Games

One of my favorite past-times in Senegal, where I couldn't have very in-depth conversations with very many people due to my lack of French (and of course lack of Wolof and Mandinka and all the other widely-spoken African languages), was to watch people playing a game and try to figure out the rules.

Pictured above are two young men who were playing a game in the sand in the beach at Toubab Dialao, a fishing village where I spent a very pleasant day and a half. The called the game "dam", and as far as I could discern the rules are thus:

• Played on a 5-by-5 board (in this case, demarcated by holes dug in the sand by hand)
• Each side has 11 pieces (in this case, rocks vs sticks)
• You take turns putting your pieces down in any free spot on the board til you're done
• Then you take turns making moves, which consist of either moving a piece one space in any horizontal/vertical direction (but not diagonally), or of jumping over an adjacent enemy piece in any horizontal/vertical direction as long as you land on an empty square, in which case you get to remove the enemy piece from the board
• Whoever has pieces remaining on the board wins (though all the games I watched were conceded with a few of the loser's pieces left, rather than being fully played out)

I am not 100% sure of this but there may also have been some sort of concession for the disadvantaged side (the side that went second? the side that lost the last game?), such as getting to remove one extra of the advantaged side's pieces on their first Phase 2 turn (after all the pieces were laid down).

Later in a different village I saw a few old men playing a game that looked similar on a wooden board that was more like 10 by 10 or maybe even larger, and the guide told me it was also called "dam" and was dismissive of any 5 by 5 game called dam when I asked him whether they were the same, but I didn't have time to observe that one for very long.

A quick google search was unhelpful in identifying this game, but of course I could be spelling it completely wrong. Anyone heard of it or can help identify it in some other way?

Oh, and I also introduced frisbee to the kids at Toubab Dialao, engaging in a couple of sessions of beach-side (and often in-the-ocean) catch. The gender dynamics were very interesting -- the girls all wanted to play but as soon as the boys started playing they would melt away, only to return when almost all the boys were tired of it. I wonder whether my treatment of the boys was part of the problem -- I was interested in creating a mixed-gender group so when a boy approached I would try to include him, but he and his friends would quickly come to dominate the group. The girls, on the other hand, generally wouldn't approach a group of boys to try to cut in, so once the boys took over there was no going back. I'm not sure whether there's something I could have done to change the situation or whether it was inevitable...