Childhood Games played by Nigerians

Sometimes I wish I could go back to the old days when life was more fun. We could sit for hours playing games with no worries about what to eat. Some of these games were educational, teaching us different lessons at a time and some of these lessons still remain with us. Childhood is fun, maybe the most funful time in our lifetime. I'll be sharing with you some of these games African children play and still play, it looks like a culture that every African child must adopt before turning an adolescent.

Kudoda

The game is played by children from different African countries. 12 holes are dug, six on one side and six sides on the other side. A player is expected to collect the entire seed of the other play at the end of the game. A player picks a certain seed of either stones, or small balls in a particular hole and throws one each in the twelve holes. He packs the entire balls in the hole if the last seed he drops falls in his opponents home (the six holes for his opponents). The players always pray to have their last drop of the seed fall in a hole with plenty of the seeds in it. The game involves logic, one has to calculate well where to first pick a seed, because it determines the final result.

Boju

The boju game is always played at night with the moonlight giving a faint light. The players except the crier are expected to hide from being seen. The game is also known as seek and hide. After singing the song

"boju boju o, here I come, if I catch you, don't beg o

He sings it twice, during this time the other players run to hide , then the crier go in search for them. It taught us as children how to select a very good place of hiding, usually where no one could suspect anyone is hiding. The image above is an example of what the crier does, they close their eyes as the other players run for cover.

Suwe

The suwe game was known to be for the female gender even though the male children engaged in it too. A large square was drawn dividing it into boxes of five on each side. Only two players play in this game. The players move on those boxes drawn on the ground with one foot pushing a broken piece of tiles , the other leg is raised to avoid touching the ground. a player can only rest putting his two feet on the sixth box known as the general room where he throws a stone outside the square. The player throws the stone back with his eyes closed or facing backward, he fails if the stone falls outside the boxes or on the line of the drawn boxes, whichever box the stones falls in is marked as your home where you can rest. The number of boxes one marks is what determines the winner.

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