Bao la Kiswahili

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Article about Bao la Kiswahili in Italian.

Bao la Kiswahili

Other Names: Bao, Bao la Kucheza, Bao la Kete, Bao la Komwe, Bawo, Busolo, Katra, Lusole, Morahha, Mraha Wa Tso

First Description: Étienne de Flacourt, 1658

Cycles: Two

Ranks: Four

Sowing: Multiple laps

Region: Burundi, Comores, D. R. of the Congo, Kenya, Madagascar, Malawi, Tan- zania

Bao (Swahili for: "board") is a mancala game played in Swahili and Bajun communities in eastern Africa, e.g. Zanzibar, coastal Tanzania and Kenya, and the Comores. The game is also known by the Sakalava in northwestern Madagascar. Nowadays, it has also arrived in the Swahili hinterland, where several Muslim people have adopted the game. The Yao in Malawi changed its original name to Bawo. Bao is also played by the Bangubangu in Kisangani, D. R. of the Congo, and the game was also reported from Bujumbura, the capital of Burundi.

The game was first described by the French traveller Flacourt in 1658 who saw it on Madagascar. Thomas Hyde found it 1694 on Anjouan, Comores. The Bao poem "Bao Naligwa" was written in the 1820s by the Swahili poet Muyaka bin Haji in Mombasa, Kenya. The oldest still surviving Bao board was made in 1896 in Malawi and is kept today in the British Museum in London.

In 1966, the Chama Cha Bao ("Bao Society") was formed in Tanzania to promote the game. On Zanzibar, there are about 16 Bao clubs and about 10 masters who are called fundi ("artist") or bingwa ("master"). The strongest players are Abdulrahim Muhiddin Foum, Masoud Hassan Ali (known as "Kijumbe") and Ali Maulid Hussein ("Maulidi"). Regular championships are held on Zanzibar (Tanzania), on Lamu (Kenya) and in Malawi. In Europe, tournaments were organized in Cambridge, England and Senigallia, Italy.

Some call Bao the "king of mancala games" as it is considered the most difficult and complex of them.

Contents 1 Rules 1.1 Sowing Without Capturing (Takasa) 1.2 Sowing With Capturing 1.3 Goal and End of the Game 1.4 Takasia 2 Trivia 3 See also 4 External Links 5 References

Rules

The Bao board consists of four rows, each one with eight holes. The holes are rounded except the fourth from the right in the central rows, which is squarish and called nyumba ("house").

Initial Position

The position at the start of the game is shown above. In addition, each player has 22 seeds in reserve.

The game is played in turns.

Bao is a game with multilap sowing. Moves can be with or without capturing. Captures are mandatory.

If the first lap of a move is without capture, nothing is capture in the full move.

There is an initial phase with special rules, called namua, in which seeds are not yet introduced into play.

Sowing Without Capturing (Takasa)

If there are still reserve seeds (namua stage), and it is not possible to make a capture, to play the player takes a seed from the reserve and adds it to any of the holes he has on the front row except the nyumba.

• If the player has not "destroyed" his nyumba (he has not safaried it and it has not been captured) he can only add the seed to a hole containing more than one seed, and only can start from a singleton if the only non empty holes in the front rows are singletons.

Then the player takes all the seeds from this hole and sows them in the following holes in any sense, clockwise or anticlockwise, on the players own side. If the last seed is sown in a non empty hole its content is taken and the sowing keeps on, and so on until the last seed falls in an empty hole and the turn ends.

If the only non empty hole in the front row is the house what the player must do is taking one reserve seed and one seed from the nyumba and sow them to the right or to the left of the nyumba. If the house has now just 5 seeds (fewer than the initial 6) it is not considered a nyumba, but if it gets more seeds again (6 or more) it will be again a house.

If the player has no more reserve seeds the takasa move starts in a different way: the player chooses any hole (including the house) containing more than one seed from his front row and sows with its seeds in the sense he wants. If there are only singletons on the front row he can begin with a back row hole (not a singleton). The move keeps on with multiple laps as explained before.

In any case the front row can never be emptied, so if the only non singleton and non empty hole on the front row is the first or the last one the sense of sowing can not be towards the back row, but towards the center of the front row.

Sowing With Capturing

If still in namua stage, the player must put a seed from his reserve in a hole on his front row that has an opponent's hole opposite to it which is not empty. Then he takes the contents of the opponent's hole and sows these seeds beginning from a kichwa (an extrem hole in the front row) and going to the center of the row.

• If he has captured from any of the two holes on the right of the row, he must start on the right kichwa.
• If he has captured from any of the two holes on the left of the row, he must start on the left kichwa.
• If he has captured in any of the four central holes, and he was already sowing in a clockwise sense, he starts on the left. If in an anticlockwise sense, no the right. It is, he keeps the same sense he already had.
• In any other case, he can choose from which kichwa to start.

He keeps on sowing as in takasa, but if a sowing ends in a non empty hole on the front row, and if the opposite hole is not empty, he captures the seeds and sows them as before. Another difference with takasa is that if the player still has the house and ends a sowing in it he can choose to either stop the move or keep on with the nyumba contents (doing safari).

If there were no reserve seeds, the player begins sowing from any hole (not a singleton) in a way that the sowing will end in a non empty hole in the front row whose opposite hole is also non empty, and so capturing. This is a mtaji. The move keeps on according to the previous explanation, but if a sowing ends in the nyumba he must safari (keep on the sowing).

Goal and End of the Game

The winner is the player who has either captured all counters of the opponent's front row (which is then empty) or is leaving him only singletons, so that the opponent will not be able to move.

Takasia

There's an extra rule used in just a few special cases. Most players can survive without knowing it. Its name is takasia.

If after a takasa move only a single opponent's hole is under threat of being captured, and the opponent must also takasa, this hole is takasiaed and the opponent cannot start to takasa from it, and if a lap ends in it, the move also ends. If there is still a nyumba, it cannot be takasiaed. Also, if there is a single non-empty pit or a single pit containing more than one counter in the front row, it cannot be takasiaed.

Trivia

To count the seeds at the beginning players usually put all the seeds in their pits in one of the following ways:

Then they remove the 20 seeds from the back row and the two seeds from the rightmost hole.

See also

• Bao dictionary
• Bao test

External Links

• CHAMIJADA. The official site of Dar es Salaam Regional Traditional Games Association (Chama cha michezo ya Jadi Mkoa Dar es Salaam) with Bao rules and other information.
• KIBA. A site where it is possible to meet other players and to play free matches or tournaments by correspondence.
• Bawo software (Malawian version).

References

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How to Play Bao. National Museum of Tanzania, Dar Es Salaam (Tanzania) 1971.

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© Wikimanqala.
Introduction by: Víktor Bautista i Roca & Ralf Gering.
Under the CC by-sa 2.5.
Rules by: Víktor Bautista i Roca.
Under the CC by-sa 2.5.

© Wikinfo.
References by: Ralf Gering.
Under the CC by-sa 2.5.