Awale i jocs Mancala - Oware and Mancala games

Mancala boards are one of the oldest games in the world which the players must transfer seeds, cowries or other pieces from one hole to another of board during each turn. Were played and are still played with many variations. There are well over 200 different names of mancala games. In some cases the same game will have many different names. And, on the other hand it sometimes happens that completely different games have the same name.

These has common characteristics how:

1- Are generally played on wooden boards which have either two, three or four rows of holes carved into them. Sometimes, when wooden boards are not available, the rows of holes are often dug out of the earth or sand or drawn in the earth. Therefore, the terms “boards” and “game boards” are used, indistinctly, in a generic way to refer to all these possibilities.

2- There are not pieces of one or another player, there are the own area and the opponent area. The players usually are placed one on each side of the board; half of the board corresponds to each one.

3- Is usually to use as counters: stones, seeds, small conches, shells, feces of goat,...

4- Mancala games basic movements receive names like "to sow" and "to capture". Then, “sowing” and “capturing” are carried out in several ways depending on the kind of game. Generally, the aim is to capture more seeds than the opponent.

In the literature mancala games are classificated by authors in several ways. Often authors divided mancala games into groups, distinguished on the number of rows making up the board. Nowadays many rules and boards have been collected firsthand and more than one researcher takes mancala research seriously. In some loactions the shape of the boards and the rules of play have been well documented.


TYPICAL PIECES FOR PLAYING MANCALA GAMES

The majority of mancala games use seeds as a counters. Some games use beans, stones, pebbles, shells, chickpeas, small conches, cowries, fences of animals (of goat, of sheep, of dromedary) or, nowadays, other materials are used (plastic beads, glass stones, wooden pieces, plastic pieces,...). For simplify, the pieces are called “seeds”.

The most popular seeds for playing mancala games in Africa and Caribbean are from the shrubs: caeselpinia bonduc, caeselpinia major and caeselpina cristata. The shrub caesalpinia bonduc receives the name "awale" in some locations of Africa, that produces small fruits of green color, hard and smooth that are not consumed either by the men or by animals and are usually used as pieces for playing in the different mancala games.

Their size, color and shape are not important. The number of pieces you need to play, however, varies with the game. Each game starts with an exact number of pieces placed in the holes according to the rules of the game.