The game of stones

By Azwidohwi Mamphiswana

@AuRoRa92578521

mamphiswanaazwidohwi@gmail

Back in the days before digital games, internet and streetlights, sunset was used to indicate time to go home for children.

Children would spend hours collecting pebbles from streams, rivers, and the ground just to play Ndode. They would spend hours jumping over a rope ‘Khadi’, leaving no room for obesity nor depression.

image:Google

Indigenous games are a universal language – something that you find in every city, town, and village worldwide. While they may to differ depending on where you might find yourself playing, they’re all connected by their power to connect.

Ndode is an indigenous game in the Vhavenda culture that requires the hand-eye coordination. The game is also known as Diketo,Upuca or puca and it is very popular in South Africa and Lesotho. Further afield it’s called nhodo(Zimbabwe), ondota (Namibia), or mdoko in Tanzania. 

Originally, the game used to be played by girls near the river when they went to fetch water, but through revolutions the game is unisex . The game is played using pebbles with a circle drawn on the ground between two players or teams. The player throws a stone called “gute” into the air and tries to scoop as many stones as possible out of the circle before catching gute. The player then throws the stone up and take the stones back to the circle ,remaining with a required number of stones required for the game level.

 

                      Boys playing Ndode emphasizing the Unisex nature of the game  Picture : Internet                           

If a player drops the stone “gute” or makes mistakes with numbers being removed in and out of the circle , then it is the other players’ or team’s turn to play.

The winner is a player that finishes the game with many stones and having a correct number of stones in each round. In competitions ,players are scored over a period of ten rounds with two opposing players taking turns, the one with highest score is declared the winner.

image: Google

Every game teaches, Ndode helps to concretize concepts as linear equations, counting, conceptualizations of independent and dependent variables. “ As a mathematics student who plays ndode during my free time, the circles that I see in Ndode are like the ones in my circle theory chapter. The game helps me to have skills of calculating the area of a circle”, said Tshikhala Matiba a Grade 11 learner at Tshivhase Secondary School.

Like other indigenous games, ndode has different kinds of benefits for its players. The game brings people together, promotes reconciliation, provides essential training in social interaction and boosts education retention. The game enhances physical health as it involves hand reflexes.

Image: Google

“Ndode is also a game that helps the mental health problems as it requires your mind to focus on it, leaving no room for stress nor depression. It makes you think out of the box”, firmly added a medicine student at Sefako Makgatho University, Prudence Vele.

This Indigenous game reconnects urban indigenous youth to their culture.