Lamlameta
Lamlameta (German: in pairs ; from "lama" = two ) is a strategic board game ( Tagega ) of the Konso , a people who are at home in the Omo Valley in Central Ethiopia . This game was first described in 1971 by the ethnologist Richard Pankhurst, who observed it near Olanta. In Germany it has been taught since 2004 at the Africa Festival in Sinzig together with other Mancala variants.
Lamlameta is a recreational activity of adult men and, to a lesser extent, boys. It is played outdoors, in the rainy season also indoors or on a kind of veranda directly in front of the house entrance.
Rules of the game
The carved wooden board, called toma tagéga , consists of two rows with 12 hollows each ( awa ). At the beginning of the batch, there are two seeds in each well, called tagéga . Each player has a row.
Starting position
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Individual trains
In each turn a player takes the contents of one of his hollows and distributes them individually counterclockwise to the following hollows. Pankhurst writes that the first move begins with the hollow on the right or the penultimate hollow, but this does not seem to be a fixed rule, just a frequent opening move.
When the last seed falls into a filled trough, its contents, including the last seed placed in it, are taken and distributed.
The turn ends when the last seed is placed in an empty hollow.
It is forbidden to place seeds in opponents' hollows that contain two seeds, except on the first move of a game. Later, these troughs are skipped when distributing.
If the last seed falls into its own empty trough and the opposing trough on the opposite side contains two seeds, these opposing seeds are caught, as are all other pairs of opposing seeds in other troughs on the opposite side.
The game is over when a player can no longer move. The seeds that are still on the board belong to the player on whose half of the board they are. The winner is whoever has caught the most pairs.
literature
- Pankhurst, R. Gabata and Related Board Games of Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa . In: Ethiopia Observer 1971; 14 (3): 187-188.
- Russ, L. The Complete Mancala Games Book: How to play the World's oldest Board Games . Marlowe & Company, New York (USA) 2000, 36-37.