Owela, also referred to by the

Khoekhoe language The Khoekhoe language (), also known by the ethnic terms Nama (''Namagowab'') , Damara (''ǂNūkhoegowab''), or Nama/Damara and formerly as Hottentot, is the most widespread of the non-Bantu languages of Southern Africa that make heavy use o ...

loanword A loanword (also loan word or loan-word) is a word at least partly assimilated from one language (the donor language) into another language. This is in contrast to cognates, which are words in two or more languages that are similar because th ...

hus, () is the

Oshiwambo The Ovambo () language is a dialect cluster spoken by the Ovambo people in southern Angola and northern Namibia, of which the written standards are Kwanyama and Ndonga. The native name for the language is ''Oshiwambo'' (also written ''Oshiv ...

name of a traditional

mancala The mancala games are a family of two-player turn-based strategy board games played with small stones, beans, or seeds and rows of holes or pits in the earth, a board or other playing surface. The objective is usually to capture all or some ...

board game Board games are tabletop games that typically use . These pieces are moved or placed on a pre-marked board (playing surface) and often include elements of table, card, role-playing, and miniatures games as well. Many board games feature a comp ...

played by the

Nama people Nama (in older sources also called Namaqua) are an African ethnic group of South Africa, Namibia and Botswana. They traditionally speak the Nama language of the Khoe-Kwadi language family, although many Nama also speak Afrikaans. The Nama Peo ...

Herero people The Herero ( hz, Ovaherero) are a Bantu ethnic group inhabiting parts of Southern Africa. There were an estimated 250,000 Herero people in Namibia in 2013. They speak Otjiherero, a Bantu language. Though the Herero primarily reside in Namibia, t ...

Rukwangali Kwangali, or RuKwangali, is a Bantu language spoken by 85,000 people along the Kavango River in Namibia, where it is a national language, and in Angola. It is one of several Bantu languages of the Kavango which have click consonants; these are t ...

speakers, and other ethnic groups from

Namibia Namibia (, ), officially the Republic of Namibia, is a country in Southern Africa. Its western border is the Atlantic Ocean. It shares land borders with Zambia and Angola to the north, Botswana to the east and South Africa to the south and ea ...

(and its

Southern Africa Southern Africa is the southernmost subregion of the African continent, south of the Congo and Tanzania. The physical location is the large part of Africa to the south of the extensive Congo River basin. Southern Africa is home to a number of ...

n neighbours). It is related to the

Omweso Omweso (sometimes shortened to Mweso) is the traditional mancala game of the Ugandan people. The game was supposedly introduced by the Bachwezi people of the ancient Bunyoro-kitara empire of Uganda. Nowadays the game is dominated by Ugandan villag ...

family of mancala games played in

Eastern Eastern may refer to: Transportation *China Eastern Airlines, a current Chinese airline based in Shanghai *Eastern Air, former name of Zambia Skyways *Eastern Air Lines, a defunct American airline that operated from 1926 to 1991 *Eastern Air Li ...

and Southern Africa. Although this is an

abstract strategy game Abstract strategy games admit a number of definitions which distinguish these from strategy games in general, mostly involving no or minimal narrative theme, outcomes determined only by player choice (with no randomness), and perfect information. ...

, the consequences of individual moves are so hard to predict that it can be considered, to some extent, a

game of chance A game of chance is in contrast with a game of skill. It is a game whose outcome is strongly influenced by some randomizing device. Common devices used include dice, spinning tops, playing cards, roulette wheels, or numbered balls drawn from a ...

Gameplay

Hus (Omwela) board for sale in Swakopmund, Namibia

Equipment

Owela is typically played on a board with 4 rows of 6 to 24 pits. In addition, a number of undifferentiated seeds are needed depending on the size of the board. Owela can also be played without a board by digging rows of pits in sand.

Objective

The winner is the last player to be able to make a legal move, possible by capturing all an opponent's stones or reducing the opponent to no more than one seed in each pit.

Setup

Two seeds are placed in each of the outer pits. Two seeds are also placed in each of the four rightmost inner pits for each player.

''Starting position for Owela''

Sowing

A player moves by selecting a pit with at least two seeds, and ''sowing'' them one by one around their side of the board in a counter-clockwise direction from the starting pit. The player may only sow from one of the sixteen pits in their territory, and the sowing proceeds around this territory, not directly involving the opponent's side. If the last sowed seed lands in a previously occupied pit, all seeds in that pit, including the one just placed, are immediately sown, before the opponent's turn. This is called ''Relay sowing'' and continues until the last sowing ends in an empty pit.

Capturing

If the last seed sown lands in one of the player's eight inner pits, which is occupied, and furthermore both the opponent's pits in this same column are occupied, then all seeds from these two pits are captured and sown starting from the player's next pit in the sowing.

Footnotes

Notes

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Owela Traditional mancala games Oshiwambo words and phrases Namibian culture