Owela, also referred to by the

Khoekhoe language Khoekhoe or Khoikhoi ( ; , ), 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 ...

loanword A loanword (also a loan word, loan-word) is a word at least partly assimilated from one language (the donor language) into another language (the recipient or target language), through the process of borrowing. Borrowing is a metaphorical term t ...

ǁHus, is the Oshiwambo name of a traditional

mancala Mancala ( ''manqalah'') is a family of two-player Turns, rounds and time-keeping systems in games, turn-based Strategy game, strategy board games played with small stones, beans, marbles or seeds and rows of holes or pits in the earth, a board ...

board game A board game is a type of tabletop game that involves small objects () that are placed and moved in particular ways on a specially designed patterned game board, potentially including other components, e.g. dice. The earliest known uses of the ...

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 Khoekhoe language, Nama language of the Khoe languages, Khoe-Kwadi language family, although many Nama ...

Herero people The Herero () are a Bantu people, Bantu ethnic group inhabiting parts of Southern Africa. 178,987 Namibians identified as Ovaherero in the 2023 census. They speak Otjiherero, a Bantu language. Though the Herero primarily reside in Namibia, there ...

, Rukwangali speakers, and other ethnic groups from

Namibia Namibia, officially the Republic of Namibia, is a country on the west coast of Southern Africa. Its borders include the Atlantic Ocean to the west, Angola and Zambia to the north, Botswana to the east and South Africa to the south; in the no ...

(and its

Southern Africa Southern Africa is the southernmost region of Africa. No definition is agreed upon, but some groupings include the United Nations geoscheme for Africa, United Nations geoscheme, the intergovernmental Southern African Development Community, and ...

n neighbours). It is related to the Omweso family of mancala games played in Eastern and Southern Africa. Although this is an

abstract strategy game An abstract strategy game is a type of strategy game that has minimal or no narrative theme, an outcome determined only by player choice (with minimal or no randomness), and in which each player has perfect information about the game. For example ...

, 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, numbered balls, or in the case ...

Gameplay

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 Culture of Namibia