Bao is a traditional mancala

Mancala

Mancala is a family of board games played around the world, sometimes called "sowing" games, or "count-and-capture" games, which describes the game-play. Mancala games play a role in many African and some Asian societies comparable to that of chess in the West, or the game of Go in Eastern Asia...

 board game

Board game

A board game is a game which involves counters or pieces being moved on a pre-marked surface or "board", according to a set of rules. Games may be based on pure strategy, chance or a mixture of the two, and usually have a goal which a player aims to achieve...

 played in most of East Africa

East Africa

East Africa or Eastern Africa is the easterly region of the African continent, variably defined by geography or geopolitics. In the UN scheme of geographic regions, 19 territories constitute Eastern Africa:...

 including Kenya

Kenya

Kenya , officially known as the Republic of Kenya, is a country in East Africa that lies on the equator, with the Indian Ocean to its south-east...

, Tanzania

Tanzania

The United Republic of Tanzania is a country in East Africa bordered by Kenya and Uganda to the north, Rwanda, Burundi, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo to the west, and Zambia, Malawi, and Mozambique to the south. The country's eastern borders lie on the Indian Ocean.Tanzania is a state...

, Comoros

Comoros

The Comoros , officially the Union of the Comoros is an archipelago island nation in the Indian Ocean, located off the eastern coast of Africa, on the northern end of the Mozambique Channel, between northeastern Mozambique and northwestern Madagascar...

, Malawi

Malawi

The Republic of Malawi is a landlocked country in southeast Africa that was formerly known as Nyasaland. It is bordered by Zambia to the northwest, Tanzania to the northeast, and Mozambique on the east, south and west. The country is separated from Tanzania and Mozambique by Lake Malawi. Its size...

, as well as some areas of DR Congo

Democratic Republic of the Congo

The Democratic Republic of the Congo is a state located in Central Africa. It is the second largest country in Africa by area and the eleventh largest in the world...

 and Burundi

Burundi

Burundi , officially the Republic of Burundi , is a landlocked country in the Great Lakes region of Eastern Africa bordered by Rwanda to the north, Tanzania to the east and south, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo to the west. Its capital is Bujumbura...

. It is most popular among the Swahili people

Swahili people

The Swahili people are a Bantu ethnic group and culture found in East Africa, mainly in the coastal regions and the islands of Kenya, Tanzania and north Mozambique. According to JoshuaProject, the Swahili number in at around 1,328,000. The name Swahili is derived from the Arabic word Sawahil,...

 of Tanzania and Kenya; the name itself "Bao" is the Swahili

Swahili language

Swahili or Kiswahili is a Bantu language spoken by various ethnic groups that inhabit several large stretches of the Mozambique Channel coastline from northern Kenya to northern Mozambique, including the Comoro Islands. It is also spoken by ethnic minority groups in Somalia...

 word for "board" or "board game". In Tanzania, and especially Zanzibar

Zanzibar

Zanzibar ,Persian: زنگبار, from suffix bār: "coast" and Zangi: "bruin" ; is a semi-autonomous part of Tanzania, in East Africa. It comprises the Zanzibar Archipelago in the Indian Ocean, off the coast of the mainland, and consists of numerous small islands and two large ones: Unguja , and Pemba...

, a "bao master" (called bingwa, "master"; but also fundi, "artist") is held in high respect. In Malawi, the game is also known as Bawo, which is the Yao equivalent of the Swahili name.

Bao is well known to be a prominent mancala in terms of complexity and strategical depth, and it has raised interest in scholars of several disciplines, including game theory

Game theory

Game theory is a mathematical method for analyzing calculated circumstances, such as in games, where a person’s success is based upon the choices of others...

, complexity theory

Computational complexity theory

Computational complexity theory is a branch of the theory of computation in theoretical computer science and mathematics that focuses on classifying computational problems according to their inherent difficulty, and relating those classes to each other...

, and psychology

Psychology

Psychology is the study of the mind and behavior. Its immediate goal is to understand individuals and groups by both establishing general principles and researching specific cases. For many, the ultimate goal of psychology is to benefit society...

. Official tournaments are held in Tanzania, Zanzibar, Lamu

Lamu Island

Lamu Island is a part of the Lamu Archipelago of Kenya.Lamu Old Town, the principal inhabited part of the island, is one of the oldest and best-preserved Swahili settlements in East Africa. Built in coral stone and mangrove timber, the town is characterized by the simplicity of structural forms...

 (Kenya), and Malawi, and both mainland Tanzania and Zanzibar have their Bao societies, such as the Chama cha Bao founded in 1966.

In Zanzibar and Tanzania there are two versions of Bao. The main version, which is also the most complex and most appreciated, is called Bao la kiswahili ("Bao of the Swahili people"). The simplified version is called Bao la kujifunza ("Bao for beginners"). There are a variety of other mancalas across East Africa (and part of Middle East

Middle East

The Middle East is a region that encompasses Western Asia and Northern Africa. It is often used as a synonym for Near East, in opposition to Far East...

) that are closely related to Bao. One of them is the Hawalis

Hawalis

Hawalis is a traditional mancala game played in Oman as well as Zanzibar, where it is known as Bao la Kiarabu, with slightly different rules...

 game of Oman

Oman

Oman , officially called the Sultanate of Oman , is an Arab state in southwest Asia on the southeast coast of the Arabian Peninsula. It is bordered by the United Arab Emirates to the northwest, Saudi Arabia to the west, and Yemen to the southwest. The coast is formed by the Arabian Sea on the...

; it is also known in Zanzibar, where it goes by the name "Bao la kiarabu" ("Bao of the Arabs"). Another major relative of Bao is Omweso

Omweso

Omweso 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 villagers. It is a very hard and fast game said to keep one's mind high and ever...

 (played in Uganda

Uganda

Uganda , officially the Republic of Uganda, is a landlocked country in East Africa. Uganda is also known as the "Pearl of Africa". It is bordered on the east by Kenya, on the north by South Sudan, on the west by the Democratic Republic of the Congo, on the southwest by Rwanda, and on the south by...

), which employs exactly the same equipment as Bao, and has some similar rules.

History

As with most traditional mancalas, precise historical information on the origins and diffusion of Bao is missing. Early accounts and archaeological findings are arguable as there are many games that are similar to Bao in both equipment and rules. For example, a 1658 account by French governor Étienne de Flacourt

Étienne de Flacourt

Étienne de Flacourt was a French governor of Madagascar, born at Orléans in 1607. He was named governor of Madagascar by the French East India Company in 1648....

 about a game played by the Sakalava

Sakalava

The Sakalava are an ethnic group of Madagascar numbering approximately 700,000 in population. Their name means "people of the long valleys." They occupy the Western edge of the island from Toliara in the south to Sambirano in the north. The Sakalava denominate a number of smaller ethnic groups...

 people in northwestern Madagascar

Madagascar

The Republic of Madagascar is an island country located in the Indian Ocean off the southeastern coast of Africa...

 is sometimes quoted as the earliest reference to Bao, but scholars are more cautious about identifying Flacourt's game with Bao proper. The study of archaeological findings of boards usually relies on the assumption that boards having a square hole in a certain position (that of the nyumba, see below) are associated to Bao, as it is the only known mancala to have such feature. Nevertheless, as traditional boards are made of wood, ancient evidence of the game of Bao is unlikely to be found. As of today, the oldest Bao board is supposed to be one from Malawi, exposed at the British Museum

British Museum

The British Museum is a museum of human history and culture in London. Its collections, which number more than seven million objects, are amongst the largest and most comprehensive in the world and originate from all continents, illustrating and documenting the story of human culture from its...

, and dating back to no earlier than 1896. One of the first written accounts of Bao as played in the Swahili world is due to British orientalist Thomas Hyde

Thomas Hyde

Thomas Hyde was an English orientalist. The first use of the word dualism is attributed to him, in 1700.-Life:He was born at Billingsley, near Bridgnorth in Shropshire, on 29 June 1636...

, who saw it played in 1658 in Anjouan

Anjouan

Anjouan is an autonomous island, part of the Union of Comoros. The island is located in the Indian Ocean. Its capital is Mutsamudu and its population as of 2006 is about 277,500. The total area of the island is 424 sq. kilometers Anjouan (also known as Ndzuwani or Nzwani) is an autonomous island,...

 (Comoros).

Due to its strong relationship with Swahili culture, and despite the lack of historical evidences, it is reasonable to assume that Bao originally spread from the Swahili coast (i.e., the coast Tanzania and Kenya, and their islands). It is also notable that "Bao la kiswahili" means "swahili board game" as opposed to, for example, "Bao la kiarabu" (the related "arab board game", also known as Hawalis). In the 1820s

1820s

The 1820s decade ran from January 1, 1820, to December 31, 1829.- East Asia :* February 14, 1820 – Minh Mang starts to rule in Vietnam.* Java War * 1828 Siamese-Lao War: Siam invades and sacks Vientiane....

, Swahili poet Muyaka bin Haji from Mombasa

Mombasa

Mombasa is the second-largest city in Kenya. Lying next to the Indian Ocean, it has a major port and an international airport. The city also serves as the centre of the coastal tourism industry....

 celebrated the game in his poem Bao Naligwa.

Rules

As with most traditional games, the rules of Bao were only preserved by oral tradition

Oral tradition

Oral tradition and oral lore is cultural material and traditions transmitted orally from one generation to another. The messages or testimony are verbally transmitted in speech or song and may take the form, for example, of folktales, sayings, ballads, songs, or chants...

, and as a consequence, they are subject to local variations. The most influential transcription of the rules is due to board game scholar Alex de Voogt, who wrote it between 1991 and 1995 based on the teachings of Zanzibari Bao masters.

Equipment

Bao is based on a mancala board comprising four rows of eight pits each; in swahili, pits are termed mashimo (singular: shimo), meaning "holes". Each player owns a half of the board comprising two adjacent rows.

Some pits that play a special role in the game have specific names. The fourth rightmost pit in the "inner" row of each half board is called nyumba ("house") or kuu ("main"); in most traditional boards, it is visually distinguished by a square shape. The first and last pit of the inner row are called kichwa ("head"), while the name kimbi applies to both the kitchwa and the pits adjacent to them (i.e., the second and next to last pit in the row).

Every player has 32 indifferentiated counters (or "seeds" according to the standard mancala terminology) that are termed kete ("shells"). Note that this same equipment (a 4x8 board and 64 seeds) is shared by a number of other (mostly African) mancalas, including Omweso (Uganda), //Hus

//Hus

//Hus is a traditional mancala played by Nama, Herero, Kwangari and other related ethnic groups from Namibia and neighbouring countries. It is related to the Omweso family of mancala games played in Eastern and Southern Africa...

 (Namibia

Namibia

Namibia, officially the Republic of Namibia , is a country in southern Africa whose western border is the Atlantic Ocean. It shares land borders with Angola and Zambia to the north, Botswana to the east and South Africa to the south and east. It gained independence from South Africa on 21 March...

), Isolo

Isolo

Isolo is a traditional mancala game played by the Sukuma people in northern Tanzania. The rules of the game come in three variants, respectively for women, boys and men.-Equipment:...

 (Tanzania), Kombe (Kenya), and Hawalis (Oman).

The initial setup of seeds is one of the elements that distinguish different versions of the game.

Setup

In Bao la kiswahili, each player initially places 6 seeds in the nyumba, and two more seeds in the two pits immediately to the right of the nyumba. All the remaining seeds are kept "in hand". In Malawi, 8 seeds are placed in the nyumba. Thus each player has respectively 22 or 20 seeds in hand at the beginning of the game. These seeds are introduced into the game in a first phase of play called the namua phase.

In Bao la kujifunza, all seeds are placed at startup, two per pit. Players thus have no seeds in hand, and thus there is no namua phase.

Namua

In the namua phase, each player begins his or her move by introducing one of the seeds he or she has in hand into the board. The seed must be placed in a non-empty pit in the player's inner row.

A "marker" pit is a pit of the inner row that faces a non-empty opponent's pit. If the first seed is placed in a marker pit, a capture occurs, and the player's turn will be called a mtaji turn. Otherwise, the turn will be called a takata turn. A player must capture if he or she can do that. In a mtaji turn, other captures may occur as a consequence of sowing (see below); in a takata turn, on the other hand, captures are not allowed.

Capture and sowing

When a capture occurs, the player takes all the seed from the captured opponent's pit, and relay sows them in his or her rows. The first seed must be sown in a kichwa; if it is sown in the right kitchwa, sowing will proceed counterclockwise, while if it is sown in the left kitchwa, sowing will be clockwise. For this reason, the right kitchwa is also called "counterclockwise kitchwa" and the left one "clockwise kitcwa".

The choice of the kitchwa to sow from is initially left to the player, with a few exception. If capture has occurred in any kimbi, sowing must start from the closest kitchwa.

While the player is relay-sowing, if the last seed in any individual sowing is placed in a marker, a new capture occurs. Sowing of the captured seeds will start again from a kitchwa. In this case, it is never up to the player to choose which kitchwa to sow from, that is: if the capture occurred in a kimbi, sowing must start from the closest kitchwa, as above; otherwise, the player must preserve the current clockwise or counterclockwise direction of sowing. That is, if a capture occurs at the end of a clockwise sowing, the newly captured seeds will have to be sown starting from the clockwise kitchwa, and vice versa.

If the turn is not a mtaji turn, relay sowing, but captures will never take place: marker pits are treated just like any other pits.

In any case, the turn ends when the last seed in a sowing is dropped in an empty pit.

Mtaji phase

When players are left without seeds in their hands, the namua phase is over a new phase of the game begins, which is called the "mtaji" phase. Note that the word "mtaji" is used both to refer to a turn and to a game phase; the two meanings must not confused. Also note that in Bao la kujifunza, the game begins with the mtaji phase, as there are no seeds in hand.

In the mtaji phase, the player will begin his or her turn taking all the seeds from any pit that has at least 2 seeds, and sows them (either clockwise or counterclockwise). If the last seed of this first sowing is dropped in a marker, a mtaji turn begins, with the same rules described above. Again, if the marker is a kimbi, sowing will be from the closest kitchwa; otherwise, the player will have to preserve the clockwise or counterclockwise orientation of the sowing that caused the capture.

As for the namua phase, the player must capture if he or she can do so.

If the first sowing does not lead to a capture, the whole turn is a "takata turn", exactly as in the namua phase. In this case, the player must start sowing from a pit in the inner row, if this is possible.

As a special rule, if the first sowing is from a pit that has more than 15 seeds, the turn will always be "takata" irrespective of whether the last seed falls in a marker or not.

The nyumba

In Bao la kiswahili there are some extra rules (not included in Bao la kujifunza) that are related to the nyumba. First, if sowing in a takata turn ends up in the nyumba, the turn is over (there is no "relay-sowing" of the seeds in the nyumba). Second, likewise, if sowing in a mtaji turn ends up in the nyumba, and the nyumba is not a marker, the player may freely choose whether to relay-sow the contents of the nyumba or end his or her turn. Third, if, during the mtaji phase, the player begins his turn sowing from the nyumba, he will only sow two seeds from the nyumba rather than its whole content. This is called "taxing" the nyumba.

The nyumba loses its special features the first time its contents are sown (taxation excluded), i.e., the first time the player chooses to relay-sow from the nyumba in a mtaji turn.

There are some variations to these rules. For example, taxing the nyumba is sometimes allowed only if there is no other legal way to begin a player's turn. Also, in some versions of the Bao relay-sowing of the nyumba in a mtaji turn is mandatory rather than optional.

End of the game

The game ends when a player is left without seeds in his or her inner row, or when he or she cannot move anymore. In both cases, this player loses the game.

Terminology

In Swahili literature on Bao, the following terms are commonly used:

• kete: the seeds.
• kichwa: the first and last pits in a player's inner row.
• kimbi: the first two and last two pits in a player's inner row, i.e., the kitchwa pits as well the pits adjancent to them. In some cases, the term "kimbi" is only used for the second and next to last pits in the inner row, i.e., kitchwa pits are not included as kimbi pits.
• mtaji: referring to a turn, is a turn that begins with a capture, and that may include further captures. Referring to a phase of the game, is the phase where there are no seeds left in hand. Some sources also use "mtaji" to refer to a group of seeds that, when sown, lead to a capture.
• namua: the initial phase of Bao la kiswahili, when seeds "in hand" are introduced into the game.
• nemo: the seeds in hand
• nyumba: the fourth pit from the right in a player's inner row; usually distinguished by a square pit.
• shimo (plur. mashimo): pit(s).
• takata: refers to a turn that does not begin with a capture and, thus, that may not include any capture.

External links

• Bao at Mancala World
• CHAMIJADA, official site of Dar es Salaam Regional Traditional Games Association (Chama cha michezo ya Jadi Mkoa Dar es Salaam) with Bao rules and other information
• KIBA, Italian site where free matches or tournaments can be played by correspondence.
• Bao Game Rules from Malawi
• Jeroen Donkers Bao page with a free program for the Zanzibar version of Bao
• Rules and sample games at Pergioco.net (in Italian)
• De Voogt's rules and analysis of Bao
• Bao la kiswahili and Bao la kujifunza