African version of sungka?!?

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After a few months, I was back at the de Young Museum's African Art gallery, reviewing what I might have missed during my first visit. And one of the smaller objects that caught my attention was this board game from Côte d'Ivoire. 

It looks like sungka! If I remember correctly, this game is called Awalé in Côte d'Ivoire. It appears to be played with shells too, like sungka. The main difference, though, is the number of small holes on each side: in sungka, there are seven holes; for awalé, there are only six. Thus, this makes the number of shells required different too. More shells are required for sungka because there are more holes to fill. Plus, there may be slightly different rules for each game. But still, uncannily similar, right?


Seeing the awalé in the African Art gallery made me think that the Philippines may have more influences from Africa than I probably know... there may be cultural practices that I thought were Asian but have African origins. For example, Africa is considered to be the home of awalé (1). From different parts of the continent, the board game went to the Middle East and then to the rest of Asia; it went across the Atlantic to the Americas through the slave trade. As Nwamaka Nkele wrote (2):
The African diaspora... took with them their cultural heritage in clothes, dance, and mancala games with names and rules...
Awalé has been so ingrained the in the different cultures in the continent, that it was regarded by kings as a means to resolve marriage issues and to plan war strategies (3). Awalé has also been used as an informal teaching tool (4). I can understand that because when I was first playing sungka, I had to quickly learn how to add and subtract (maths) and to know which hole to select (strategy) to win each match. 

I am always fascinated to see how common different cultures are. We may be from different tribes and grew up in different climes, but at the end of the day, we are more similar than we think. Awalé and sungka just reinforced this idea. And this is one reason why I keep coming back to museums. I see the culture I grew up with juxtaposed against other cultures.

(I think I should have been an anthropologist.) 

References:

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