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David Mungoshi Shelling the Nuts
Growing up on the streets of Bulawayo’s Mzilikazi Village was in many ways an education in itself, although I didn’t know it at the time. Informal education, though sometimes maligned, has always been with us. It has always been possible to watch, observe, learn and do. Some of the things I talk about here are captured in my next book, a novel called “Catalogues” in which a fictional story is woven into the socio-cultural, political and economic fabric of a chosen era in the life of Zimbabwe.

When I was a boy, it was not difficult, generally speaking, to say who belonged to the “haves” and who did not.
Society was clearly demarcated into classes. White people were always at the top of the pyramid and were supported on either side by people of Asian origin and those officially-known as Coloureds (whatever that meant).

At the base of the pyramid propping up everyone else was a mass of indigenous and other black people. As time went by, this structure began to show signs of stress and strain. It was always going to be just a matter of time before the iniquitous system collapsed.

To add salt to injury to white entrenchment was added the Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI) by the Ian Smith government on the November 11, 1965.
This made the plight of black people much more pronounced and worse.

Armed struggle became the logical antidote to the outrage of just over a quarter of a million whites lording it over millions of “Africans” as they called us. ZANLA guerrillas often sang, “Kupedza udzvinyiri toitawo zvechigandanga” (To annihilate oppression we are resorting to guerrilla warfare).

Amazingly, white people in this country called themselves Europeans!
There was no pretence at belonging. Accordingly, it goes without saying that children in the “reserves” and the locations or African townships were worse than poor relations at a wedding. The pampered white kids, who habitually referred to men old enough to be their fathers as boys had everything going their way. And every black woman was “nanny”.

Since hardly any attempt was made to provide the same kind of toys as the white children had in abundance, we had to create our own games and pastimes to keep ourselves occupied and entertained.

Ready-made toys were novelties then. This of course had the effect of stirring our creativity and inventiveness – something our children today could benefit from. Of course they have brand new toys to play with and when they do so, it makes someone somewhere a very rich person moneywise.

The games we played were many and varied and often seasonal. In other words there were games that we played as children when the rains had fallen and those that we played in the dry season.

Wet-season games included “arawuru, kwenyekwenyebhaza and touch”, all of which demanded skill and concentration. The first two games are similar to hopscotch in that they involve an object thrown into defined areas, followed by the player hopping and jumping where necessary. As the game proceeds, successful players claim chosen portions of the structure as their own.

In such areas, the owner of the space is the only one allowed to stand there and be comfortable. No one else can stand inside such spaces. Everyone else had to hop and jump over. If they accidentally stepped on any of these special spaces, they automatically disqualified themselves from further participating.

A game that boys played and for which they had an insatiable appetite was one that everyone called “igiri”.
In this game, the player uses a stick to propel the giri (a stick sharpened like a pencil on either side). To avoid the giri being caught or captured by players on the opposite side who spread themselves out the way fielders do in cricket, the person playing must either lift the pointed stick above the heads of the fielders or propel it into spaces where there is no danger of it being caught.

If the giri lands safely and is not caught, the player has three chances, to hit it into the air with a makeshift bat made of discarded pieces of plank.

The boy nearest where the pointed stick lands and scoops it up before anyone else does can aim a throw at the plank where it sits within a groove made for that purpose. If the throw is true, the fielder takes over from the one at the crease (for lack of a better word). If, however, the fielder’s throw misses the plank, the player at the crease has three chances to drive the giri as far as he can.

To do this, he taps the pointed end of the stick gently so that it rises into the air and as it does so, he must protect it against the fielders by hitting it up and away.

If the giri is caught, that particular round of the game is over for him.
Thus, the hitter of the giri has always to avoid hitting it into areas that are well-manned and where the fielders are on the lookout for a chance to snuff him out with easy catches. Evasive action and deft catches are what make the game absorbing and competitive.

After hitting the giri successfully on three occasions and not being caught, the scoring starts. You use the plank to measure the distance covered and do so either in multiples of five or multiples of 10 or 20 whatever is agreed on.

When you reach the crease, you stop counting and the player repeats the process and sets in motion everything previously done. Giri was a very competitive game in which the player at the crease did his best to stay while those fielding did their best to stop him in his tracks and take over at the crease. The fielders were not a cooperating team.

Each boy aimed to do well for himself and this made the competition quite intense.
Out in the country, boys gathered around at some popular venue where they would spin roundnuts (nyimo/indlubu) on a flat piece of rock to see whose spins and roundnuts could knock the other boys’ roundnuts out of the arena.

Knocked out roundnuts became the property of the victor. It was not unusual to see boys with bulging pockets or small bags made of tree bark (makavi/ingxoza) after a game of “kusika nyimo”.

The equivalent of that game in the locations of Bulawayo was a game called “ubhokeyi” played with buttons of all shapes, colours and sizes. You played the game by knocking buttons with your index figure from a distance into a rectangular square or box drawn on the ground. The one most successful in doing this won whatever buttons happened not to hit their mark.

You had to sit on your haunches to play this game. As with the roundnuts, good players always had lots of buttons on their person and these were priced possessions.

Games like “touch” were played by both boys and girls.
It was the same with “Bantwana Bantwana” in which a girl played the role of a mother calling her children home at the end of the day.

The children answered that they were afraid of marauding lions. The mother then assured them that there were no more lions in the area.

Thereafter, the children rushed out to sprint home. And of course the lions would be waiting for them. The really fast runners usually got away and the fast lions always caught someone. This went on and on for some time, with players occasionally changing roles.

Players could then change to the “chidhange-chidhange game” designed to train children against being deceived by conmen such as the hyena is portrayed to be in most Zimbabwean folktales.

To stay safe, each child in the metaphorical hut had to know who to open the door to. She had to recognise her mother’s voice even when there was subterfuge in the air. It goes without saying that many of us loved being the drooling hyenas.

“Sarura wako kadeyadeya” was a match-making game through which children began to know the need to make and respect choices.

It was a game that fed the fancies of puppy love.
The Ndebele equivalent of this game was the “Sicela umntwana namhlanje ekuseni” game (We ask that you give us one of your children). In the end, the least popular boy or girl on the occasion would be the last to be requested. This game was a good socialising agent. You adjusted your behaviour if people kept isolating you.

The games we played were cooperative ones and did not encourage rabid competition. The situation also meant that in addition to recognised traditional games, inventiveness took over and we created new games.

Given that the games of today are more or less anti-social, it may be necessary to rekindle some of the old games

David Mungoshi is a social commentator, a writer and editor.