Kidding Around

By Alli Sinclair

When I lived in Cuzco, I taught English to street kids and quite often they asked me to join in their games. To be honest, I sucked at most of them, but the gorgeous laughter coming from kids who had such tough lives always warmed my heart. After that experience, whenever I had the opportunity to join in a game with kids, I jumped at the chance. Here’s a list of games I’ve played throughout South America:

Colombia – La Cachanga (Cotton Sandal)

Players form a close circle and kneel on one knee, the other knee is at right angles. While the person who guesses is on the outside of the circle, the players quickly pass the cotton sandal under their knee in a clockwise direction. The player on the outside tries to guess who has the shoe. While the game is going on, participants chant “Que corra la cachanga” (the sandal that runs). Game is over when the person on the outside guesses who has the sandal. It sounds simple, but when you get a bunch of kids well-practiced at this game, the sandal can literally, fly between the players.

Brazil - Luta de Galo (Fight of the Roosters)

This game requires a minimum of two. Players tuck a handkerchief in their belt and place their right arm across their chest while hopping around on their right foot. The left arm is used to grab the opponent’s handkerchief. If a player’s left foot touches the ground or the right arm moves away from the chest, the player is disqualified.

Brazil – Vivo ou morto (Dead or Alive)

A leader is chosen amongst the children and they stand in front of him or her, awaiting his instructions. When he yells “vivo!” the children stay standing, when he yells “morto!” they crouch down. If one of the participants gets it wrong, they’re out of the game. The fun part of this game is when the leader shouts the instructions really quickly and the kids get super confused. The last person to have followed all the instructions correctly gets to be leader in the next round.

Chile – Quien es? (Who is it?)

If the idea of 20 or more teenagers congregating in one noisy place frightens you, don’t play this game! If you do decide to brave the gaggle of hormonal teenagers, it’s well and truly worth the effort.

One player is chosen as the leader and is the head of the line. The remaining players stand in an orderly line. The leader asks the question, “Have you seen my friend?” and the players answer with, “No, Sir/Madam.” The leader than asks, “Do you know who my friend is?”, the group answers with, “Yes, Sir/Madam.”

The leader takes nine steps forward and doesn’t look back at the other players. The other players quietly change positions and the (new) first person remains quiet while the other players shout out, “Who is it?” The leader asks three questions before they guess. Typical questions are, “Boy or girl?”, “Dark hair or fair?”, etc. The leader then guesses who’s standing behind him or her. If the leader wins they can stay in that role or if they lose, someone else is nominated for this position.

Los encantandos (The Enchanted)

This game is similar to “freeze” or “tag”. One person is chosen as the enchanted one and if they touch a person, that person has to stay frozen until one of the unfrozen players touches them. There is usually a safe place where the enchanted person can’t enter, and if a player makes it to the safe spot, they can form a chain with other players to release frozen people.

And just for fun, I’m adding my all-time favorite game for kids—one that is played in many countries around the world. I only discovered this after I became a mum and this game is a firm favorite in our house (especially when little friends are over):

Dead Fish

A fisherman is chosen from the group of kids and the players lie on the ground, not moving. The fisherman moves between the fish and if he/she spies a moving fish, that fish is moved over to his “basket”. The game keeps going until there is only one fish left. Needless to say, the idea of a group of kids lying on the ground and being still and quiet is a caregiver’s dream!

What I’ve discovered since playing games with kids is it doesn’t matter where you come from or language you speak, as long as you join in and embrace the spirit of the game, you’ll always be welcome. Games breakdown barriers, create friendships, and encourage the sharing of moments that can stay in our memories forever.

How about you? Have you ever joined in a kid’s game on your travels and ended up with an experience you’ll never forget?

Ancient Games, Modern Twists

We’ve played Chutes and Ladders with our young daughters for years without ever realizing how good it was for our karma.

Turns out our Sesame Street-inspired Chutes and Ladders, the Americanized name for what the British called Snakes and Ladders, was originally a morality game from ancient India, one of a variety of family board games, in fact, that started with the invention of dice. 

Archaeologists once excavated the oldest known dice from a 5,000-year-old backgammon set in Shahr-i-Sukhta (Burnt City) in Southeastern Iran. But more recent excavations in the Indus Valley suggest a possible South Asian origin. Possibly corroborating this discovery is that dice were mentioned in the ancient Indian tomes, the Rig Veda and Mahabharata, as a means for gambling. It was even listed as one of the games the Buddha would not play. (He kept a list? Apparently, he also didn’t approve of board games, pick up sticks, hopscotch, playing with toys or balls, charades, or the olden-day version of Pictionary. There are also lists of things he would not watch [dancing and animal fights, among them] and things he wouldn’t wear [mainly anything ornamental or decorative]).

But the ancient Indians loved dice, even creating a number of popular board games with them, games the world continues to play today. The modern forms of Parcheesee and Ludo, for example came from an old game called pachisi (from pachis, which means twenty-five, the largest score that could be thrown in one shot). 

Before Milton Bradley brought Snakes and Ladders from England to the States and changed its name, it was Moksha Patam, which literally means the path to salvation (or the ladder to salvation). The original version was based on the ideas of luck, chance, and destiny. The ladders represented the attainment of higher virtues, such as humility, faith, and knowledge, and the snakes represented vices such as greed, rage, theft, and murder. In the original game, there were more snakes than ladders, to signify how much more difficult the righteous path is than its alternative.

Another game that’s weathered the travel through time and place is chess. The Gupta dynasty in India created it sometime between the 5^th and 6^th century AD and called it chatrang or chaturanga, meaning “having four limbs,” which in turn was thought to represent the four divisions of the military (in those days, elephants, chariots, foot soldiers, and horsemen). Originally, the Indian military played it as a battle simulation game to work out strategy—with 100 or more squares on the original chess boards compared to 64 in our most common modern form. Scholars from those days noted that one of the main reasons ancient Indians used ivory was to produce the pieces for chess and backgammon sets.

An illustration from an old Persian
manuscript shows Indian ambassadors
presenting the chatrang to the king
of Persia, Khosrow I Anushirwan.
(Photo by Firdausi)

From India, chatrang spread to Persia, which changed its name to shatranj. When attacking the piece we now know as the king, the Persians would call out “Shah!” (the Persian word for king, typically the military ruler) and shah mat for checkmate. (Hear the similarity with the current form?) From there, the game spread throughout the Arab and Greek empires then to the Byzantine empire through Spain. Once it made its way through Europe, the game took on its current form around the 15^th century, with ornamental pieces shaped as kings, queens, bishops, knights, and rooks, before making its way to East Asia via the Silk Road.

Much of the world derived its names for chess from the Persian one: in Latin, shatranj became scacchi, thus influencing the names in languages derived from Latin, such as echecs in French, or inspired by the Germanic, Russian, or Slavic, such as schack in Swedish or szacyhy in Polish. Mongols call the game shatar; Ethiopians, senterej; and the Russians as shakhmaty. In German, Schachmatt means checkmate.

Plenty of food for thought next time I sit down with our beat-up board games, cluttered with pictures of Big Bird and Elmo, right?