IDNO

N.13041.GIJ

Description

Close up view of two men sitting on a raffia mat playing the game wari. The wari board is made of wood and consists of two rows of 20 squares each; the pieces used to play the game are seeds or pebbles?. The board is carved from one piece of wood and at one end is a round handle. The men are dressed in wrappers tied around their waist.

Physical Condition: Slight yellowing of negative.

Place

W Africa; Nigeria; Cross River

Cultural Affliation

Igbo [historically Ibo]

Named Person

Photographer

Jones, Gwilliam Iwan (known as G.I.)

Collector / Expedition

Date

1932 - 1939

Collection Name

Jones Collection

Source

Jones, Gwilliam Iwan (known as G.I.)

Format

Film Negative Black & White

Primary Documentation

Other Information

This negative was kept in a film storage album labelled “Misc” by G. I. Jones, and numbered “C10/” by the cataloguer.

Publication: Same image published on John McCall’s G.I. Jones website with the following information: [Source: www.siu.edu/~anthro/mccall/jones/, AF ]
1. Index to Igbo music, shrines, architecture and other cultural artifacts
2. Other Igbo cultural items
3. Wari board (game) (1st image).

Context: Wari is a game that is played throughout Africa. Wari (also called Warri or Awari) is a very old game from Africa. It belongs to the large group of Mancala games. All of these games are played by moving uniform pieces around a board. The board usually contains two rows of six or eight squares. Depending on the different versions there are differences in the exact rules, especially on capturing pieces. In almost all cases though a move implies distributing the pieces from one square one by one counterclockwise around the board.

Newberry writes about Ayo which is the Yoruba word for Warri and he describes the game: “The apparatus required for ayo is simple: 48 seeds of the plant Caesalpinia crista, and a piece of smoothed timber, measuring roughly two feet by eight inches, and about two and a half inches thick. In the wider surface of the latter twelve cup-like hollows, large enough to allow the insertion of four bent fingers, are carved in two rows of six running the long way of the board. The board is called ‘opon ayo’ (tray or trough) and is usually provided with a handle at either end; it also may be decorated with patterns carved in low relief according to the fancy of the carver. There are three versions, or rather, separate games of ayo commonly played by Yorubas...but each starts with four seeds in each ile or house, as the holes are called. There are many rules which are by no means obvious to the uninitiated spectator, and so, at the risk of their seeming tedious, the descriptions which follow are rather detailed nature. in the most common form of ayo; Two players sitting on opposite sides of the board play in turn by taking the seeds from one of their own to ‘houses’ and dropping one of these seeds in each of the successive houses to the right of that from which the seeds iwere removed, and continuing to do so, moving in a counter-clockwise direction, until the hand is empty, with the object of making the total number of seeds in certain of the opponent’s houses up to two or three, these being the numbers which make it possible for the attacking player to take and hold them as part of his winnings, subject to the conditions explained show. (Murray, 1939, p 75-76)

Bibliographical Reference: Newberry, R.J. 1939, “Games and Pastimes of Southern Nigeria”, The Nigerian Field, Vol. VIII, no. 2, PP.75-80.

This catalogue record has been updated with the support of the Getty Grant Program Two. [Alicia Fentiman 16/10/2007]