By
Obododimma Oha
The great
Nigerian playwright, Femi Osofisan, gave a very disturbing title to his inaugural
lecture: he sub-titled it, “Playing
Dangerously.” Trust Okinba Launko with verbal pugilism. That resembles
the turn of mind in this blog essay in which I reflect on how I inadvertently
turned a dialogic exercise to a
monologic one, playing alone and
endlessly.
The location
of this endless play is the Igbo nchọkịrị,
which in Yoruba is called “ayo.”Originally,
nchọkịrị, a mathematical game of
seeds, was played in holes dug in the ground, holes called “houses.” It is a
game about acquisition, the goal being to possess all the houses and dominate
the game, if possible, take over the mate's houses, dispossess this mate in
order to answer “winner,” as in Monopoly. Really, no one likes to be so
disgraced. To lose one’s houses, one’s possessions, is to confess that one is
not worthy of them, that one lacks the skills to protect them! So, it is
disgraceful to lose. And, in order to ensure that one does not lose, one can do
any of the following:
(1) try to play effectively, displaying
good intuition, forecasting, and wise risk-taking;
(2) cheat, using every opportunity of the
mate’s relaxation of alertness;
(3) do counting, to know the available
opportunities and risks;
(4) combine (2) and (3) into one
dangerous strategy;
(5) waste the other’s time, biting finger
nails, but not really without some thinking.
In fact, in
setting out the rules before starting, it may become necessary to indicating
“No counting’ (Rule 3) clearly. Some players make it the standard rule and even
write it clearly on the board (if they are using nchọkịrị modernised and made portable by having the “houses” carved
in wooden tray). Some other people may introduce “Touch-and-Play” rule also,
making it obligatory for a player to play any own house touched. In that case,
there is no change of heart. That, still, is to prevent players from having an
upper hand through thinking about opportunities!
It was in the
process of looking for #2 above while playing nchọkịrị with a friend when I was teaching at University of Calabar
that I ended up playing endlessly, even though I was predictably supposed to
stop playing when the last seed met a house waiting to receive it. I was
obviously selfish, like anyone looking for an opportunity to avert disgrace by
losing their possessions to a better thinker, better player. How did the
selfish crook end up in soup?
I have
already confessed that I was playing dangerously (although it was just a play).
One psychological thing about a game is that the player easily forgets that it
is just a game and that one’s life does not depend on it. But I was desperate
and playing as if my life depended on it! I combined the biting of finger nails
with counting. Yet that did not work or was not enough for the loser. Oh, did I
say “loser”? Did I say just that? You see, it could be worse and more painful
when this imminent loss is fanned by taunting and verbal terrorism. Watchers
could taunt you or your mate, in other to rub it in, may call you an “iti.”
That is the clipped form of “itibọrịbọ,”which
is an iconic title one gets as a blockheaded player. When one is called a
blockhead, what is left to that person’s
ruin? The person’s face (fellowship, competence, and even autonomy face) is
tarnished forever and one wants to ameliorate it. A drowning fellow has to
clutch to a merciful straw!
And the straw
came when my mate relaxed his watchfulness: I just skipped a house and sought
to abort a house of his that was getting
“pregnant.” A pregnant house is a house that has seeds enough to be taken by
the owner as a harvest when the seeds are complete. He was a mumu who trusted me for fairness.
Terrible mumu and I kept playing,
hoping that chance would reward me. But I played endlessly. Why is he still
playing? What went wrong? I pretended that I did not know. I played on. One
hour later, I was still playing!
Do you call
that a game? A game for two or more but one person playing endlessly. As the
Igbo would say in a proverb, O chọ ihe
ukwu, ya lekwa agba enyi (Somebody looking for an outrageously big thing
(out of selfishness), let the person take the jowl of an elephant!). Oh, that
could be an excess luggage. And I was carrying an excess luggage, playing nchọkịrị alone and sweating. What was
comparable to it was a conversation in which one person dominates, and does not
allow the other to take a turn. To dominate, the endless talker could
interrupt, seize the floor, even send soldiers into somebody kitchen to turn
the soup to find out whether crayfish thugs are hiding there!
I played
endlessly and did not like it. The joy of playing with the other was gone.
Company was ruined. It was no longer a game.
I needed to be rescued from endless play. And was happy when my mate, my
friend, intervened and pulled me away, saying I should stop playing because he
wanted to leave.
Even though I
sought to formalise this endless nchọkịrị,
seeking to co-author a paper on it with a
mathematician, I have not forgotten that selfisness and greed were
behind this endless play.
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