Warri (Haiti)

From Wikimanqala

For other meanings of "warri", please see warri.

Warri
Kay (?)
Played in: Haiti
Multiple lap
One cycle
6 holes per row
Two rows

Warri is the most popular mancala game played in the northern part of Haiti. Its name is shared with the bush of which the seeds are used in play.

Men play warri on wooden boards, with a large single hole at each end to store the captured seeds. Children, both boys and girls, play on boards dug in the ground.

Warri was first described in 1952 by Suzanne Comhaire-Sylvain (1898 - 1975) who was the first anthropologue of Haiti.

She claimed that warri is called kay ("house") in the southern part of Haiti according to some informants she interviewed in the early 1950s. However, Haitians who were interviewed in 2004 by Víktor Bautista i Roca in the Dominican Republic and in 2006 in Switzerland said that the games played in southern Haiti, and called kay, are the same as the Dominican games called hoyito.

Rules

Warri is a two players game.

It is played on a board made by two rows of six holes.

At the beginning each hole has four seeds.

Initial position

Each player controls the row closer to him.

Players take turns to move.

At your turn you take (ramasse) all the seeds from a hole belonging to your side of the board, that contains more than one seed, and sow them anti-clockwise (ie, you put one in each of the following holes, skipping none, all around the two rows).

Exceptionally, you can start a move from a hole with a single seed if it is followed by one and only one empty hole. In this case, you just transfer this single seed from its hole to the empty one.

If the last seed lands in an occupied hole (couvert) not followed by an empty one all these seeds (the one just sown and those which were already there) are picked up and then you keep on sowing starting in the next hole, skipping the holes you have emptied.

If the last stone lands in an opponent's hole increasing its contents to four pieces, you shout Kay! (literally "house"). You then capture the contents of this hole (mange le couvert) and also the contents of an unbroke sequence of preceding holes belonging to the opponent and containing four seeds.

When the last stone lands in a couvert followed by an empty hole, you stop your move.

When the last stone lands in an empty hole, you transfer it to the first following couvert and stop your move.

The game ends when one player can not move (all the holes are empty, or contain just a single seed not followed by one and only one empty hole).

The winner is the player who has captured more kay.

References

Comhaire-Sylvain, S.

(1952) 'Jeux Congolais', in Zaire: Revue Congolaise (Bruxelles); 6 (4): 351-362.

Personal references

Bautista i Roca, V.

Interviews with Haitians living in the Dominican Republic (2004) and Switzerland (2006).