The Ugandan Village Boardgame Convention

The Convention finished last Saturday and the boys organising are now back in Kampala, as some had to be back for school, as it is their O level year.

We saw approximately 250 visitors, of whom at least 105 were unique.  Our aim was to attract 50 people each day and thus we had to cater for around 100 more people than expected. 

Thursday - 55 Friday - 90 Saturday - 105

We did not check the gender balance, but I would expect it to be around 60:40 in favour of boys - it is not usual for girls to be allowed to leave their homsteads for days on end, so it was a remarkable achievement to have so many girls there and we would anticipate that in future years we would have an even split, better than Conventions in the UK, I would imagine!

What became clear was that the children and young people that came were really enjoying the games, so much so that they returned day after day.  We ran out of budget on Satuday and we could not transport any more to the location, so some walked 10km to be there that day.

While we work primarily with teens, many of the local children living in Koro are younger, as there is no local secondary school and thus they have no option but to move away to relatives.  For this event, though very many older youth were present boys and girls and this made it easier to test out the more challenging games.  Language barrier remains a problem for some board games, but we did note that some of the Year 3 and 4 children mastered games like RoboRally and Codenames Pictures when taught, so for non-English there do not seem to be any cultural barriers to these children learning the more interesting boardgames, if they want to learn them.

We had a last minute hitch at the Mombasa port, just as they were about to release the container to Kampala, which meant a significant delay while they scanned the contents of the container.  It has subsequently been released and should arrive today or tomorrow.  This left us short of games to play, with too few tables and chairs, so we focused on acquiring some papyrus mats, which are made locally.  However, we did play the following games:

Omweso - there was a brilliant championship here, with many entries.  Joseph managed the whole process on his own and we had a female winner of the senior event.  Two friends battled out the junior event and it seems they play each other often.

Cosmic Encounter - Arnold admits this is one of his favourite games and we even played the new enhanced version with flares, kickers and techs on Sunday afternoon.  I was Shadow, but Joseph eventually won a stealth Zombie win.  In the Convention we played this mainly on Thursday and Arnold was impressed how many of the younger children picked up the rules.

Legends of Andor - we played this mainly on Saturday and it was an older youth group that participated, led by Arnold.  They worked it out well and made it through the first Legend.

Codenames Pictures - while this was very successful, it proved to be more challenging than expected, as many of the objects have no word for them in local language.  Also some of the pictures include unfamiliar objects - such as skittles and a bauble - which made the game harder, though of course not impossible.  We can see, though a lot of scope for this game to develop new skills for young people, as they develop the ability to find connections between things.  We feel this skills could promote partnerships and lessen the impact of tribalism, when people see connections, not differences.

Snakes and Ladders - I didn't have a copy of this but luckily a local supermarket had a large fabric board version, with pieces and a special drawstring dice, which we acquired.  The game was never unoccupied and even older children enjoyed playing, as a warm-up to more challenging games.

7 Wonders - I had the pleasure of teaching this game myself to a group, who spoke little English (my local language is worse than their English), but we got through the game.  This game has drafting, which is a quite unfamiliar technique for new players.  However, Arnold (who also speaks little of the Northern Ugandan language) managed to teach the game to a number of groups and he felt it went very well.

RoboRally - We played this mainly on Friday and Saturday and on Saturday, Joseph ran a competition for the best players, which a team event "Capture the flag".  RoboRally really went well, as Joseph took significant time to explain the complexities of the game and on Saturday he rewarded those who had learnt the game with some prizes.  RoboRally is mainly English-free and meant that language was not a barrier to learning the game.  Those who know the game understand its teaching potential for maths and engineers!

Alhambra - Not too many knew how to play this, so I taught it myself on Saturday and it was very successful, especially with the younger group.  We'll do more Alhambra in the future.

Sequence is a little-known game, which has quite a lot of strategy for adults but fun to play for even younger kids, who can match the playing cards to the board.  Essentially you have to make a line of five cards and you place poker chips on the board in order to achieve this, by playing cards.  The jacks have a crucial purpose in the game need to be held onto until the proper moment.  Huge numbers learnt and played this game, from all ages and it was with heavy heart that it was sent back to Kampala gain, as we knew also that the kids love to play it there.

Computer Boardgames - this one was difficult to manage, though we did play some Ticket to Ride and Splendor.   We didn't really have suitable furniture for the computer games and also too few staff to teach the games, but it was an interesting range of games that we tried, including the above, Colt Express, Mysterium and even Gremlinsinc., which we bought using money supported by you and will be used moving into the future, as the games are on Steam.

We still have a little more work to do on the pledge rewards and we will be contacting all those who supported again with those details.  Also, we are working on some video footage and this will be posted in the next update.  In the meantime, if you would like to see more photographs, then please go to this link.

On Sunday night, before the boys left for Kampala, we met to discuss whether we would like to run the event again and there was little doubt that we believed we could make it bigger and better next year, if we were able to raise a similar amount and not have the container to fund.  We felt strongly that this unqiue event was incredibly well received by those who participated and we also gained a lot by meeting new young people, who were talented and had abilities to create change, which is what our organisation is about.

If you would like to know anything more about the event, please feel free to contact me on [email protected]