[Page 142] This is a Bagara game of something the same kind as the last two described.
Any number of players take part and each has three houses and a store for what he "eats" (a makkāla, plural makākīl). Each house contains initially seven counters, generally small balls of dried clay, called collectively tūb (bricks).
Fig. 7 shows the board set for four players, MM being the Makākīl. A player moves by picking up the contents of any one of his own houses and distributing the counters one at a time, round the board in an anticlockwise direction. If his move comes to an end in an opponent's house or in the right-hand one of his own houses and also leaves two or four or six counters in any of the opponents' houses then the player eats" any such households of two, four, or six and the move passes to the next player. The winner is the person whose makkāla contains most counters at the end of the game.
If there are several players, any given house is apt to become very full of counters, with the result that it is difficult to foresee the effect of moving its contents. This explains an otherwise obscure allusion to the celebrated Sheikh Musa Mādibbo, late Nazir of the Rizeigat tribe, as "bahr Kāra gharīg" - "a deep sea of Kāra". The Nazir's reputation was that he would sit in council with his sheikhs and elders, all would listen to all their opinions, but would not disclose his own, so that the result of the "meglis" was as unpredictable as that of moving the contents of a very full house at Kāra.
Last update January 6, 2010