Songs and games of Lango children

Dancing and beer-drinking were the chief pastimes of grown-ups, but children had games of their own, and many trained them for adult life.

• Spearing the hoop (choho awala): a boy rolled a hoop about eighteen inches across at speed, and the others threw sticks like spears through it while it was still in flight. A two-sided version used a string and sticks called gwok, “dog”, because they “hunted” the hoop.
• Sham fights between two parties of boys, armed with stalks of amomum for spears and pieces of palm sheath for shields.
• Hockey (goyo odilo, “striking the ball”) with curved sticks and a ball made of a hard wild fruit or of wood.
• Imitation drums: seven sticks bent over and stuck in the ground, cut so that they gave the same notes as the real drums.
• Dolls and model villages. Girls used a long sweet potato for a doll, which they washed, fed and carried on the back, and built whole villages of toy huts.
• Action songs. In one, girls circle with their arms round each other’s waists while one kneels in the middle as a barking dog and another prowls outside as the leopard trying to steal it.

Driberg added that nobody played for a prize: children played for the game itself. Elders may remember these games and many others.

Source: J. H. Driberg, The Lango: A Nilotic Tribe of Uganda (London, 1923), pp. 130–133; public domain. It describes life about a hundred years ago as a colonial administrator saw it, so customs have changed and some may be told differently today. Elders and families are invited to correct it and add what they know.