| abstract
| - A-i-ú appears to be a close variant of Oware that was played in Brazil. Its name is the Portuguese spelling of Ayo, a mancala game in Nigeria from where many slaves were deported to South America. A-i-ú was last observed in 1916 by the historian Manuel Raimundo Querino in Bahia. He wrote about the game: Nas horas de descanso entretinham-se a jogar o a-i-ú, que consistia num pedaço de tábua, com doze partes côncavas onde colocavam e retiravam os a-i-ús, pequenos frutos cor de chumbo, originários de África e de forte consistência. Entretinham-se largo tempo nessa distracção. Free translation: In leisure time, they amused themselves by playing the a-i-ú which consisted of a piece of board with 12 hollowed parts where they placed and removed the a-i-ús, small fruits of colour of lead, which originated from Africa, and are of hard structure. They amused themselves for a long time with this pastime. At this time the game was also found by the folk researcher Luís da Câmara Cascudo in Bahia's capital Salvador. Ebenezer Latunde Lasebikan did more research on the game in the early 1960s, at which time the game seems to have disappeared. He stated in 1963: Later investigation revealed to me that ayò was indeed, known in Bahia many years ago, but that it has now disappeared. Why a game so popular among the Yorubas, and by nature, so captivating, should have died out completely in Bahia, I still have not been able to discover. Lasebikan re-introduced the game into the Yoruba classes at the Center of Afro-Oriental Studies of Bahia University with the help of Nigerian students in 1962/63. In 1966, the Brazilian folklorist and journalist Edison Carneiro claimed that the game became extinct in the city of Bahia (i.e. Salvador) in 1920. Robert Oba Cullins, a member of the discussion forum MancalaGames and the director of the Warri Society International in New York (USA), reported in 2005 that he saw the game in a museum in the city of Salvador: The Museu Afro-Brasileiro has a couple of boards on display in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil. (...) I believe there were just two on display, along with other items of the Yoruba culture. However, he continued: I was not able to confirm if these items were used and acquired in Brazil or were just in the museum to represent the African/Yoruba culture that survived in Brazil. The Dutch mancala researcher Alexander J. de Voogt considers that further research needs to be done as it might be well possible that the game survives in isolated pockets in north-eastern Brazil. Maurício Lima reported at the Board Games Studies Colloquium XI that there will be a research project of the Pontífica Universidade Católica de Minas Gerais in 2008 to re-discover the game.
|
![[RDF Data]](/fct/images/sw-rdf-blue.png)