тоғыз құмалақ

yesterday at the nauruz celebration, we happened upon a bunch of people playing what looked like a game from the mancala family. after i watched for a few moments, one of the players challenged me to a game and through a bit of trial and error, i eventually pieced together the rules. well, most of them. the language-free trial and error method doesn't really work to find out the details of the scoring system and victory conditions, at least not if you only have time to play once. so while i thought i got the hang of it, i didn't do so well at the end.



today i asked around and learned that the game is called toghiz qumalaq, a name a friend translated as "nine pieces of sheep shit". i searched around and found the a web site discussing the rules. the site also indicated that the translation that i got was closer to what the game is called in kyrgyz, but maybe the kazakh word for "pebbles" and "balls of sheep shit" are not so far apart.

i have a small collection of board games from around the world. so i suppose i should find a toghiz qumalaq set before we leave. the one i played on yesterday was plastic. i would prefer to get a more classy old fashioned set. maybe one that uses real sheep shit!