Mweso: A Chwezi game in modern times

The Mweso board game has been around for ages yet the enjoyment people get from playing it has not faded. Photo by Dominic Bukenya

What you need to know:

To the baganda it is omweso, to basoga its vulumula, the Luo in northern Uganda call it ascoro or soro, the Itesots call it amwesor , coro in the Lango region and the Rwandese call it ekibuguzo. Different names, same game, almost similar rules

Legend has it that the game was introduced in present day Uganda by the Bachwezi, who left their playing boards marked in rocks, and some of these boards were said to be found with the pebbles the Bachwezi used while playing. Simon Katula Mawejje, a player at Munaku Mweso Club in Kasubi says the game was also played by Buganda’s ancestral spirits.

“Buganda spirits played the game hundreds of years ago, and our fore fathers started playing it from those boards in the rocks used by the spirits. But the desire to play the game from the comfort of their homes brought the game from the wilderness to homesteads,” he says.

By the time it was introduced to Buganda it was a game for the officials only. Christopher Kawooya, Kasubi Royal Tombs’ head grass thatcher says the game was first a preserve for the Kabaka and his officials and was not open to lower classes of people.

Playing the game
Two players sit astride a bench facing each other. In between them is a piece of wood with 32 holes, 16 on each side. The players use 64 black pebbles or berries divided into two. Each player gets 32 pebbles and they distribute them in the 16 holes. The most usual way of starting the game is to have four pebbles in each of the eight holes in the back raw.

The game is played anti-clockwise; each move involves dropping a pebble in each hole until the last pebble falls in an empty hole.
“Should the last pebble fall in a hole where there are others, and the two holes on your opponent’s side have pebbles you capture them, dropping them from the hole where the turn started from,” Mawejje explains.

However, if only one of the holes has pebbles, then you cannot capture them. The clockwise direction is only permissible from any of the four leftmost pits if the move ends into a capture. The captured pebbles can also be played clockwise if they are to result into a capture. After the capture the player resumes playing anti-clockwise.

Like in any other game, discipline is paramount. In the case of omweso it is strategy, speed and discipline. A player has up to three seconds to start a move, after the three seconds the player who might not have taken his turn forfeits his turn to play to his opponent.

While playing, you don’t pick from a hole with less than two pebbles. Once the pebble falls in an empty hole, it is the end of the turn but if the last pebble falls in a hole with other pebbles the turn continues until the last pebble is in an empty one. In the game language this is called okwalika.

However it is not a matter of picking and dropping pebbles, there is mathematics involved. A player must have calculated his move before he picks the pebbles. The aim is to capture his opponent’s pebbles or to deny his opponent chance to capture his.

There are three formats in which a game can be declared over. One is when one of the players cannot make any legal move, that is when he is left with single pebbles in his holes. The other is if a player captures the pebbles in the end holes on both ends of his opponent’s side in a single turn.

This is called okulya entwe. The third is if a single turn goes on for three minutes— the game is declared a stalemate. Akakyala is when one player captures pebbles of his opponent on the two extreme ends when the other player has not made any move in the game.

Taboos and changing times

Two men engrossed in omweso. In the past, women were not allowed to play the game. However, today, you will find women playing it. PHOTO BY DOMINIC BUKENYA


According to Mwanjje there are taboos that are associated with the game though with modernity some of these taboos are being challenged. “Back then omweso was not supposed to be played beyond sunset, if it was played after sunset and the hyena cried, the person playing had to walk to the nearest stream and wash the pebbles one after the other.

The moral behind the story was, because the pebbles are black once it falls down it may not be easy to find it. Girls were not allowed to play the game; the reason advanced then was that they will not develop breasts.

“As they grew into adulthood women were not allowed to play Omweso because of the profanities and chances of their food getting burnt while playing were high because of the concentration the game requires,” says Mwanjje. Such taboos had kept the youth away from the game, until recently when some of the taboos like not playing after sunset, have been demystified.
“Now it is easy to play late in the night if there is proper lighting unlike in the past, where they were depending on the daylight alone,” explains Kawooya.

At the turn of the century tournaments based on the Buganda clans were organised. These were followed by the Kampala District Championship and then the Inter-district Tournament.

Out of these tournaments, a team s was selected to go for the first ever Mweso tournament held outside Uganda. Some players like Hudson Kyagaba, Abdu and Umaru Semakula, Sofasi Ddamba, B. Kityo Mukasa, Dirisa Ssemogerere and Dirisa Nsubuga had established themselves as the Mweso players to beat.

According to the chairman of the Munaku Mweso Club Dirisa Ssemwogerere, in 1999, a European who came and saw them playing the game was so impressed and asked to introduce the game to UK. “Brian Wernham he took some of us to play a tournament in London,” he says.
The board game’s allure has certainly not died down.

Outside Uganda
In Africa the mweso is found in other parts of the continent mainly in Eastern and Southern Africa.
In Sudan it’s called aweet, kombe in Namibia, in areas of Lamu, Kenya it is called mongale while on the coastal town of Mombasa they call it mongola and in Angola they call it kiela.

Omweso Terminologies

Kitibwa > Referee
Okutebuka > Playing reverse

Okutemwa > Having your two heads captured in one move

Empanga > Winning the game when your opponent has not captured your pebbles at all

Embirye > Twelve
Ensatwe > Thirteen
Nyinya > Fourteen
Ntanwe > Fifteen
Nkaaga > Sixteen
Nsanvwe > Seventeen
Naana > Eighteen
Nyenda > Nineteen