*Close encounter with Italian culture
Nowdays children are seen playing football in narrow streets of Asmara and back alleys obstructing traffic to a certain extent. Those who like to simply watch the friendly neighborhood match prefer to dream of one day becoming famous singers and for that they craft k’rar (local guitar) and it before a home-made toy microphone, hollering, shaking and making faces at passersby.
Girl are of course of occupied at home doing the dishes or moping floors, but whenever they have free time, they like to mix with the boys and try to imitate them.
During the Italian occupation of Eritrea, various types of indoor and outdoor games or children plays have been introduced. And these remained in vogue until the 1960s. then the Derg arrived in 1970 and the whole social pattern was disrupted with children seen as potential communist cadres suitable for fast indoctrination while the brain was still soft and malleable. Crafting machine guns and lobbing toy hand grenades to capture this or that ‘hill’ become therefore common pastime among neighborhood urchins who wanted to join the armed struggle one day.
In the 50s most of the games had Italian names and Italian rules. I remember in particular, arimando, figurini, balina aquilone, cucinetti, balamburo, and the traditional teley-teley and fiti-fiti, hufra, tintin, kib-kib inkilil, ashakhakhat alem, etc.
Arimando was a summer game, played when the ground became soft for digging and molding. An image of Africa was traced on the ground and then dug along the line in the form of an open tunnel. Marbles were pushed along this winding ‘trench’ with a snap of the index finger until one reached the winning line. Two or more people could play all at once.
Figurini was played by blowing into a pile of cards (torn off from a cigarette packet) . the one with a strong lung could flip over so many cards with one breath and wins in the end.
Balina (marbles) was played not only with colorful glass spheres, but with small dried fruits as well. Children made do and innovated.
Aquilone is Italian for kite. Children went to open areas to fly their kites made mostly from old newspapers and sticks. Unlike Charlie Brown (peanuts) we succeeded most of the time to make our kites reach the clouds.
Cucinetti (a type of road toboggan made of wood fitted with ball-bearings for wheel) took us for a free ride along the winding Asmara-Massawa road. Most of the cucinetti however did not have proper brakes. And accidents were common. One wrong turn and you ended up among the prickly pear ten meters below the road and came out looking like porcupine.
Girls like to play teley-teley (hopscotch) and fiti-fiti (squat-jumping). While the first is universal and with international rules, the second looked like an Eritrean version of the famous Cossack dance where the dancer kicks his feet forward in a squatting position. In fiti-fiti the girls jumped up and down with regular and frenetic rhythm while still in the squatting position outlasting each other to become winners. Most collapsed after five or ten jumps. I think one needed Vodka to continue.
The participants in this child play emitted outlandish sounds as they darted to and fro behaving like frogs on a hot tin roof.
There was one girl I remember who never tried of doing it for sheer pleasure. Some people have rubber legs.
Balabburo (probably from Italian palla al muro) was played with coins. One would be surprised to hear that poor as we were at the time, we played with money. No, the coins were Italian lira, bout of use in the 1950s and superceded by the East Africa Shilling.
You tossed a lira (metal coin) against a wall, the lira bounced back and landed on the ground near a previously tossed lira. You measured the distance by stretching your fingers. If the two liras lay between the outstretched fingers you ‘ate’ (appropriated) your contester’s coin. Some Italians must have sobbed in private seeing haw their imperial lira was made playing in the end.
Hufra (probably Arabic) was a game much liked by youngsters at the time. It consisted of tossing a lira (Proca miseria, not again!) into a hole about a couple of meters from the players. Sometimes we used stones to shove them into the hole, at other times we measured distances from the hole to declare the winner.
Tintin (not to the confused with the Begian comoc strip character, Tintin) a game for two people kicked the ball towards each other. This type of the football by the way, is recommended for husband and wife, who are tried of throwing insults at each other for change.
Tintin was also played by head butting the ball to and fro between two players.
Kibkib (a sort of inverse dribbling) was played by kicking the ball softly upwards and kicking it again when it comes back. The process goes on and on until one misses the ball and it falls on the ground.
Kibkib can also be played by maintaining the ball in the air by constantly hitting it with the head. The one who keeps the ball bouncing up and down for long is the winner.
Inlike (rrundling of rubberless bicycle wheels) occupied most of our after five o’clock in the afternoon when the school bell rang and we stampeded out of the class.
“Simoon, be a good boy and get me a bar of soap from the nearest shop?” intones Addey Letu.
Simon is all the more happy that by visiting a shop he was sure to get a promotional candy from Arab shopkeeper.
“Okay, Addey Lettu le me just get my Inklil” chirps Simon.
Simon grabs his Inkil and using a stick pushes if forward (the groove holding the stick in place). Vroom, vroom the tries to initate the old Italian automobiles.
Maido Tseba is a sort of leapfrog with the difference that the players jump one by one with legs spread out and land on the backs of those who are bending down line reaching up to a wall. The latter feel like their backs are breaking down.The easy riders shout: maido tseba (meaning water or milk, which do you frefer?) If those spines are creaking under the weight choose water, it means they have lost, if they choose milk, it means they can hold on a bit longer.
The universal game of Hide And Seelk is known as Chirchir Abede in Tigrinya. The rules are the same worldwide. But it happened sometimes that we interrupted the game abruptly for one reason or another and many a child kept waiting and sometimes sobbing until late in the evening in his hideout because his friends did not come to look for him.
Ashakhakat alem was an imperialistic game if there ever was one. The players are all provided with a dart and are supposed to hurl it onto a circular plot of moist ground. Every time you hurl the dart you hurl the drat you get a piece of land by drawing a line from one point of the circumference along the hole made by the dart to the opposite circumference. This way, some good players grabbed more lands than their unskilled contenders.
A good player, imitating the British, can conquer a land ‘where the sun never sets’ while a bad player can see his conquered lands diminish before his very eyes.
Oh, to be a young again! Oh, for the days that were spent in innocence forgetful of the world by whom we were partially forgotten.
