Lawala game takes root in SOS Gulu

Last year, in one of our stories, I promised to tell you more about the Lawala game, a recently revived and modified traditional Acholi game that has been out of practice within the Acholi community, for more than twenty years, due to the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) insurgency in northern Uganda.

The game derives its name from the piece of playing equipment called Lawala, which simply means a ring. The ring is made of rubber with a diameter of 18cm. The second important tool is the Tii, which is a strong straight stick of 1 ½ m. long with a pointed rubber tail and a flattened head.

Traditionally this game was played using reeds to make both the Lawala and the Tii. The game was played by two teams coming from different locations, clans or local administrations. It had neither established playing fields nor rules. The playing fields were footpaths or overgrazed communal land. It was generally characterized by no planned scores, rudimentary tools, unlimited number of players, absence of well demarcated playing fields and lack of rules and umpires. The gain was only limited to imparting hunting skills by adults to the young ones because hunting then played an important role in the Acholi life style.

A team of Acholi youth, composed of Acholi-Makerere University students, formed an association in 2007 called the Lawala Game Association, with an ultimate aim of reviving the game, modernizing it, formalizing it and promoting it. They contacted SOS Children’s Village Gulu and other schools in Gulu municipality requesting to allow them to train children and youth on the new game, not only as a leisure activity but also for physical fitness and psychosocial therapy. The association also has a wider plan of using the game to promote peace building and reconciliation within the entire war affected Acholi community. As child care givers and advocates of peace, SOS Children’s Village Gulu welcomed the initiative and that’s how our children got to be trained on the Lawala game, which has become a favorite game amongst them. Trainings take place every Sunday in the evening.

How it is played

Unlike the traditional game, the formalized game is played in an organized field with a total length of 100 metres, which makes it possible to be played on a football field. The tools used are modified. There is a referee who stands at the centre line, helped by two assistant referees standing on the sides of the pitch.

There are two teams with six players each. Five team members act as tii men (shooters) while the sixth team member, skilled at throwing the ring, stands at the outer semicircle on the extreme end of the field. The two teams stand at opposite sides, having ample space to avoid injuring themselves while throwing the sticks. The Lawala men on each side alternately throw the ring, which must roll straight, directed to the side of the opponents. The tii men’s work is to aim at throwing the stick through the centre of the ring as it passes past them.

When a throw is made, there are three things which normally happen: a throw with a shot, a throw without a shot, and a no-throw. A throw with a shot means the opposite team endeavours to shoot through the ring and is immediately given a chance to make a throw. A throw without shot is when the Lawala man throws the ring and the opposite team members fail to shoot through it. And a no-throw means the Lawala man has made a mistake. This happens when the ring is thrown out of the pitch before the position of the 3rd tii man of the opposite side. Positions are numbered one to five from the inner circle of the pitch. Throws are associated with a drive to push your opponent to their last position of play, which earns your team a bonus of five marks when you push your opponents to the last position of the pitch. When a team makes a no-throw, it is pushed one position towards the Lawala throwing area.

How scores are made

Each player in the field has a chance to earn a score for his team when a throw is made. The tii man in the first position from the inner circle earns five points if he is the first player to throw the stick through the ring. The second tii man earns four points, the third three points, the fourth two points and the fifth one point. The Lawala man of the opposite team earns a point if he can run and catch the Lawala thrown without a shot, to save his team from losing all the points and a chance to throw. The work of the assistant referees is to tell the referee the position of the tii man that has made a score. Scores are then recorded by the referee. After each team has had 15 rounds of throwing the Lawala, they then change sides. The team which scores most points at the end of the game emerges the overall winner.