I can't really give gifts
this year, I thought maybe a local tale but honestly, I'm a little
burned out after NaNo and December is surprisingly travel heavy.
But, I figured I'd give you guys the gift of a games. Here's a game
I played with my host sisters in Eteya. I don't know what the name
is, but I fondly call it Ethiopian Go Fish.
Preparing for play:
Shuffle the cards. Or if
you're a small Ethiopian child, give it to the local foreigner so you
can stare at them while they bridge shuffle. Next, make a circle with
the cards face down. All the cards. None are dealt out.
Play:
Usually dealer goes first,
but hey you can change that up. Player picks a card at random from
the circle and compares it to the cards in the center. If there is
no matching card, the card in placed in the center face up. This
means that it's automatic that the first drawn card makes it way to
the center. And probably the next four or five cards too.
Players are looking for a
match, just like in normal Go Fish, with an added twist – you can
add. Example: if you flip a nine from the circle, and the center
contains a seven and a two, you can add them to equal nine and take all three cards.
It is also possible to steal
cards. Lets say the player before you snagged a pair of jacks. And
then you flip over a jack. Those two jacks the guy before just added
to their pile? They're yours now. Yes, you now have three and the
fourth jack no longer has a pair. It doesn't matter. This is
Ethiopian Go Fish. Things just happen and you have to go with it. Explanations are rare.
Due to the stealing and
addition nature of the game, it's inevitable that there will be left
over cards. The last player to flip a card over gets lucky and gets
to add them all to their pile of pairs. Regardless of the leftovers
not matching.
Selecting a winner:
After all the cards in the
circle are flipped and the left overs are given to the last to go,
players count cards. The winner is the one with the most.
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