Let's Play!!!

 

A culè defender hard at work

 More than half of the 1,800 or so residents of my town are youth or children, so there is almost always someone playing some kind of game. Traditional sports are often in action for kids, teenagers and adults. Soccer, of course, is huge (this being Latin America, after all) with several fields of various size and condition in use during long stretches of the day. Soccer is played – usually barefoot, except for the odd gringo that doesn’t feel like stepping on a sharp rock or shard of glass – in the concrete micro-cancha (“mini field”) and in at least three large dirt patches in the hot sun and in the pouring rain, the sand and gravel turning into thick mud and in the street. Baseball also happens in one of the fields, known as the “softball field” for where town men occasionally play softball on Sunday afternoons in beer-soaked matches with other Afro-Colombian community teams. Some of my neighborhood students even got hold of real tennis rackets and a few balls and convert the sandlot next to my house into a dirt tennis court for a few hours each day, placing a long stick on two logs for a makeshift net structure (minus the actual net) and scratching boundaries in the hard sand. (Tennis is currently on pause this week as the last ball got destroyed between zealous smacks and being left in the rain.)

 

Makeshift tennis court

Playing some island tennis

Board games and the like are also often underway. Dominos can be found being slapped down on many tables through town by kids, teens and adults, replete with smack-talking regardless of age (usually much less of it happening at tables with females than at male-dominated tables). The basic version is how it is played – four players with seven dominos each, the goal being to match number ends until one player successful disposes of all his dominos and wins. Betting often occurs with adult males playing for 5,000 pesos per hand (about US$2.50) with players rotating in and out depending on who wins and who loses. Losing players – as identified either by number of dominos remaining in their hand at the end of the round or, in cases of equal number of dominos in the hands of multiple players, the higher tallied number of dots on their dominoes – not only lose the money they bet but also have to buy a round of beer for the other players. Highly skilled gents who have a lucky day at the table can drink all day long without paying for their beer and also making some extra spending money (which will mostly be spent buying beer when they wind up having an unlucky day at the domino table or continue drinking after play ceases and the dominos are put away). And though kids don’t always gamble, it is not uncommon to see them play for coins and earn or lose some of their snack money while adult women idle away their time playing a dice board game for change.

Playing some bones (though they just call it Dòmino)

Dominoes

A betting game during the week of the town festivities - place a coin on a number (or on the line connecting numbers) and win or lose depending on the roll of a die

Placing some bets, winning and losing snack money

Marbles come and go throughout the year, with the intensity of a fever. Play is for keeps and these kids have no mercy, having personally made several trips from a game to a nearby corner store to buy marbles for about 50 pesos each as I kept losing, the winners “killing” my marbles and adding them to their soda bottles full of marbles won through fierce play.

A homemade mini-billiard table

Some of my neighbors having a fun time

A group of teenagers entertaining themselves training their fighting cocks

Where I’m most impressed is when kids make up their own games or have traditional games that require little or no materials. One of my students taught me a game that involves throwing two coins against a wall with the aim of the coins landing on the ground separated by a distance commensurate to that between their thumb and pinky when the hand is fully spread. The player who gets closest to having their coins land that distance wins the round. Any two kids can play it together as long as they have two coins and a decent wall to use.

My student Brayan throwing a couple of coins against the wall

Two coins on the floor about a handful apart - a pretty good throw.

Another game – “palitos,” or little sticks – is a kind of a low-tech Operation, played with just a handful of popsicle sticks (anywhere from 10 to 20 of them). To start the sticks are gently tossed in the air an inch or two to land on the table or school desk underneath.  The player then chooses one loose popsicle stick and uses it to slowly and carefully move another popsicle stick without shifting any others, repeating the process until they accidentally move an unintended popsicle stick (like getting shocked in Operation). Adding up the number of sticks successfully moved, the next player throws the sticks to start his or her turn with the aim of surpassing the highest number achieved. Purchase a small bag of popsicle sticks and you can easily be on your way, either competing against a friend or practicing solo.

Playing palitos as school before class starts

Trying to get the sticks free without disturbing the others

One stick removed!

Making progress in a round of palitos

The current town favorite is a game called Culé (sounding like “cool LAY”), played with nothing other than a plastic cup of juice, a small chair to set the cup on, and a ball anywhere between the size of a small soccer ball or a full-sized soccer ball. Said ball can be either completely flat or fully inflated – it simply doesn’t matter as the ball is not intended to bounce. I have seen the game played with anywhere from 6 players to around 15 players. Divided into two teams, one team is on offense and one team on defense (my own terms). Defense guards the cup of juice with the ball while the offense tries to grab the cup and drink all of the juice before getting hit with the ball as thrown by a defending player. If an offense player is hit with the ball (usually from an accurate strike or getting tagged in “Monkey in the middle”-like  coordination between two or more defenders) he or she is “burned” (quemado) and out of play. Play continues – even if the juice is gradually  decreasing by sipping offensive players –until either all of the offensive players are “burned” or the cup is completely emptied and the successful offensive player finishes the last drop without getting “burned” and yells “Culé.” With each round the two teams alternate between offense and defense with neither team concerned about keeping track of the score. It’s an exciting game to watch and it’s really great to see a bunch of kids having a ton of fun playing a game that requires no investment other than a packet of Frutiño or SunTea (a  mere 500 pesos and 800 pesos, respectively) to make a pitcher of juice.

A cup of juice on a chair before a game of culè

Attacking and defending!!!

The classic "monkey in the middle" defense approach in action as an offendsive player takes off

Going for the cup while the defense recovers the ball!!!

 

Time to drink some juice and switch sides