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| - Ajua (named after the seeds used as game counters) is a very popular gambling game in western Kenya and is also played in eastern Uganda. The game, which is known by numerous ethnic groups including the Luo, Luhya, Samburu, and Turkana, is closely related to Lukho, but also has similarities with Boola. As in Lukho a player has no choice after the initial re-arrangement, but the lifting of seeds is restricted as in Boola. Ajua is a game of herdsmen prohibited to women, although female researchers have been allowed to participate in Ajua matches.
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| abstract
| - Ajua (named after the seeds used as game counters) is a very popular gambling game in western Kenya and is also played in eastern Uganda. The game, which is known by numerous ethnic groups including the Luo, Luhya, Samburu, and Turkana, is closely related to Lukho, but also has similarities with Boola. As in Lukho a player has no choice after the initial re-arrangement, but the lifting of seeds is restricted as in Boola. Ajua is a game of herdsmen prohibited to women, although female researchers have been allowed to participate in Ajua matches. Ajua employs a wooden board about six feet long and 48 seeds of the Wild Orange Tree (Toddalia asiatica). During a game, players deploy sexually suggestive and sarcastic expressions as "chuowo thuon" (spearing with the cock), "turo tielo" (breaking the leg = to impregnate), "soko wang" (poking the eyes) and "nindo e bam" (lying on the thighs). According to Benjamin M. O. Odhoji this "sexually explicit verbal discourse is popularly viewed and accepted as part and parcel of any Ajua performance". The pits of the Ajua board are called, starting with the first hole from the right, "tielo" (foot), "pier" (buttocks or female genitals), "bam" (thighs), "wang'" (eye), "nungo" (waist), "kor" (chest), "ng'ut" (neck) and "wich" (head). Odhoji interpreted this as an "example of the rhetoric of representation whereby the Luo people attempt to influence or re-create the corporeal body by temporarily challenging its physical form" and wrote that "the body is deployed [in the game of Ajua] as a hypogrammatic derivation". The Kenya Ajua Club registered on June 27, 1977 and later became the Ajua Association of Kenya. It is affiliated with the Kenya Inter-Municipality Sports and Cultural Association (KIMSCA)) and the Kenya National Sports Council (KNSC). In 2001, more than 20 Ajua clubs in Butere District led by Joseph Anzetse, the secretary of the Sabatia Ajua Club, were disowned by the national body and a legal dispute followed. In 2004, the national chairman was Mr Dennis Ogenda Otieno. Local Ajua Clubs were reported from Kawangware, Makunga, Mathare Valley, Muthara (Nyambene), Nairobi, Nyandiwa (Suba), Nyilima (Nyanza), Sabatia (Nyanza), Siaya Town (Siaya), Sori (Migari), and Wichlum (Bondo). Siaya Town is home of President Barack Obama's father who is a member of the Luo tribe. Tournaments seem to be widespread in Kenya. Sometimes short notes even made the national newspapers such as the "Daily Nation", which wrote on January 1, 2009, that "Busijo won the Ajua competition [in Sio Port] followed by Nambototo while Nambuku and Ganga [all names of Ajua Clubs] took third and fourth positions." There was even an Ajua tournament in the USA, which was held at the Kenya American Day (KAD) in Jersey City, N. J., on August 3, 2008. The game was successfully used as an HIV/AIDS Awareness Campaign in 2003. A computer programme was written by Philip Apodo Oyier of the University of Nairobi in 2006.
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