Adji-boto → Italian. Adji-boto ("pebble boat") is a mancala game which is played by the Saramaccans who live on the upper Saramacca river in Surinam. The Saramaccans are a tribe of Bush-Negroes which was formed by escaped slaves. The first field study on the game was conducted by the American ethnologue Melville J. Herskovits (1895-1963) in 1928 in the village of Beidotti. The game resembles mancala games known in Benin, West Africa.