GAMES OF GHANA

Ampe

This game is traditionaly for girls.

Number of players:

Two girls, or two teams of more than two in a team. The players or teams are identified as "Ohyiwa" and "opare".

Action:

Two playerss at a time, one from each team, start clapping their hands while singing and jumping. As they land, each player manipulates the legs and places one leg forward. 'Ohyiwa' scores a point when a player’s left leg meets the right leg or right leg meets the left leg of 'opare'. "Opare" also scores a point when the left leg meets the left or the right leg meets the right leg of "ohyiwa". The first to get ten points wins the game.

Menya Kwan Mansen

Action:

A number of children join their hands together to form a circle, with one player inside the circle. The idea is that the player inside the circle must to try to break through and escape.
The player inside the circle goes round and asks "Which way is this"?
The others forming the circle respond… mentioning the names of the towns and villages around.
Then, the player leads those forming the circle in a song by singing, "Menya Kwan Masen", which means, "I want a way out."). And, the others respond, "oowa", which means "but I cannot find the way."
As the player moves round inside the circle still leading in the song, he/she will be finding the line of least resistance by taping the joined hands. Having determined this, when he/she reaches this point he sings aloud and taps hard and breaks loose and runs away. One of the two children who let him escape goes inside the ring and another game starts.

Pilolo

Number of players:

about four people, including the timekeeper and the leader.

Action:

Before the game starts, the timekeeper has to stand at the finishing place, that is the end point. The leader will also be with the other four to make sure that no one moves from where he or she is supposed to be. The leader will hide sticks or stones in a whole lot of places. Then the leader will come and announce "Pilolo", while the timekeeper starts his watch. The person who is fast and able to reach there early for one of the hidden sticks and hurriedly runs to the end point is the winner of the game. The game is repeated several times till they wish to stop. The results are tabulated to find out the final winner.