Owela

Owela, also known by the Khoekhoe loanword Hus, is the Oshiwambo name of a traditional mancala board game played by the Nama people, the Herero people, Rukwangali speakers and other ethnic groups of Namibia and its southern African neighbours. It belongs to the Omweso family of mancala games found across eastern and southern Africa, and although it is classified as an abstract strategy game, the consequences of individual moves are so hard to predict that it can to some extent be considered a game of chance. Owela is played on a board with four rows of six to twenty four pits, using undifferentiated seeds as playing pieces, and players may also play without a formal board by digging rows of pits in sand. The game concludes when one player becomes unable to make a legal move, typically because the opponent has captured all their stones or reduced them to at most one seed per pit. It uses a multilap sowing method and is played across four ranks.