Reconfiguring the Omweso Board Game Performing Narratives of Buganda Material Culture Rose Namubiru Kirumira y artwork titled Nakulabye, which is 4 (Wernharm 2002). On the surface, the game is a simple and an an- meters long and weighs 440 pounds, cient form of daily entertainment (Trowell and Wachsman 1953). is an intimidating sculptural replica of However, Omweso consistently appears as a location for power the Omweso game board (Fig. 1). The and spirituality in the history of the Baganda: it can be a form of wooden sculpture, twenty times larger divination and may be associated with spirit possession, a ceremo- than an average Omweso game board, nial game as part of a king’s coronation rites, and its play has been, includes four cane stools to sit on during play. Its composition is at times, a prerogative of the royal court. These locations have de- derivedM from a human face, and it has thirty-two pits (8 x 4) in the veloped as restrictive spaces,3 rife with taboos and gendered nar- configuration of a mancala board. This sculpture was inspired by ratives. For example, in Buganda’s material culture, women are my engagement with a group of men that I visited in July 2016 in restricted in numerous spaces: the playing of mujaguzo (the royal Nakulabye, a town in an urban area of Kampala City, Uganda. drums of Buganda); the brewing of mwenge bigere, also known as At the Nakulabye Omweso Club, a shop veranda in Nakulabye tonto (a local banana beer); the process of making olubugo (a tradi- Town, these men play Omweso and chat against the backdrop of tional bark-cloth); and the making and, indeed, playing of Omweso a small television that mostly screens British Premiere Leagues. (Nakazibwe 2005, Kabiito 2010, Nanyonga–Tamusuza 2014). Observing their exchanges, which seem to be informed by moves As a sculptor—a particularly masculinist subdiscipline of the on the Omweso board and reveal strong, clearly gendered power visual arts in Uganda—I have been actively engaged with cul- dynamics, I became curious about the performative place of tural artifacts that speak to different historical narratives and their Omweso as a cultural artifact of the Baganda people.1 In this ar- contexts within Uganda’s societies.4 My first encounter with the ticle I posit that, despite centuries of cultural diffusion and relo- Omweso board was in 2010, when my husband inherited a board cation, Omweso continuously narrates and constantly contends from his father, Aloysius Kasujja (1927–2009). Although I had wit- a gendered functional space within the fluid cultural history, nessed men playing Omweso, this situation was unique because memories, and perspectives of the Baganda. I examine the idea the cultural taboo of obuko prevented me from handling that that the unusual ethos of Omweso, as a primary (re)source, has particular board—in Buganda, there are restrictions on a woman contributed to ongoing creative representations and personal ar- and her father-in-law in terms of touching, physical proximity to tistic visualizations. each other, or the handling of personal possessions (see Nyanzi, Omweso2 (Fig. 2) is a Luganda word for a type of mancala Nassimbwa, Kayizzi, and Kabanda 2008). My father-in-law’s board game (Brauholtz 1932) played among the Baganda and Omweso board (Fig. 3) piqued my interest and caused me to ques- several other ethnic groups in Uganda and other parts of Africa tion how I, as a culturally situated female artist, might speak to and about indigenous artistic expressions that are shaped by specific Rose Kirumira Namubiru is a Senior Lecturer at the School of Indus- gendered perspectives. 5 trial and Fine Art Makerere University specializing in ceramics and Baganda are a patriarchal society that places emphasis on the sculpture. She a is a widely recognized and exhibited female sculptor in sanctity of masculinity, denying women access to any intellec- Uganda. Her major artistic research interests are reconfiguring cultural tually or spiritually beneficial object or practice, such as playing artifacts of the Baganda. She has practical experience in initiating and Omweso. However, the do’s and don’ts that governed (and may still organizing national and international artists workshops and residencies govern) Baganda women’s social life reveal subtle contradictions, in Africa. [email protected] denying power to women yet, in some instances, surprisingly al- locating it to them (Bantebya-Kyomuhendo and McIntosh 2006, 52 african arts SUMMER 2019 VOL. 52, NO. 2 Downloaded from| http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/afar_a_00460 by guest on 01 October 2021 kirumira.indd 52 2/20/2019 12:23:09 PM 1 Kirumira Rose Namubiru Nakulabye (2016) Wood, 400 cm x 150 cm x 30 cm Photo: Kirumira Rose Namubiru (2017) (below, l–r) 2 Omweso Baganda Wood, 24 cm x 18 cm Photo: Kirumira Rose Namubiru (2016) 3 Omweso board that belonged to my late father-in-law, who passed away in 2009. It is now kept by my husband as a family heirloom. Wood and counters, 28 cm x 22 cm Photo: Kirumira Rose Namubiru (2016) Tamale 2006). I first experienced these gender-restricted spaces include a winning move known as akakyala (referencing female when I was not allowed to touch my father-in law’s Omweso board. passivity) and a counter, known as empiki buteba, that is used for Then, conversations with men in the Nakulabye Omweso Club es- divination sessions and contains lubaale or spirits. (Since empiki tablished specifically that women in Buganda are not allowed to buteba in the Omweso game is rare, difficult, and embarrassing to play Omweso. Nonetheless, in the course of my research I found obtain, medicine men usually ask for it as a price for a divination people in three locations whose experiences challenge this restric- session.)8 The three locations—Nakayima, Nakku-Namusoke, and tion and became significant in shaping my perception of the role the Nakulabye Omweso Club—are central to this article in terms of Omweso as an artifact and a game in the gendered spiritual and of holding and assigning meaning to the object (Kabiito 2010: cultural history of Buganda. 53–62; Brenner, Vorster and Wintjes 2016). They are significant The historical narrative of Omweso was informed by my almost in containing and unpacking subtle performative nuances in the chance discovery of a miniature Omweso board in a diorama at personal creative reconfiguration of the Omweso board and game. the Uganda National Museum6 showing the priestess Nakayima, whose divination practices have transcended time and space and OMWESO AS BOARD, GAME, AND are part of contemporary indigenous culture in Buganda (Ballarin, GENDERED SPACE Kiriama, and Pennacini 2013).7 Second was a visit to Nakku In 2016, I created another sculpture, titled Akakyala (Fig. 4), Namusoke, a mukondo (descendant wife) and muzaana (royal that engages with Ganda narratives surrounding Omweso. In servant) to Kabaka Ssuna II (1836–1856), who showed me the this work, I used a mannequin9 to create the figure of a young Omweso board that belonged to him. In both locations, Omweso woman sitting on a stool. She is dressed in black and adorned with silently intertwines with practices of kubandwa or spiritual posses- a trendy, brilliant red necklace and red shoes. Placed in front of sion (Pennacini 2009). Third was the Nakulabye Omweso Club, an her is a bench with four oversized Omweso-like pits containing archetype of masculine cultural idealization whose members per- both black and red counters (Fig. 5). Three of the pits are made of petuate narratives from Buganda’s patriarchal past that persist in barbed wire, while the fourth is covered with brightly colored, pat- the present, asserting that women are not allowed to play Omweso. terned cloth.10 The figure bends forward, as if ready to play on the They also describe okwesa (“playing Omweso”) with metaphors that four-pit board and engage an imaginary player. The attitude and presentation of the sculpture is provocative, exhibiting the young woman’s confidence in playing a forbidden game on a tangibly lim- iting barbed wire board. Akakyala confronts the Baganda narrative VOL. 52, NO. 2 SUMMER 2019 african arts 53 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/afar_a_00460 by guest on 01 October 2021 | kirumira.indd 53 2/20/2019 12:23:10 PM 4 Kirumira Rose Namubiru Akakyala (2016) Mixed media, 155 cm x 120 cm x 120 cm Photo: Kirumira Rose Namubiru (2016) 5 Kirumira Rose Namubiru, Omweso-like pits, detail of Figure 5 Photo: Kirumira Rose Namubiru (2016) that “women are not allowed to play Omweso.”11 It is through this [The game] is played on a board, made usually of wood but some- narrative that I present Omweso: the game board and how it is times marked out on the ground or cut in the rock, with seeds or played as an object with power relations and gendered narratives small stones called men. Each player has thirty-two men in his two rows of holes, with which he tries to capture his opponent’s men.15 in Buganda (Kiguli 2001; Tamale 2006). At first glance, the Omweso board presents itself as a simple tra- The counters are referred to as “men” for reasons grounded in the ditional object utilized for sport and entertainment. It is carved gendered tenets of the Baganda, where individual roles, although inter- from a flat piece of wood with round or square pits or cups.12 changeable, are associated with situations or objects of power (Kiguli Omweso has thirty-two pits (amasa in Luganda) arranged in front 2001: 6, Nannyoga-Tamusuza 2009: 368).16 Therefore, if women were of each player in territories of sixteen pits: eight lengthwise and allowed to play Omweso they would be figuratively controlling men.