Boredom will get you here in Africa. I can’t tell you how many times I thought I was going to go crazy from the simple fact that I was bored. There are days when it feels like hours have gone by and it’s actually only been a couple of minutes. Since there is so much boredom, we have to come up with things to kill the time. Boredom=Creativity, so here’s a few of the games we have come up with.
“Hey Goat” Game: So with this game, you’re trying to get an animal to look at you after you yell at it. So when we are walking or driving and we spot an animal, we simply yell “Hey _____”. If it looks at you, you get a point. Simple enough, right? WRONG! Animals here are either stubborn, or don’t understand English. We have played this game since we’ve been here, and I think the top score is 4. We found out what “hey goat” is in the local language, and that didn’t even work. We even try asking in more polite ways “Excuse me cute thing,” “Hey Billy Bob Joe,” or “Hey cow, can I have a second of your time,” and we still get nothing.
Ninja: The explanation for this is too long, so if you don’t know it…Google it. We have put a twist on this game and have called it “real life ninja” where you play ninja in real life, so your basically not confined to the circle and it starts once ministry stops, and last until there’s one person left.
Do something random game: Basically if we’re really bored…we yell at someone “Quick, do something random,” and we count down from three. If they stall, they loose, because we aren’t entertained.
Dart game: That was explained in my second blog.
“Da Game”: We made up a game where everyone makes up two rules…as crazy as they want to be, and we make a game out of it. A few rules that we have are:
-You can move anyways but forward
-You have to make the most random noise you can think of the whole game
-You can only tag with your head
-Whenever you get tagged, you have to say whoever tagged you “Is your daddy”
-Hips and shoulders have to be in constant motion
-You can only have one eye opened
Those are just a few of the rules…don’t want to spoil it or anyone to steal our ideas. We will be playing this at mid-debrief, so those reading this that will be with team Uganda…get ready.
Penguin Tag: Same rules as tag, except you have to waddle like a penguin, and you slap people with your flipper instead of tagging them.
Spy: Pretty self explanatory…we pretend to be spies and creep…it’s especially fun when we do it to our leaders. We (mainly I) like to pretend we’re invisible and no one can see us, even if we walk in front of him or her.
What If/Instead of game: You spot an object, say a football player. You think of something to replace it with…say a typewriter. Then you say “What if instead of football players, we had typewriters (this certain one wasn’t our creation…we stole the instance and idea from Alex Nesta…thanks for the awesome game bro). The object is to think of the most bizarre and opposite things and put them together. It gets you thinking. What if we really did hade typewriters instead of football players?
