TW: nostalgia | Losing friends
Childhood Games
We all wanna play
Whenever I find some quiet time, I relive those childhood moments when we used to play in the street. For someone who has lived in South Africa for all his life, specifically in Soweto and central JHB, I still have a desire to play them even as an adult.
My inner child refuses to die. It just evolved to owning a laptop in which I can watch anime, type stuff and play online games. Since completing high school, I have lost a lot of friends.
Somehow, it feels like a breath of fresh air. It taught me that being alone is not that bad. I’m one to blame due to my rare social media posts and not making any effort to meet up or simply text. Even though I consider myself an ambivert, the introverted side is more dominant.
Sometimes I feel like this “personality” thing doesn’t exist. Your habits and facts about yourself can create the “real” you, I guess.
By the way, my friends have changed. Some of them have children, jobs and are studying stuff — the oldest among us is only twenty six. When we tried to hang out once, we didn’t have anything to talk about — which made no sense because we had not been together for a long time.
We all tried to hide the awkward silence by using distractions, but we called it a day after an hour. That’s when I realised we are no longer compatible.
These are the outdoor games we used to play in high school:
- Zoom Kolobetsa (Zoom baptize).
- Tamati so (Tomato so).
- Ayabampa amagwinya estofeni (Fat cakes are bumping on the stove).
- Standing Morabaraba (Morabaraba). Not the boardgame.
- Ubuyaphi madhlamini? (Where do you come from dhlamini’s mother?).
- Isikipa saka Johnnie (Johnnie’s T-shirt).
- Tsamo reka omo (Go buy washing powder).
- Diketo (Playing with stones).
- Dithini (Playing with three tins and a tennis ball).
- Black mampatile (hide and seek).
- Scotch (hopscotch).
- Mafrot (tag).
- Topseven.
- Blackshoe.
- Ditaba/Gossip: drawing square houses on paper and using the pen to keep stabbing on those houses as the player makes up gossip about those houses.
- Ke mang o phintseng? (Eeenie Meenie Miney Moe)
- Hand games.
- Leg games.
- Kushoo Kushoo (a long line of people trains singing).
NB: I don’t know some of the real names of these games. I renamed according to what’s said when playing them and gave a description to identify some. There are many more others I forgot.
Anyway, as time went by, I learnt to be honest with myself. Being alone kind of forced me to introspect. This made it easy for me to shut out people’s opinions and stand for my perspectives.
I think of the above mentioned games as prehistoric due to the difficulty of finding them online. Well, if you know of some online archive website or something similar, please do share the information with me. Your help is very appreciated.
If you enjoyed this piece, follow me and subscribe to my newsletter for poems, short stories, challenges, and more, at no charge to you. You can also connect with me on other platforms.
Copyright © Mbhango Lefoka
