Project teaches African and Afro-Brazilian culture through games

Hide-and-seek or hide-and-seek is a popular game in Brazil, but few people may know that these pastimes also entertain children in different African countries such as Angola, Mozambique, and São Tomé and Príncipe. Even more unlikely is that anyone has heard of Nguec, a shooting game from Equatorial Guinea, in which participants score points if they manage to hit a fruit from the Anguec tree with a stick.

These are just a few examples of the more than 100 games that were recorded in Brazil and in six African countries that also speak Portuguese: Angola, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Equatorial Guinea, Mozambique and São Tomé and Príncipe. They are in Catalog of African and Afro-Brazilian Games and Games. The book is organized by researchers Helen Pinto, Luciana Soares da Silva and Míghian Danae and is available free of charge at digital version.

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Work like these helps teachers and students, especially in early childhood education, to get closer to the guidelines established by the Law 10,639, which 21 years ago made the teaching of Afro-Brazilian and African history and culture mandatory in schools. Pedagogue Míghian Danae, professor at the International University of Integration of Afro-Brazilian Lusofonia (Unilab), explains that the main objective of the project was to produce teaching materials with subsidies for educators to discuss issues that historically permeate the lives of the black population in the country.

“We can practice education based on ethnic-racial relations. Most people are very surprised to think about the game from this perspective of valuing African and Afro-Brazilian culture, and relationships of belonging. Playing is also a cultural artifact, an expression of the values ​​of a society”, highlights professor Míghian Danae in an interview with Brazil Agency. “The information in the book seems simple, but it is very rich. When learning about a certain game, the child links it to a geographic place, but also to a political, social and historical place, which has relations with Brazil.”

The production of the material took two years and was supported by the Center for the Study of Labor Relations and Inequalities (Ceert) and Itaú Social. Throughout 2022 and 2023, the project was publicized in some schools and associations of the black movement in Bahia, Florianópolis, São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. And it ended up giving rise to a second book, We Play at School! Games of Quilombola Children in Early Childhood Educationmade from two communities of Santo Amaro and São Francisco do Conde, municipalities in Recôncavo Baiano.

The authors wanted to make the ways of being and doing of quilombola children better known, to show how they develop in school spaces. Betting on play, for them, is a creative and purposeful way to establish social relationships of reciprocity, respect and affirmation of diversity.

“We thought about using these games inside and outside of school. We were careful to choose games that reaffirmed and valued issues that were important to us. We know that racism also reaches this universe and we curated it to understand what values ​​were present in the games we selected”, says Míghian Danae. “We want to give children the right to know difference, understood from the idea of ​​celebration. And not competition or inferiority. Therefore, both theory and practice are important in this process, otherwise the debate will be emptied.”