Zulu’s smoking – South Africa by B W Caney – 1880
The South African Smoker Games
Long before the Hunger Games would captivate the delight of many a sauced smoker, cannabis smokers in South Africa came up with their own way of higher entertainment…
There can only be one, do you have what it takes to win… The Smoker Games…
“Men in Pondoland playing a ‘Saliva Game’” 1904
Smoking cannabis in South Africa was so fun, they turned it into a game…
In one version of the South African smoker games, 2 people would sit across from each other.
Taking turns hitting the pipe, they would exhale the smoke through a ‘tambootie grass straw’ (natural reed often used as interchangeable mouth pieces on pipes).
While exhaling the goal was to mix in your spit or saliva forming wet smokey bubbles dampening the ground. Moving along with their hit of smoke, they would draw labyrinthine like patterns.
The next smoker would continue the labyrinthine pattern until a impasse is reached (think of the worm game) declaring a victor in the Smoker Games…
“Men in Pondoland playing a ‘Saliva Game’” 1904
Like a dirty 70’s basement version of ‘Risk’ with just a bit more spitting involved, The Zulu tribe played a more battle type version of the smoker games.
The game would start the same as the first, with this one being a bit different in the drawing.
Blowing smoke and spit through the straw, the spit bubbles produced in this version represented army’s. The ground the battle field…
To win you surround your challenger’s army in a circle of spit…
The Swazi and Tsonga groups also played the game very much like the Zulu, described in the 1904 book ‘The Essential Kafir’ by Dudley Kidd…
“One man fills his lungs with smoke first, and hands the pipe to his friend who fills his lungs. Then they take small hollow reeds and exhale the smoke through these reeds, making bubbles with their saliva. One man blows the smoke out and forms a row of bubbles on the ground, and his friend tries to outflank him by making his row of bubbles encircle the first line. So they go on, each trying to win. The game is something like a form of chess game played in a dirty fashion.”
-Dudley Kidd in the ‘Essential Kafir’ 1904
Both these versions could be played with multiple contenders playing at the same time in a team format. The winners would be declared when there was only one left…
“Zulus Smoking Insango” (playing the smoker games), 1900
Why spit?
While smoking cannabis, salivary glands became increasingly restricted, as the matches went on, the attacks became weaker and weaker.
With a bravado like a drinking game, those who could “handle their high” with saliva left in mouth, would win…
These smoking games were so intertwined with the social gatherings in South Africa that a Zulu Chief would argue the point in testimony to the South African Native Affairs Commission, against the country’s purposed criminalization of cannabis…
What is your opinion of this indiscriminate smoking of hemp by the Zulu; would you like to see a law putting that down, as drink is put down?
The old custom was the proper way, whereby the smoking of hemp was restricted to adults and grown-up men…
Would you restrict it to grown-up men?
Yes, because the adult is able to control himself; he takes a whiff of the pipe or the horn, and he passes spittle through a stick onto the floor, and makes figures; and passes on the horn to his next neighbour; but he does not use it to excess. The young people smoke it to excess, and they fight with others, and they become mad through it, and rush away sometimes out of the huts like mad people.
Would you like it restricted to adults?
Yes, those who take a draw, and amuse themselves by making figures on the floor, and then pass the horn on.
-Zulu chief Swaimana, in his testimony to the South African Native Affairs Commission – 1905
The Smoker Games, there can only be one…
Smoking hemp, Swaziland, South Africa