Laajverd Visiting School: Doga and Doda (Local games to relive folklore)
I'm in Ringe. Attending LARP. Had dinner. Attended 'Character writing workshop'.
Yesterday, it was my first 'LARP'. Black box. White Death. It was a non-verbal LARP. The focus was a lot on the body language... gestures...movement. I got to play a 'two-dimensional character who constantly had to point his arms, legs, and feet in different directions'. After the game ended and I had to say goodbye to other role players...one of them told me that "you scared me!"
I have attended some talks and workshops. They were a bit of an introduction for me to this world!
I think people here are like these walking talking characters in the real world. One guy had a black feather stuck in his hair. One dresses up like some Victorian-era guy. One guy was wearing a steampunk hat. I also came across someone, who had a HUGE tattoo of Hulk on her leg... like some kind of huge comic book pages printed on her legs and arms.
People are friendly here. This world has a language of its own- campaigns.immersion.bleeding.
The characters do follow some rules and then they evolve as the game moves on.
I loved the workshop titled 'The emotions in your physics'! I like the fact that by taking a single body movement and gesture...repeating it... faster every time...you transform into something else...like I came across a girl who at one point had widened the space among her legs to such an extent that she looked smaller...in that very space she had transformed into another character.
I got an opportunity to participate in Laajverd Visiting School, a cross-curricular and interdisciplinary program which is conducted in sites of post-disaster and conflict. This year the area being visited was Neelum Valley that lies on the Line of Control. Line of Control is the line that marks where the region of Kashmir is divided. This Line of Control suffers from ceasefire violations. Since parts of Neelum Valley have faced natural disasters like earthquake, floods, avalanches, and landslides and geographically, along the Line of Control, its people have faced continuous crisis and trauma. Keeping this in mind, I took it as an opportunity to introduce live action role-playing game (LARP) to the locals in Kel, Kashmir. I participated in Knudepunkt, a LARP conference in Denmark and found it to be very beneficial for an individual as well as for the society as a whole.
LARP is a role-playing game where participants play out characters according to the story that is part of a fictional universe. The participants have to follow a set of rules that evolve as the game progresses. Participants take on the role of different fictional characters and interact with a given environment which gives everyone a chance to take on the role of a leader. This way a shy and traumatized person can be transformed into a strong individual. I learned that LARPing includes people of all age groups and the main purpose is to work together to complete a task. By completing tasks in the game, a participant gets encouraged to face successfully, a difficult situation in the real world. Furthermore, I learned that Educational LARP is being used as a teaching method in schools around the world. The method used is to implement playful learning in the classroom environment where students learn lessons through interactive experiences embedded within conceptual narratives. For example, an 8th grade class in urban Los Angeles was asked to take on the role of a police detective or forensic scientist by using science facts to solve different mysteries. LARP can also help in transforming the environment in classrooms that can often be filled with anxiety and loneliness into a more playful scenario.
While carrying out field visits in Kel (a village in Kashmir), Batool Ali and I learned that boys play games like cricket, hockey, football, and Doga (a local version of hopscotch) while girls play Doga, Panj geetay (five pebbles), climb trees and some play with dolls. As we played hand-clapping games with little girls where we had to sing the English alphabets, we found out that not everyone goes to school and so some games could only be played by those that were part of an educational system. Educational LARP could not work in this context since we thought of creating a game that wasn't just for children going to school.
We had to understand children’s imagination so that we could design a LARP and create a universe around that. We had different conversations with children and through that, we learned that they were interested in mythical stories that exist in Kashmir. They talked about jinns1 and believed that they exist in Mosques, empty houses and in the jungle. They told us that jinns exist in different forms and sometimes also come in the form of a cow or a dog. We noticed how girls had fewer play-time activities than boys. They played a game called Doga that was a bit similar to hopscotch. Here the player has to drop a stone on one of the eight squares drawn on the ground. He/she has to hop over the squares and kick the stone from the first block till the last block for the game to finish. The participants use a 2 by 2 inch smooth round stone called tikki in the local language.
The eight squares have names such as Pail, Duja, Teeja, Jantu, Ogra, Dharni, Seriya and Samandur. They are named after numbers ranging from 1 to 7 while Samandur means sea. They could rest both feet on the square titled Ogra. As we started to understand the local context, the idea about LARP changed and instead we decided to improvise the game Doga by embedding a dying folktale. We decided that we can encourage children to design a creative activity that could become part of their everyday life. On the other hand, LARP requires participants to wear costumes and have props. Our aim was that children should be able to use inexpensive materials available in the local market.
We discussed and explained our idea with children of age group ranging from 9 to 14 years who immediately started to draw squares on the floor of the veranda. They drew out 36 squares from limestone powder. The children also added some safe and danger zones to these squares. They marked three separate squares as danger zones and named them Suraj (Sun), Saanp (Snake) and Sher (Lion).
These squares were marked as ‘Chashmas’.
We divided the group of children into two teams. One team called themselves Jeeto Pakistan (Win Pakistan) while the other team named themselves Neelum Club. We made wrist bands out of pink and yellow colored waistbands (kamar band) as it was a cheap material easily available at the local market.
The game was based on the mythical story around jinns possessing people and if they drink water from 7 chashmas (natural water spring), they will be able to get rid of them. Based on this story, 7 squares were marked as chashmas and 5 stones were randomly placed. The participants had to quickly hop and pick up the stones. The winning team had to collect a maximum number of stones.
The next day the group of children had found an empty room which they could use for playing purpose only and started to draw out the game again. This time they drew out 30 squares and named this game ‘Doda’ meaning loquat. Also, we kept 5 stones on 5 chashmas since we wanted to embed the mythical story of jinns and fairies who protected the water bodies in Neelum Valley into the game. They kept the names of the eight squares same as before while they named the remaining squares after the following fruits and animals.
Iklu = Name of a local fruit
Glas = Name of a local fruit
Sunjali = Name of a local fruit
Bronti = Name of an area in Kel
The objective of this project was to bring a positive change in the lives of the children living in Kel.
This new game Doda gave a chance to children of Kel to play together as teams competing with each other which also promoted team spirit, healthy competition, and good sportsmanship. It also helped to build social skills as they played together and enjoyed each other’s company. Another innovation was that both boys and girls were involved together in playing this game while in the past Doga was played by boys and girls separately. We also encouraged the girls to become team captains that made them feel more confident and enthusiastic.
Also, playing helps to develop cognitive skills in children as it involves remembering, problem-solving skills, reasoning, and thinking and decision-making skills. As children developed Doda and its rules, it was a good way for them to learn to follow instructions, play fair and work to be a good winner. The game Doda is a reflection of the local, social and cultural context in which the children of Kel live. When playing a child learns to take risk, question and explore and while exploring it helps them to build up ideas, concepts, and skills. Therefore, this approach of designing creative activities is helpful for children in developing their self-esteem as well as their emotional, cognitive and physical development.
We found that our approach was useful in teaching children how to interact and communicate with each other. As they have to follow rules, wait for their turn and compete with each other, they learn to think, solve problems as a team, listen to each other and improve their speaking skills. Also, it helps a child to learn to handle the spirit of losing if he/she does not win. As children developed new rules in Doda where they named different squares and marked different squares as danger zones, they made all those decisions on consensus and also made sure that everyone followed them. This also taught them to play with each other in a larger group. Our major conclusion is that collaborative learning including play and imagination is effective as it involves problem-solving interaction among children on one hand and between children and adults on the other hand.
1 According to Islamic mythology, a jinn is a class of spirits, lower than the angels, capable of appearing in human and animal forms and influencing humankind for either good or evil.
izzy806
jbbartram-illu
annaxmalina
stormborns
kianamaiart
areudirty
kaledo-art