Intercultural Beach Games

… with surprising results.

Playing Kubb on the beach at Jambiani, Zanzibar. © Ron Smit, December 2024

According to some legends, Vikings played a game (later dubbed “Viking chess”) with the bones and skulls of defeated enemies. There is no real evidence to support this and I can’t really imagine those warriors spending any time after a battle to lob femur bones at skulls. I expect that they spent more time having a stiff drink, or perhaps bleeding.

Nevertheless, these days we play a game with Scandinavian origins, called “Kubb”. It’s a great outdoor game, good for family gatherings. Being good at it is great, but if not, it’s fun anyway, and provides comic relief to spectators.

A few years ago, we played this game during a holiday to the Netherlands. A set of Kubb game pieces is quite bulky, so after we’d travelled back to Zambia, I made my own set out of a few lengths of wood purchased locally. (More about the game itself, the game pieces and rules, here.)

For the last week of 2024, we’d arranged a family holiday in Zanzibar. The logistical challenge was to get all of us together at the same time, in the same place. We inhabit three continents, with one son and his wife here in Zambia (though at least five hours away from us, in the Kafue National Park), one son and his partner in the Netherlands, and the other son and his girlfriend in Hong Kong.

We’ve all lived in different places, and we all value the wide experience that we’ve gained as a result. But we do not enjoy the distances separating us all. As parents, we see different subsets of this family at different times. And we have a WhatsApp group for all of us.

However, nothing beats being together in the flesh, so we plan a trip like this every few years.

During our very enjoyable time on this Indian Ocean island, we did a lot of things together, on land and in the water. Diving and surfing for some, snorkeling for others, swimming in a cave, wandering through Stonetown (and enjoying lots of different foods during a night market), playing in the hotel pool (and lounging in the shade next to it), but also … playing on the beach.

The not-too-shabby view from the hotel where we were staying, looking Northeast across Chwaka Bay, towards the Indian Ocean. © Ron Smit, December 2024

On one day, we took a taxi ride towards Paje and Jambiani, on the south-eastern coast of the island. Beautiful beaches and quite a few very nice restaurants. Having visited the Kuza Cave during the morning, we had a great lunch in one of these restaurants, looking out over the ocean and the various activities of other tourists.

One of our team had brought their Kubb set and we set it up on the beach for a relaxed, after-lunch game. This very quickly attracted a few spectators, who could all chuckle at our attempts to hit the kubbs with our batons, or perhaps to wonder what we were doing.

Looking onto our field of play, as seen from the restaurant. © Ron Smit, December 2024

If you ever visit Zanzibar, you will certainly notice men dressed in red cloth, wearing sandals, and with a knobkerrie pushed into their belt. These guys are Masai (or claim to be), from a tribe that inhabits the mainland, in Kenya and Tanzania. On Zanzibar, they are largely employed as guards or security men, in addition to providing some local colour along the edges of hotels and restaurants.

On that Jambiani beach, there were a number of them hovering around the edges of restaurants, presumably to discourage the locals from interfering with tourists too much. Not that we really noticed anything like that.

These Masai warriors are quite modern, sporting cool sunglasses and using smartphones. They chuckled politely at our rather astonishing lack of accuracy with throwing, and one of them asked whether he could join. He did quite well and pretty soon our own multi-cultural family was playing against a Masai team.

Our opposing warriors. © Ron Smit, December 2025.

They beat us rather easily, more than once. I guess they’ve had ample practice in throwing their own wooden clubs, while growing up.

Our family is already pretty diverse, with Dutch, South African, German and Malaysian components. Being beaten at a Scandinavian game by a Masai team definitely took the multi-cultural experience to the next level. And not a single viking in sight.

Good preparation for being defeated at a beach game. © Ron Smit, December 2024

Jambiani, Zanzibar, Kubb, all highly recommended! As are the beers on the island.