BLIDA, Algeria –
Algerian villagers run across a highland meadow and strike a ball with wooden sticks in an ancestral game similar to hockey, to celebrate the advent of spring.
“We’ve inherited this game from our Amazigh ancestors,” said 22-year-old Sid Ahmed Yettou, using the local term for the ethnic group also known as Berbers.
“We play it at the start of spring every year, seven times through May.”
The age-old game called thakourth, which means ball, is passed down “from father to son,” Rabeh Zaghmim, 68, said.
“Today we are teaching it to our young ones,” he added, smiling at children around him enjoying the game in the northern highlands.
Thakourth has historically been practised throughout North Africa among the Amazigh, with regional variations in ways of playing.
Teams wield slender wooden sticks curved at the bottom to manoeuvre a wooden ball woven from twigs that is called a koura.
Teams, usually from the same village, play on fields spanning up to several hundred metres.
Unlike in field hockey, players can catch the ball by hand and fling it deep into the opponents’ side to score points for their team.
Heritage researcher and historian Radhia Beljedoui said “this game is an extension of nature. It symbolises joy and welcoming for the arrival of spring.”
Villager Omar Darbal, 50, an enthusiast of the sport, said, “I make the ball from heather twigs … one for each week we play during spring season.”
Direct body contact is ruled out, but the games can get physical as striking other players’ sticks is allowed.
Locals say the game is a way to lay to rest grudges and settle latent disputes that may have festered between some villagers.
“Some go a whole year without seeing each other,” said Omar Hamadouch, 76. “If there are any problems between them, they make up here.”
