Bubble Wrap and Beans!

Ouch! Don’t touch that jelly!

While staying in our beach bungalow in Zanzibar, we spent a lot of time on the beach. The water was beautiful, the sand was great for making sandcastles, and there were lots of shells everywhere. Another thing we noticed were jellyfish washed onto the beach from the tide.

One day, we decided to go swimming together because the Indian Ocean was at our door. There were quite a few jellyfish near the shore in the shallow water, so Zoe and my dad decided not to swim. My mom and I went out, and we didn’t see any jellyfish where we were, so we kept swimming. All of a sudden, my mom said, “I think I just got stung by a jellyfish!” She said she was stung on the arm, but it didn’t hurt too much because she was stung through her shirt she was wearing to avoid being sunburnt.

Then about 30 seconds later, my neck started to hurt a lot, and when I reached up to see what it was, my fingers started hurting! My mom said, “You just got stung too!” Apparently, she saw it spread out on my neck and I must have gotten it off when my fingers started hurting. We started going back to shore, and two things were going through my head. The first, OUCH! The second, I had heard urine cured jellyfish stings and I didn’t want to have to use this “remedy”.

I went with my mom to the restaurant to see if any of the staff knew how to help my sting stop hurting. One of the staff members, Ibrahim, was there, and he said aloe would help, so he went and cut fresh aloe growing nearby. The aloe helped and after a few minutes and the sting didn’t hurt at all!

In the following days when we were walking on the beach, we would occasionally hear popping noises. It sounded like we were walking on bubble wrap! We soon found out it was the jellyfish which had washed onto the beach. Every time I heard a popping sound, I sang a little song with the words: “Pop little jellies, pop, pop, pop!”

With so many encounters with these creatures, including a very close one, I wanted to learn more about jellyfish and their tentacles. Here are some facts I found interesting:

• Even if a tentacle is not connected to the jellyfish or if the jellyfish is dead, it can still sting!

• Jellyfish tentacles are covered with cells called cnidoblasts. These cells contain capsules called nematocysts. Inside these are coiled stinging threads which uncoil with pressure and attach to it’s victim/predator, giving them a nasty venomous sting!

• The uncoiling of the nematocysts is faster than a bullet!

• Jellyfish are 95% water, so when they are on land, they collapse and die. The popping jellyfish must have been washed onto the beach shortly before we stepped on them.

• A group of jellyfish is called a bloom, swarm, or smack. 🙂

For more facts on jellyfish, click here!

After being stung, Ibrahim wanted to make me feel better, so he taught us a traditional Tanzanian game called bao la kete, also called the “bean game” by yours truly. This is now one of my favourite games; a few days after learning it, I played this game by myself for two hours! Here are the instructions for this fun game.

Bao La Kete (2 players)

Set Up

The board is a long piece of wood with hollowed out cups which looks like a muffin tin. There are 32 cups in total (4 x 8).

Each player has two rows to play with.

Each cup has 2 beans, 64 in total (marbles can work too).

Objective

Collect as many of your opponent’s beans as possible until they can no longer move.

How to Play

Moving your pieces

• Pick up all the beans in a cup of your choice.

• Drop a bean into the next cup over.

• Continue dropping one bean into each cup until there are no more beans in your hand.

• If your last bean lands in a cup with any number of beans already there, pick them up and continue moving.

• If your last bean lands in an empty cup, your turn is over. Single beans cannot move.

Taking Beans

• If your last bean lands in your row closest to your opponent’s rows and you have at least one bean in your cup, you can take the beans from your opponent’s cup.

• If you land in your row closest to your opponent’s in an empty cup, your turn is over.

• If the front rows are empty, you can start taking beans from your opponent’s back row.

Since single beans cannot move or take other beans, the game is over when one player can’t move.

Jellyfish and bao la kete are very different from what we see at home. While I did not enjoy being stung by a jellyfish, I was taught a game which was a lot of fun. So sometimes, bad things can turn into good things with a bit of good attitude, aloe, kind people, and fun games!