AFRICA · LIVING

ORIGINS & SOCIAL FUNCTIONS

Widespread across Senegal, one against many. Variants: Halamadirbado (“let me through”), Naoagula in Casamance (no pursuit, forcing the ring suffices), and Maaxala-Ndir-Bajjo, with its answering chants.

THE GAME

Ten to thirty players joined in a circle; one player at the centre.

The central player must, during the chant, force the ring of linked arms and escape to a designated refuge, in the Maaxala variant “with a violent blow of the shoulder or chest, drawing back to gather all his force like a battering ram.” He who forces the chain and reaches the refuge wins, replaced at the centre by the player who let him through; if caught first, he returns to the centre.

PLACE IN THE FAMILY

The invitation to rupture. The linked circle closes the field; the whole game is built on the search for the point where the ring will break. This structural principle, the deliberate seeking of the breach, the reinforcement of the risk of failure, is one of the foundations the thesis identifies across the family, from the roda to the Guadeloupean duel of challenge.

The breakout game inverts the family's siege logic: the circle is no longer defended but escaped, the many holding, the one forcing passage. With the baay-xaal and the zeibaka it forms the Senegalese one-against-many constellation, three scenarios of inequality, three resolutions by art rather than force, the chant timing the ordeal.

SOURCES

Black Combat Arts Institute.

HOW TO CITE THIS ENTRY

MALO, Olivier. Xalam Ma Ndir Bajjo. In: The Atlas of the Black Combat Arts [online]. Black Combat Arts Institute, 2026. Available from: https://www.blackcombatarts.com/atlas-en/xalam-ma-ndir-bajjo [accessed date].

RELATED PRACTICES

→ Zeibaka, One against many, breakout

→ Lambi Golo, Forcing the ring

→ Baay Xaal, One against the seated circle

→ Sansanding Balomba, Forcing the castle