Description

Tchadji is a game played, at least, in Island of Mozambique (Ilha de Moçambique in Portuguese, the official language; Muhipitti in Makua, the local language). It has been studied by Abdulcarimo Ismael, a mathematician from Universidade Pedagógica, Maputo. It is played mostly by men.
Except for the initial position, and for the fixed length of the board, tchadji is identical to mefuvha and moruba.

Rules:

Tchadji is played in a wooden board with four rows of eight holes each. At the beginning there are 2 seeds (Caesalpinia bonduc) per hole. Each player only uses his side of the board, which consists of two rows.
At his turn a player takes the contents of one of his holes, which must contain at least two seeds, and distributes them, one by one, counterclockwise into consecutive holes on his own side.
If the last seed falls into a non-empty hole, its contents are distributed in another lap in the same direction, and so on.
The move ends when the last stone is dropped into an empty hole.
If the last seed is put into an empty hole of the inner row and the opposite hole of the opponent contains seeds, these enemy seeds are "eaten" (odjá).
Additionally, the seeds of the outer hole directly behind it, if any, are also eaten and the contents of another (any) enemy hole. The eaten seeds of the opponent are removed from the board.
When a player has only singletons (ompwechá, "divided into pieces"), he is permitted to move them, but only into empty holes.
The winner is the one who captures all the opponent's seeds.
Other data
Talking about habitual players, the first move is made without counting, as they know beforehand what are the best moves. Usually the first move is made from the last but one hole in the outter row (the second from the right). On next moves players do count.
According to the study made by Ismael, a game lasts a mean of 146 seconds, and 38 moves per player. The shortest (in time) recorded game lasted 62 seconds. The shortest in moves, 16. The longest, 4 minutes 39 seconds and 73 moves respectively."