New Year's Eve.
A beach fire.
A borrowed saw.
And the Smite Effect began.
Nobody planned this. Jon and his family were on holiday in Zanzibar. Jacob worked at the small hotel where they were staying. On New Year’s Eve, Jacob brought wood down to the beach for a fire — the same local timber used to build furniture. Jon asked Jacob if he had a saw, he fetched one and the first set of Tanzanian Smite was made right there and then. The next day, children from the nearby village came to the beach to learn how to play after word had spread that there was a new game around. We knew something special was happening right before us.
Jacob explaining the rules to the local children — pins made from firewood, standing in the sand. The very first game of Smite ever played in Africa.
"The Smite Effect"
One chance meeting. One borrowed saw. One game made from firewood on a beach. And now an entire community in Tanzania has been changed by it. That's the Smite Effect — Smite has a way of spreading itself, person to person, smile to smile, wherever it lands.
— Roger Daniel, founder of SmiteTaking Smite into schools and orphanages across Tanzania.
We stayed in touch when we returned to the UK. Now with the help of the profits from the annual North of England Smite Championships, we are now supporting Jacob directly — funding materials so he can keep making sets by hand and taking them into schools and orphanages across Tanzania.
These children have nothing. They have been introduced to a game like nothing else they have ever experienced. It’s teaching them maths. It’s teaching them how to play together. It’s teaching them that play matters. And the smiles say everything that words can’t.
Jacob is now a true Smite Master in his own right — spreading everything that Smite is, one handmade set at a time. A share of every Smite sale goes towards funding our charity mission.
