“Hannah, roll a six!,” Mahad, Alliance Wellness recovery program resident, pleaded as the game of Ludo intensified. Ludo, a strategic and competitive board game, was popular among Somali American men, such as Mahad, who were in the process of renegotiating their dependency on substance use. These men also held vivid memories of playing Ludo in Somalia and neighboring countries that they moved through as they sought asylum from Somalia’s civil war. I first heard about Ludo when I began fieldwork at Alliance Wellness, a recovery program for an East African communities that was developed out of community need in Bloomington, Minnesota. With increasing rates of opioid related addiction and deaths among Somali Americans, Yussuf Shafie recognized a need for culturally appropriate therapy and recovery programs for Somali Americans in Minnesota (Feshir 2019). (read more...)