SPORTS AND RECREATION
Soccer is popular in Sudan. Its players rank among the best in Africa. Basketball and volleyball are also played. The Sudanese have always been good fishermen and boat-builders. Fishing is more of a necessity than a sport in Sudan.
Did you know?

Television is a part of the lives of the Sudanese only in the urban areas.

Popular traditional sports are wrestling and a kind of martial art performed with long sticks and shields. Men also hunt deer and other game for sport. Women and men enjoy traditional dancing together. The Sudanese have a game they play at night or at "moon time", called shelel, which involves stones, sticks and holes made in a wooden board or in the earth.

Young Sudanese girls enjoy playing with dolls, jump rope and hopscotch, which is called arika. Backgammon, or tawal, and a board game called mangala using stones are also played.
Men and women have different ways of socializing in urban Sudan. Women entertain friends at home and men socialize with friends elsewhere. In rural areas, men socialize in a diwanya, a hut used as a meeting place.

Did you know?

The longest river in the world, the Nile runs from south to north in Sudan. Since ancient times the historic Nile River has been the main route of travel and communication for Sudanese people to the Mediterranean Sea.