Village life is tied together through cooperation and socializing. The survival of the village depends on the villagers sharing and helping each other. Everyone is related in some way, so the whole village is like a big family. People help each other with their work and when they are not working, they spend most of their time socializing--talking and joking and telling stories.

Neighbors share meals and and help look after each others' children. Children often spend the night in their friends' or relatives' houses. If children behave badly outside the home, any adult can discipline them and will report the misbehavior to the parents.

The villagers gather together to celebrate holidays, to celebrate weddings and births, to mourn deaths, to bid farewell to travelers and to greet them upon their return. The whole village participates in these events. In large gatherings, men and women tend to socialize separately.

A wedding celebration in the village lasts for days. Everyone joins in preparing the food and decorating the bride's and groom's houses. Older women supervise all the wedding activities; they are the bearers of the wedding traditions through which the bachelor enters a new status in family and village life.

Older women, and then other relatives, put henna on the hands and feet of the groom and his friends before the wedding. This is the only time that men use henna. (see more about the use of henna

All the men gather at the mosque for the signing of the marriage contract. 

Girls and women wait outside the bride's room while the bride is being prepared inside. When the bride is ready, the groom enters, and the couple emerges together. They go sit in the middle of the crowd, where the older ladies wait with a tray of ritual objects.

The tray includes incense, perfumes, oil, and a kind of dough. While everyone crowds around to watch, the older ladies anoint the couple with oil, perfume, and the dough.

After the ceremony, the bride and groom go together to the room in the bride's house which has been specially prepared for them for their honeymoon.

The day after the wedding ceremony, the bride and groom walk to the Nile, with the rest of the village in procession. The couple enters the water, where they wash their hands and feet. The crowd on the bank cheers, and tries to splash the couple. Entering the Nile water is a very important symbolic act in the marriage ceremonies.