Black Combat Arts Institute.
AFRICA · LIVING
Sansanding Balomba
A three-team siege game of Diola origin in Senegal (“the game of war”): team A forms a “castle” by binding itself waist to waist in a circle, each member holding a plaited-cloth whip, while the assailant teams B and C — chosen for courage, strength and speed — circle it to a war chant and each try to tear a defender loose and drag him back to their camp. The defenders lash the invaders; one must endure the blows and use both force and cunning to take a prisoner. The game ends when the whole castle has been captured.
ORIGINS & SOCIAL FUNCTIONS
Of Diola origin, named “the game of war”; many against many.
THE GAME
Three teams; team A binds itself waist to waist into a “castle,” each member holding a plaited-cloth whip; teams B and C, half A’s number each, are chosen for courage, strength, speed and prowess.
To a war chant, the assailants circle the castle and each tries to tear a defender loose and drag him to camp; a defender dragged to B or C is a prisoner. The defenders lash the invaders with their cloth whips — so one must endure the blows and use both force and cunning to take a prisoner. The game ends when the whole castle is captured; in one adaptation, each team forms the castle in turn and the longest-resisting wins.
PRINCIPLES OF PLAY
To endure rather than return the blow, joined to force and cunning. The assailant neither parries nor ripostes — he takes the whip-blows willingly to reach his end. The risk and the pain are accepted and integrated, not fled: exactly the disposition the thesis names when it writes that in these games “the risk of losing is neither hidden nor fled: it is accepted and magnified.”
PLACE IN THE FAMILY
The 'game of war' scales the family's logic to its largest collective form: a bound castle, whip-bearing defenders, assault teams chosen for courage and speed. It shows the family's games able to organise entire village cohorts into codified war — the regulated confrontation as social institution, not merely as duel.
SOURCES
Répertoire de jeux traditionnels, CNEPS de Thiès (Senegalese Ministry of Youth and Sports). Its description was judged complete enough that the repertoire gives no separate technical sheet.
HOW TO CITE THIS ENTRY
MALO, Olivier. Sansanding Balomba. In: The Atlas of the Black Combat Arts [online]. Black Combat Arts Institute, 2026. Available from: https://www.blackcombatarts.com/atlas-en/sansanding-balomba [accessed date].
RELATED PRACTICES
→ Gar Tombe — Many against many, the circle
→ Zeibaka — Whips and captives
→ Xalam Ma Ndir Bajjo — Forcing / defending the ring