Football, Yoga, and Tobacco.... a natural combo

The Dzoole medicals have made it to the village league semi-finals!
The price of Tobacco is double that of last year. Malawi is so happy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
All is well? Actually, no. The team captain says that no one is coming to practice because of Fodya (tobacco, which must be struck in leaves of 4 onto blades of grass and hung on shaded poles, taken down, carried in bundles on bikes to be graded, and sold... ) My good friend who teaches in the primary school says that school attendance has halved since prices went up... the children stay at home to work on tobacco.

While I have no idea how to stop the child labor going on in Dzoole, I do feel it is in my power to get the guys to show up to practice. The thing is, they all WANT to practice, but only for a quick tobacco work break; they simply don't have time for the typical 2 hours of waiting around before anything starts. They are becoming very American when, despite their lack of English, they clap their hands twice above their heads and say, "Program guys, program. TIME IS MONEY guys!" Practice begins at "2:00" Malawian time, which means people show up sometime in the afternoon between 3 and 5, and practice starts when there are enough guys to get a game going. They come, see no one is there, leave, and come back an hour later. In this two hour period, all the team might show up, but never form a group of more than 4 or 5, and so practice never starts.

One morning, I made my friends Kondwani and Holli (who we call program) saw me after a run, before their quarter final that day, and I made them do yoga with me. In short, they loved it. Every day last week, we did yoga while we waited for the guys, so that when they showed up, they started yoga, and by 4, the whole team was there to practice.

I felt bad I had to leave (or chose to leave) for Easter. But, Martha texted me on Friday to say that when she showed up at 3:30, they were already half way through a yoga routine!