Fantasy Football, Jet Lag, and Africa

Have I told you how much I love having the internet here? Yeah, I get to blog, but I also get to follow my guilty pleasure, Fantasy Football. See, I'm in the playoffs and I won my first round match-up in both of my leagues...not that I didn't expect to. My team is called the Living Legends and we dominate. Now back to being humble...

I am still struggling a bit with jet lag. Or at least that is what I'm calling it. Could be that we didn't get in Sunday morning until 4am, then hit the ground running on Sunday and then last night (Monday night) stayed up late to watch the Arsenal vs Man U match...which I was not happy about the outcome. If I were watching it in Memphis, it would have been at 2pm in the afternoon. However, here in Africa, it was 11pm at night. Kinda late to get in and get to bed. So that probably doesn't help with the lack of sleep.

Today we took an inventory of all the donations we brought in and we were amazed at it all once we counted it. I wish I could show you the look on Nega's face when we gave him the total. It really means a lot. So for those of you that contributed to the donations, we really and I do mean REALLY appreciate it.

We started our program in the afternoon for the younger girls and while it didn't go as we would have planned, overall, I felt like the girls had a good time...and that is what is important. I say it didn't go as planned and mean that once we got there, people from all over the community made it their business to start to come in and join in the fun. We even had a few teams that were going to scrimmage disrupt the matches.

One of the things I noticed, which I don't know if anyone else did, was boys started pouring around us like vulchers waiting to attack the girls. It really started bothering me. Anyone that is a man knows this...we see how other men look at women. So naturally, I started getting a little bothered by it. See, in America, the probability of something happening is small. Here, girls are sexual molested at very young ages...like younger than 10 years old. We got out of there without any incident, but it did open my eyes to just a small piece of what women here go through.

Tomorrow we'll have a busy day. I am going with Nega to the government to talk to them about our program and then am meeting with the local community leaders to discuss coaching, leadership, and the overall need for the program. Please pray that my words are fruitful and are received with openness. Also, we'll be continuing the program and starting to interview the girls.

By the way, my wife rocks. She's great with these kids.

To our friends and family, we really appreciate your support and prayers. We miss you all. Especially the Grinch.