The Surge
In Effingham County, one player's search for a game grew to sixty women
A Georgia paper follows a group founded last September that now fills three tables' worth of rooms, three times a month.
The Effingham Herald reports that Dana Bodo founded Effingham Gals Mahjongg in September 2025, after moving to Guyton, Georgia and looking for more chances to play. The paper describes a group that has since brought together "more than 60 women from Effingham County, Savannah and surrounding areas."
Per the report, the group holds three gatherings a month, rotating between local community centers and members' homes, and typically draws between 12 and 24 players. The game is American mah jongg, played on the standard card, and Bodo teaches newcomers in beginner classes of two three-hour sessions.
Bodo told the paper, "Everyone that I've taught walks away absolutely loving it, and then they find that it's more than just the game, it's the community." Member Alison Mahoney told the paper, "It did sort of change my life in a way because it expanded my friend circle." Member Sarah Maier put the logistics more plainly: "It doesn't matter where you meet, as long as you have a square table."
Ten months from one player to sixty is the same arc local papers have printed all summer, and it almost always starts the same way. Somebody moves, cannot find a table, and builds one.