Integration of church and state

Coming from a country where people protest the mention of god in the Pledge of Allegiance, the level to which church and state are integrated here is sometimes still shocking.  It's certainly less shocking now than it was on that first morning of school during site visit - before i'd even been sworn in as a PCV - when my HOD lead morning assembly with a bible in one hand and a stick to whack the learners who were late or talking in the other hand.

I know I've written previously about morning devotion - reading from religious texts and the bible during the morning staff meeting.  I'm not really bothered by this anymore - at least not until followers of religions outside conservative Christianity are insulted and put down and said to be walking down the wrong path, etc etc etc.  The bible reading and praying is one thing, but to actively put down EVERYONE who doesn't subscribe to a certain branch of Christianity is kind of where I draw the line and even I begin to feel insulted even though I don't believe in organized religion.

I understand that religious intolerance and religious superiority are everywhere.  Had I gone to Mauritania as was the original plan, I would have been living in a Muslim culture, and who knows what that would have been like.  But this is a blog for me to talk about my life, and this is part of my life. At least it is between 0700 and 0725 on weekdays (and when people randomly corner me into religious conversations....  which happens more often than I'd like).

Every group of learners I pass walking to school in the morning now greets me.  By name. And asks how I am. It's....  heartwarming.  But it's more than that.  I met the Lower Primary HOD when we were about a block from school and was telling her about it; she observed that not only is it NOT DANGEROUS for the learners to know my name and greet me in the morning (because it's been suggested and implied that this type of thing is dangerous..... ....), it is what's helping keep me safe.  She went on to say that those learners aren't going to do anything to me, and in fact would likely protect me, because I'm "Miss Nikki from ********" (insert name of my school there).

Yolande's garden is growing, even without manure!  I hope to get some photos up as soon as stuff starts really taking off.

And a couple parting shots from a walk through the bush over the weekend.  The first: regrowth where the bush was burned at the end of the summer. Not sure why this struck me enough to take a photograph....  maybe symbolic for for how we have to continue to grow even after we've been burned?