I finally managed to take some pictures of my „Sports & Games“ afternoon highlight, playing Ultimate Frisbee with a bunch of students and some teachers, with the disc I brought from India. I will try to find one to leave here, but I would very much dislike to part with this one. Also, some more commented pictures from the school and life in general.

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One thing that living in a poor, rural part of Africa certainly does change is my perspective on economy. While I feel confident to say that the huge majority of things on sale in Germany, the US, or most of Europe don’t do much to improve people’s well-being or happiness (and many probably make it worse, at least if you take into account the work done to pay for them, and their effect on the environment) things are very obviously different here.

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In a Catholic environment like this one, sooner or later I had to remember the scandalous theories of Jesus being married to Mary Magdalene, or at least fathering a child with her. While I have to admit that the claims to historical evidence for this marriage don’t really convince me, I found the spiritual-religious argument striking. And I think it does a pretty good job at explaining the shortcomings of institutionalized religion with the incompleteness of the Jesus it chooses to believe in:

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One detail from a „Informed Comment“ discussion of Obama’s recent Middle East address (already briefly mentioned in a tweet of mine) stuck to me and got me thinking. It is the explanation of why Obamas (moderately) critical stance towards Israel and his push for pre-1967 borders as the basis for peace negotiations are politically daring:

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