Thank you for your prayers – our old colonel got transferred to a place closer to the capital and it sounds like, needier for peaceful control. Our new colonel seems to be following in peaceful footsteps, no hassling or anything worse, for which we are extremely thankful. He does not like pigs, though, nor other non-haram (“kosher”) meats such as snails and bush meat, and in his first days here issued an edict against these things in the market. He has since withdrawn that law, and it seems the Musxslims and non-Musxslims continue to live next to each other without discord now, as before. I personally wouldn’t mind at all if there was a law against pigs, and actually there is a law, country-wide, against livestock wandering free in villages. We have pigs and goats in the hospital compound daily, and they make messes everywhere with their rooting and their droppings, but no one enforces that wonderful law! I remember the days in Zaire/Congo when Dr. Roger M. would bring out a 22 and shoot any goats that wandered onto the hospital property, and then would give the animal to the TB patients to eat. Ah, the good old days. Problem is, we have two very different cultures butting heads here. We expats like order and cleanliness and penned up animals, and the nationals consider their livestock as bank accounts that don’t need much care – it’s so easy to let them wander and feed themselves! A suggestion about their animals usually is interpreted as an attack on their financial well-being, and if you were to actually shoot one!!!… Oooooh lah lah. Lord have mercy.
