Enculturation

I noticed the bait of solar electricity atop the Catholic Church, and nowhere else in this floating village. In contrast, the school is a barge with a tin roof and no walls.

As Providence would have it, during my nightly reading I happened upon a short passage about this very region:

“Ancient Kings in Cambodia worked out the day on which the Mekong and the Bassac rivers would annually suddenly start to flood and conjoin and, under terrific water pressure, appear to actually reverse their flow back into the great lake at Tonle Sap. Relatively soon, there was a ceremony at which the divinely appointed leader would duly appear and seem to order the waters to flow backward. Moses on the shore of the Red Sea could only have gaped at such a thing.”
– Christopher Hitchens, God is Not Great, p.140.

He opens his chapter on “The Tawdriness of the Miraculous” with a further provocation:

“Give me the name of one people among whom incredible prodigies were not performed, especially when few knew how to read and write.”
– Voltaire, Miracles and Idolatry