Last week, we hosted our 2023 new parents’ and pupils’ evening. As part of whom we are, we opened the evening with prayer. Thinking about all the new girls and their families joining St Mary’s in 2023 made me remember the following statement by Elijah Obinna:

For many Amasiri Christians, the transition process into a new religion is characterized by experiences of change and continuity. This uncertain process, normally expressed in terms of understanding a new culture with new requirements, highlights many Christians’ endeavours to regain equilibrium. That is, they attempt to integrate their context, culture, and experiences into the existing frame of reference, or they attempt to repudiate their past (Obinna 2017: 1).

Rereading this passage made me think about the new girls joining the school, coming from different schools, some religious, others not. They must get used to the weekly chapel services and that we are a faith-based school. It sheds light on the challenges the new girls and their families face, adjusting to our school culture.

It also poses questions to us, as a school, about how we, through our Christian identity and ethos, and educational philosophy, respond to the girls as they negotiate their identity and what is a new cultural and social space, not to forget the religious aspect. The dialogue that will take place between the school and the new girls is not an encounter between systems in abstract ways but rather a meeting between persons who share a common human nature (Obinna 2017:145).

In our dialogue with one another may we hold fast to our values of Love, Community and Integrity.

REVD RAKGADI KHOBO
CHAPLAIN