Muslims

About half of Kerala is Christian--the most Christian state in India--with the rest mostly Hindu with some Muslim. The autorickshaw at left, with a picture of a mosque painted on the back window, was dropping off students at Auxilium, the Catholic primary school that shares facilities with the orphanage.
We were in Kerala during Ramadan, and each morning and evening we could hear the call to prayer from a mosque. Did I say morning? Like 4AM in Kumily, in the mountains, which seemed to be more Muslim-dominated than Cochin. The morning of our bullock cart ride we had to get up around 5AM. With the call to prayer gently echoing around the edges of dawn (poetic!) we shuffled out to the front entrance of our hotel to wait for our ride. Looking up into the dimly lit, nearly starless sky, we saw an upside crescent moon with a single star perfectly centered above the bowl of the crescent--the classic star and crescent symbol of Islam. A really memorable moment. Four national flags use the star and crescent by the way--Turkey, Malaysia, Tunisia and Pakistan.