There are 6 flagpoles in front of the building where I serve at the Welcome Desk. The flags are changed every 2 weeks, though the flag closest to the building is always the US flag and the next one is always the Texas flag. I think that each flag represents a country in which SIL International is involved in linguistics or literacy or translation work.
A couple of weeks ago, Jill had selected a number of flags that had similar colors but differences in how the colors were arranged. I forgot to take a picture of the names of the countries, but, looking it up, I think that
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| the first one is Guinea, the second is the Republic of the Congo (Congo-Brazzaville), and the fourth (hard to see in this picture) is Benin |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan-African_colours
Within this group, she also included the flag for Brazil. There is a family on campus now who are visiting while he is in school here from Brazil. I had the opportunity to hear him speak at Sing and Share a couple of weeks ago. He and his wife are often in the lobby area of the building where the Welcome Desk is while waiting for their children's school buses to let them off (I think one is in elementary school and the other in middle school because they are on two different buses). He was so pleased to see his country's flag represented, and he told me some about it.
Here's a better picture:
Josue told me that the curved band represents the equator, and the stars represent states in Brazil. The single star above the equator identifies one of the original states which was north of the equator (if I understood him correctly, he indicated that other states now also exist north of the equator, but the flag maintains that design to recognize the one that was originally there). There are 27 stars, representing 27 states (or, more correctly, Brazilian Federative Unit).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_Brazil
It is fun to be on a campus with people who have lived in so many varied places around the world!
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