Wednesday 20 August 2008

Fr E from Ghana

Spent the day with my parents and Fr E, who is staying in their parish for the Summer. After Mass, we went to Greenwich and took lots of photos of Fr E on the Meridian line and Leutgeb learned that Accra, capital city of Ghana, is also on it! Well 00' 04'', but as good as. We were delighted to find it in brass on the ground and took photos of that too.

Fr E is a Holy Ghost Father and having spent a number of years working in the North East corner of Nigeria, is the now the bursar of a Seminary - lots of seminarians.

Now, my idea of a bursar is a man in an office who pays bills and makes sure the books balance. I'm sure that Fr E does all of that, but he also makes sure that the seminary has enough food for the students and this involves much tilling of the land and looking after chickens and pigs. He said they only have five pigs at the moment and they have to wait til they have bred before any can be slaughtered. Each student also cultivates a strip of land and this serves as part of their training as they will have to grow their own food once they are ordained. Oh yes and they have 5 acres of palm oil, which once refined is used for cooking, fuel and to sell.

That and a whistle stop tour of the countries of west Africa courtesy of a globe in the Royal Observatory and we are a bit better informed than when the day started.

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