UGANDA: St. Mary’s National Major Seminary Promoting the Spirit of Self-Sustenance
Sowing the seeds of self -reliance and reaping the fruits of cultivation and food production is apparently improving the welfare of the Seminarians at St. Mary’s National Major Seminary Ggaba.
At St Mary’s National Seminary, the seminarians are able to grow vegetables and eat them from their own plots. These include egg plants, tomatoes, a local hybrid of spinach called dodo, and other fruits. There is also St Joseph banana plantation exhibiting good harvest.
From this initiative, the catering department on daily basis gathers vegetables that enhance essential nutrients to the seminarians’ diet.
The initiative also fetches alongside improved nutrition, the satisfaction of seminarians working together. Besides gardening, they are also encouraged to take care of the cows that supply them with and a piggery where the seminarians learn pig farming.
Even when faced with inadequate resources, the seminarians are acquiring techniques that will help them as future Church Ministers who are self-reliant. With this, seminarians have come to realize Genesis 3:19, “By the sweat of your brow you shall eat bread, until you return to the ground, from which you were taken; For you are dust, and to dust you shall return”.
At St Mary’s Seminary, this does not sideline the responsibility to care for the environment. There is an ever green seminary compound which, in the light of Laudato Si, highlights care for our common home.
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By Isaac Ojok, St. Mary’s National Major Seminary Ggaba
