Valerie Gastager, a Ger-man student, was excited to eat what she grew at the farm of a Catholic convent in southern India.
“We harvested and ate the vegetables we grew,” Gastager said February 28 as she showed Global Sisters Report the kit-chen garden in the courtyard of the Helpers of Mount Rosary congregation at Alangar near Moodabidri, a town in the southwestern Indian state of Karnataka.
Valerie is among two male and two female students from German uni-versities who have come to study tropical agriculture on an exchange program to learn under the Helpers of Mount Rosary, a diocesan congregation in the Manga-lore Diocese.
As part of their nine-month training, which started in November, the Germans learn from the nuns how to cultivate grow vegetables and cash crops. Sister Theresia Mukkuzhy says teaching international students is the latest addition to the congregation’s mission.