Well, hardly acclaim, but even so ...The Carmelites in Nigeria contacted me to write an article for their magazine, published by their students. I am supposed to write a short piece (two pages approximately) on poverty and moral integrity. I gather from the other topics they suggested that they want something about avoiding the temptation to make wealth the be-all and end-all of life. I told them that it might sound absurd for an over-educated white man living in great security in the United States to talk to people in Nigeria about poverty, but they told me to go ahead.
As they said about all impossible situations in Up the Down Staircase, "Let it be a challenge to you."
Nigeria is the first place in Africa that I volunteered to go, back in 1984. The Washington Province was asked to take the mission there in Lagos. (You will see the name on the coast on the left-hand side of the map.) In the end, we did not go there and the Irish took the mission. The students from Nigeria, however, study at the house in Nairobi where the Washington friars did eventually go. That is why they had heard of me, I suppose. They asked a number of friars from my old province to write something for them.
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