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Name: DREYER, Acheul (Brother Albert)
Birth Date: 26.4.1862 Mulhouse
Death Date: 6.1.1891 Zanzibar, blackwater fever
Nationality: French
First Date: 1889
Last Date: 1891
Profession: Holy Ghost Father. Member of party sent to establish mission at Ndera on the Tana in 1889. Mission established at Kosi 1890 but abandoned after floods destroyed station in July 1890
Area: Lamu, Tana River, Zanzibar
Book Reference: North, Mombasa Mission
General Information:
Henry J. Koren, Spiritan East African Memorial, 1994: He was only a fourteen year old apprentice locksmith when in 1876 he entered Chevilly as a pre-postulant Brother. Admitted to pronounce his first vows on September 8, 1879, he asked to be appointed to "the missions." Sent to the Zanguebar Vicariate, he sailed from Marseille on November 2 of the same year, together with two other Brothers. We find him stationed there in various places as needed by the vicariate's expanding works, such as Bagamoyo, Tununguo and llonga.
Eleven years after his arrival in Africa, Fr. Charles Gommenginger took the versatile Br. Acheul with him from Bagamoyo in an attempt to establish a new mission in Kilimanjaro. They travelled up the Tana River for ten days and arrived at the area within which the bishop wanted them to select the most suitable spot. Brother and his helpers erected temporary shelters there on the "highest" place, and on January 14, 1890 the new mission was officially opened. Unfortunately, the Tana River floods twice a year and their "highest" spot was not high enough; many of their belongings got lost. So they had to move. Then they discovered that the alternative site at Makengue was the haunt of slave-hunting Somali and therefore unsuitable.
Not daring to go outside the area specified by the bishop, Fr. Charles sent Brother Acheul to Bagamoyo to get instructions. The round trip took two months, and the bishop's answer was that they should try to go to Subaki. Then Fr. Charles became gravely ill and Br. Acheul had to nurse him day and night, while also taking charge of the transport of all material and of the Christians who had come with them to start the new mission. He accomplished the double task to everyone's satisfaction. In October 1890 we find him again in Bagamoyo, preparing everything for the next attempt; he himself was also to go again on that expedition. (Eventually it would succeed in Kilema.) Then in December, just before the departure of the group, he developed a fever. Rushed to the hospital in Zanzibar, this utterly devoted and energetic young Brother died of black water fever.