Drumkey 1909 - Mwabaya Ravine, Uganda

North - Mombasa May 1894, Nov 1898, 1899; Superior of Mombasa Mission, ill at Zanzibar 23-8-1899; St. Austin's Mission Nairobi 1901; Pemba Mission 1902, Giriama 1904, and director of Giriama mission 1908. 1912 Pemba, not interned. To Mayotte. To retirement home in Algeria 1936.

Red Book 1912 - J.B. Ball - Rabai

Henry J. Koren, Spiritan East African Memorial, 1994: He was one of the 31 young priests who on August 28, 1886 pronounced their vows at Orly.  Just then the government of France had asked the Congregation to staff a school in the Comores Islands. Thus it came about that, together with three Brothers and one scholastic, he embarked for the Indian Ocean on September 22, 1886. The local French commander of Mayotte, however, objected to the presence of religious in the schools of an island that was largely Islamic.   Without even waiting for a reply to the telegram that he had sent about the matter to the Ministry of the Navy and the Colonies in Paris, he shipped them all back to France soon after their arrival.  All that is except Fr. Ball: he was allowed to stay to replace the ailing Fr. Guilmin who served the few local Catholics. (The recalcitrant local commander himself was soon after replaced by a more liberal officer.)

In 1893 Fr. Ball became seriously ill with black water fever and had to return to France.  Eager to start work elsewhere, he sailed for the Zanguebar vicariate on January 12, 1894 and was assigned to Mombasa.  Apparently he was not quite cured yet, for on March 28 of the same year he had to be rushed back to France, but was allowed to return to Mombasa on April 10. He served there as local head of the mission and procurator for the inland stations for about six years, doing also some ministry at Kilindini.  In 1901 we find him at Nairobi's St. Austin mission; then on Pemba island, in 1904 at Giriama, and in 1908 at Giriama as the director of the mission.

In 1912 he was back in Pemba. World War One does not seem to have disturbed him directly; at least, he did not figure on the list of Spiritans interned or expelled because of their nationality. After a leave of absence in France, he returned to Mayotte and spent the remainder of his active life on that Indian Ocean island, near Madagascar. In 1936 we find him at the Congregation's retirement home of Miserghin, Algeria. He died there of old-age infirmities.