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Name: BOULÉ, Felix (Father)

Birth Date: 10.2.1861 Barenton, Manche

Death Date: 22.2.1909 Rabai, Mombasa, blackwater fever

First Date: 1905

Last Date: 1909

Profession: Missionary

Area: Mombasa, Rabai

Book Reference: EAHB 1906, North, EAHB 1907, Baur

General Information:

North - Arr. Zanzibar from France 1889; Bagamoyo, Mandera & Morogoro, GEA; moved to Mauritius, ill, late 1893; returned to EA, chaplain of RC Hospital, Mombasa 1898; opened Mwabaya Mission, Rabai District 16-6-1905 
Henry J. Koren, Spiritan East African Memorial, 1994 He had studied at Langonnet and tried the Trappists as well as the diocesan seminary of Coutances, but he could not forget the Spiritan congregation and its missions.  Almost ready to the ordained, he returned to it at Chevilly in 1885.  To test his vocation, he was sent to prefect at the college of Merville; then, duly ordained, he made his vows on August 28, 1887. Sent to Gabon, he worked there for a few months before fever drove him back to France. When his health had recovered, he asked to return to Africa. This time his assignment took him to East Africa. Arriving in Zanzibar on May 30, 1889, he was placed in charge of the orphans in Bagamoyo.  Later we find him in Mandera and Morogoro, impressing all with his ability to instruct the young and the old in a way that made sense to them.  Neither fiery heat nor mountains, neither ravines nor torrents stopped him from reaching the villages where he wanted to go.  And if needed, he could stand up against German colonial army officers when they violated the elementary human rights of his beloved Africans.

When illness struck him again in late 1893, Bp. de Courmont sent him to recuperate in Mauritius; he was kept there and then in Reunion and Nossi-Be, Madagascar, for four years. The year 1898 saw his return to East Africa; at Mombasa he became chaplain to the hospital.  But from this island he also roamed into the mainland and secured there the sympathy of the Giriama people and other tribes.To them he devoted the last ten years of his life.  During the famine of 1898-1899 most of these people sought and found relief on Mombasa island, where the mission had persuaded the British government to build six giant hangars to house and feed them.  Although hundreds were too far gone to survive, the others did and could later return to their homelands with food and seeds for a new harvest.  A Spiritan mission could be opened among them at Mwa Baya Nyundo in 1904. Exhausted by his incessant apostolic activity, he became ill in mid-February 1909 and died before a doctor from Mombasa could reach him.

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