Do the names
Hughes and Apollinaire mean anything to you? Probably not. But a chill goes up
your spine and your eyes get misty when you walk through the cemetery at
Bagamoyo Parish on the east coast of Tanzania directly across from the island of
Zanzibar and read the inscriptions on these tombstones:
Fr. Hughes
[died] 23-8-1872 AGE 24
Fr. Apollinaire
[died] 18-4-1879 AGE 21
The first
Catholic missionaries in East Africa were French Holy Ghost (now called
Spiritans) priests and Brothers who arrived on the now Tanzanian mainland in
1868. Theirs was a hard, self-sacrificing pioneering life. Without modern
medicine many died of tropical diseases especially malaria. They died young,
too young. Now you know the rest of the story of the two tombstones. Two
missionary heroes in Tanzania!