Italian priest returns home after 52 years with bag of memories

Mill Hill Missionary Priest Adolf Poll during an interview with The Standard at the Missionary residence at Adams Arcade, along Ngong road on Wednesday, May 26, 2021. The Catholic Church Missionary, who visited Kenya as a tourist in 1966 using a boat through the Indian Ocean was popularly known as Alleluia [Samson Wire. Standard].

In a few days, Father Adolf Poll, popularly known as Alleluia, will leave the country. Father Poll, a missionary who has been in Kenya for more than five decades, will be returning to Italy with nothing more than a small bag and memories.

He also takes with him the nickname “Alleluia”, one that defined his stay in Kisii where he was first posted when he arrived at the Port of Mombasa as one of the last missionaries aboard a boat from Europe.

He did not speak Ekegusii, the language of the people he was supposed to preach to. Anytime they greeted him, he responded by saying “Alleluia”. It became his standard response whenever locals spoke animatedly to him in Ekegusii. Now, it has become the name many people know him by.