In his final year ("Rhetorica"), and without anyone knowing, Victor sent three letters to three different religious orders, and eventually made up his mind to join the White Fathers.

Victor wanted to leave straight after college but his father insisted that he spend one additional year at the Minor Seminary, Roeselare to study philosophy.

The caravan moved on, hampered severely by the winter rains, and reach the abandoned mission post at Kipalala a few weeks before the year end.

Victor organised new carriers at nearby Tabora but this took weeks, as the locals were in full harvest season, so that they celebrated New Year's Day of 1892 in Kipalala.

After three additional weeks, during which Victor could study the Kiswahili language, they moved on through the grassy plains, facing new threats such as hyenas, and reached Karema, Tanzania on the shore of lake Tanganyika on 14 February 1892 at 3 in the afternoon.

[17] whilst father Victor Roelens and brother Stanislas would start a new mission post of Saint-Louis, next to the existing military stronghold.

On 16 March, Victor arrived back at Saint Louis and started the construction of a missionary outpost next to the existing military settlement of captain Joubert.

Yet the biggest challenge facing the locals were diseases like pox, syphilis and feet infections caused by funza fleas, which missionaries had to fight with little or no medicine.

A few weeks into his new mission post, Victor fell ill with hematuric fever, which became so bad that he received last rites, but he survived and recovered.

[20] He visited the military stronghold at Albertville[21] during three days, and met the Belgian captain Jacques[22] who was fighting Arab slave traders active in the region during this period.

In the same period, a letter from Europe arrived, announcing that father Roelens had been appointed as provicar of Upper Congo,[32] which added to the already considerable workload of "bwana Mrefoe".

[36] Roelens' work in Baudouinville did not stay unremarked in Europe, and on 30 March 1895 he was appointed Vicar Apostolic of Upper Congo and Titular Bishop of Girba.

Immediately upon his return he learned about the deaths of several missionaries, most of whom had been felled by hematuric fever, and he was confronted again with endemic disease, rodent plagues, funza fleas and other harsh realities in middle Africa at that time.

On the other hand, with the Arab slave traders gone, the region had become more peaceful,[38] and construction in Baudouinville had progressed handsomely[39][40] Bishop Roelens started to further organise life in the settlement, a.o.

Even though none of that first group made it in the end, it was the first sign that Roelens' plans now started to deliver results, vindicating his vision about local education and involvement that he had held ever since his first days in Africa (see higher).

In 1899 bishop Roelens had to overcome major setbacks once more: a fire destroyed the stables in February, killing all animals except for one cow, and later that year brother Franciscus, who oversaw the cathedral construction, had to leave Africa for health reasons.

Nevertheless, Roelens accepted an invitation to visit "Stanleystad" (Dutch), currently Kisangani to which he set off from Mpala with father Van Acker on 7 July on board of the San Vitori.

They suffered from heavy rains which forced them to rest for a week at Kabambare, then crossed the Lowa river with great difficulty, and met further difficult conditions[51] so that they reached lake Tanganyika only on 5 February 1903 at Lusenda.

An additional source of joy was a letter which had come and was waiting, announcing funds donated by an organisation in Bruges[54] Bishop Roelens decided to allocate it to starting a new mission post in the Maniema region and to honour the gift by giving it the name of "Sint-Donaas-Brugge".

[57] In March 1904, Bishop Roelens discussed the new mission post with father De Vulder, who set off shortly afterwards to the Kasongo region in Maniema.

Having a very high mortality rate and a then still unknown cause,[62] the disease killed thousands wherever it appeared, leaving missionaries and local people powerless.

Father De Vulder in Kasongo was the first to brief him on the strange effects of the sleeping sickness and on the abandonment of several mission posts as a result.

[63] The cruel disease, which struck men far more often than women, and the devastating effects it had on the local population and on the missionary work, caused Roelens much consternation and despair, yet he did not think of quitting.

[64][65] Father Kindt had left Africa for the Pasteur Institute in Paris in a bid to find the cause and develop a medicine, and returned with knowledge of the cause (trypanosomes), the vector (a fly with the scientific name glossina palpalis but commonly known as the tsetse fly), medicines (atoxyl and strychnine)[66] and in possession of a microscope with which he could check throat smears for the presence of the disease.

Schwertz, after having come back from a trip to Mpala, correctly identified that the tsetse fly staid on the banks of rivers and lakes, but not inland, and that it stayed in shady environments and not in direct sunlight.

[68] He proposed the bold plan to deforest all river and lake banks to rob the tsetse fly of its habitat by burning the bush and then taking out all roots to prevent them from growing back.

As roots often went down to more than a meter, and as Mpala was 50 kilometers away, the task was gargantuan yet Roelens supported the idea and crossed the region personally to convince all villages to come out and help.

He was the sole remaining student of the group of twenty young men that had been picked by Roelens in Mpala to study Latin, and the first to become a White Father himself.

On 8 September 1909, Baudouinville celebrated the 25 year priesthood jubilee of Roelens, who could look back on two and a half decennia of hard labour with many setbacks but also many great successes.

In Rome they were present at the beatification of the martyrs of Uganda when pope Benedict XV detected the black Stefano in the crowd and stopped to give him his special blessing.