Hawaii - Jeff Campbell [382]
The same year that Father Damien arrived, a Norwegian scientist named Dr Gerhard Hansen discovered Mycobacterium leprae, the bacteria that causes leprosy, thus proving that the disease was not hereditary, as was previously thought. Even in Damien’s day, leprosy was one of the least contagious of all communicable diseases: only 4% of human beings are even susceptible to it.
In 1909 the US Leprosy Investigation Station opened at Kalawao. However, the fancy hospital was so out of touch – requiring the patients to sign themselves in for two years, live in seclusion and give up all Hawaiian-grown food – that even in the middle of a leprosy colony, it attracted only a handful of patients. It closed a few years later.
Since the 1940s sulfa antibiotics have successfully treated and controlled leprosy, but the isolation policies in Kalaupapa weren’t abandoned until 1969, when there were 300 patients here. The last arrived in 1965 and today the remaining residents are in their 60s or older.
While the state of Hawaii officially uses the term ‘Hansen’s disease’ for leprosy, many Kalaupapa residents consider that to be a euphemism that fails to reflect the stigma they have suffered and continue to use the old term ‘leprosy.’ The degrading appellation ‘leper,’ however, is offensive to all. ‘Resident’ is preferred.
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INFORMATION
State laws dating back to when the settlement was a quarantine zone require everyone who enters the settlement to have a ‘permit’ and to be accompanied at all times by a guide. The laws are no longer necessary for health reasons but they continue to be enforced in order to protect the privacy of the residents. There’s no actual paper permit. Your reservation with Damien Tours or Molokai Mule Ride acts as your permit. Because the exiled patients were not allowed to keep children if they had them, the residents made a rule that no one under the age of 16 is allowed in the settlement – this is strictly enforced, as are the permit requirements. Only guests of Kalaupapa residents are allowed to stay overnight.
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MOLOKA’I’S SAINT
Barring unexpected divine intervention, 2009 will be the year Moloka’i gets its first saint. The story of Joseph de Veuster, the Belgian priest who sacrificed everything to care for leprosy patients, has been the subject of many books and TV movies, few of which rise above the treacly clichés inherent to such a story. And yet Father Damien’s story, once learned, makes the honor of sainthood seem like the bare minimum he deserves.
In 1873, the famously strong-willed priest traveled, at age 33, to the Kalaupapa Peninsula, the leprosy settlement he’d heard called ‘the living tomb.’ Once on this remote place of exile he found scores of people who’d been dumped ashore by a government not quite cruel enough to simply drown them at sea. Soon he had the residents helping him construct more than 300 houses, plant trees and much more. He taught himself medicine and gave his flock the care they desperately needed. In 1888 he installed a water pipeline over to the sunny western side of the peninsula, and the settlement moved from Kalawao to where it remains today.
Father Damien contracted Hansen’s disease in 1885, 12 years after he arrived, and died four years later at age 49, the only outsider ever to contract leprosy on Kalaupapa. The Vatican has recognized two miracles attributed to him. Both were people diagnosed with terminal illnesses decades after his death and who attributed their recoveries to their prayers and faith in Father Damien.
Excitement over Father Damien’s sainthood is widespread on Moloka’i and fundraising efforts to pay for group travel to Rome for the ceremonies are constant. Many hope that his beatification will provide rescue from the dodgy local economy through an increase in curious visitors, although this may require a miracle that even the sainted priest can’t deliver.
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