Molokai History:
(from “The Separating Sickness: Ma’i Ho’oka’awale: Interviews with Exiled Leprosy Patients at Kalaupapa, Hawaii” by Ted Gugelyk and Milton Bloombaum, Ma’i Ho’oka’awale Foundation, Honolulu, HI, 1979)
Female, Portuguese
Widowed
Age: 61
42 years at Kalaupapa
I was nineteen when they first diagnosed this disease. Like the rest of the patients, they sent me to Kalihi Hospital. All in all, I have been here forty-one or forty-two years. I think I was twenty when they first sent me to this place.
My mother became ill, and we had to send her to the hospital. I remained at home, doing housework with my sisters. My throat was still sore from a tonsil operation, so I remained home most of the time. But one day, my family went to visit my mother in the hospital. But, they would not let me into my mother’s room. The others could see her, but not me. “Why?” I asked. They did not tell me why. So I went home. A few days later, while I was cleaning house and playing records, a tall Hawaiian man came to the door. He said, “I got papers here that say you must come with me, go to Kalihi for mai Pake.” What? Me? That was the first I found out about it! I had one day to get ready. He came on a Thursday and I had to leave on Friday. I was in shock. I went to our bathroom to look for poison to drink. But I was so shocked and confused, I could not find it! That man who came to the door, they called him the “bounty hunter.” He got ten dollars a head for each leprosy person he arrested.
Overall, when I look back over my life, I have been lucky. My family never rejected me. And, I found a wonderful husband. We had a good life together. I am still close to my family, and to my children. You know, my children were born inside, but my family hanai them. So I see my children, and my grandchildren. I am lucky!
Blessings, Pule & Pono,
Fr. Brian, ss.cc.
Priest
Molokai, Topside