AFRICAN LEPER COLONY

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29165, 28 March 1960, Page 10

AFRICAN LEPER COLONY

Missionary’s Work For Natives The doctor of the “Island of Miracles,” a leprosy colony in one of the most inaccessible parts of tropical Africa, is in New Zealand. spending five weeks of his leave visiting a sister whom he has not seen for 25 years. He is Dr. Robert Parry, of the Ruanda Mission—part of the famous (Anglican) Church Missionary Society—and he is fresh from 10 years’ service on the island leprosy colony in Lake Bunyonyi. in Uganda. Though in his seventieth year, he is just taking normal furlough, and will return for another term on his inland island. Mrs Parry is with her husband. They began their missionary careers together at remote Lanchow, on the China-Tibet border, serving with the China Inland Mission. Dr. Parry’s predecessor. Dr. Leonard Sharp, started leprosy relief in the island colony. The island is 6000 ft above the sea and almost on the Equator. For centuries it had been the centre of the cult of Nyabingi, the great female evil spirit, the supposed reincarnation of the ancient queen and sorceress. Bahororo. whose powerful witch doctor priests had such a fearsome and malevolent influence over the whole area. Missions and police tried to deliver people from this sinister domination, and finally the last great high priest of the witch doctors. Ndabagera. was captured and exiled. The island with all its associations of blood-shed and black magic was left deserted, and goon Nature had clothed it again in a mantle of jungle. Then came the war on lenrosy, waged by the Ruanda Mission and the Mission to Lepers. The island was still uninhabited and was greatly feared by the tribes for miles around, but it suited Dr. Sharp perfectly. So it was occupied and developed, and today there is on it a happy Christian community where the white magic tablets of the latest leprosy drugs—the sulphones and the cortisones and thiureas—are transforming outcast sufferers into free and happy peonle again, and the Christian faith is replacing the superstitious ignorance of old. There Dr. and Mrs Parry look after more thap 300 patients. 60 to 80 of whom are children. They report that their patients respond well to the sulphone drugs, and that already some thousands have left the island free of leprosy. There is still much superstitious dread of the disease among these simple tribesfolk. but little by little they are being persuaded to accept back into their villages and into their tribal life the patients who have been cured. Dr. Parry insists that the disease is now quite definitely listed as a “curable disease.” During their brief stay in New Zealand Dr. Parry and Mrs Parry will address church congregations and Rotary and other groups, telling of the work of the Ruanda Mission and of the Mission to lepers which helps to support