MAKOGAI LEPERS

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 81, Issue 7273, 6 November 1950, Page 5

MAKOGAI LEPERS

SISTERS EXPERIENCE HARDSHIPS WORK AMID DIFFICULT CONDITIONS Difficulties under which wonderful social work is being done by the Missionary Sisters of the Society of Mary, who nurse the lepers at Makogai, is described in letters received in Wellington. “On the morning, of October 7 a terrific wind came up, full speed—a hurricane was at our door. The coconut trees were falling on all sides, huts blown away with the wind, plantations uprooted—and this all day,” says one letter.

“Two camp stretchers, remnants of the American army, should have allowed us a good night’s sleep. The rats danced over the beds all night long!” The variety of the social work is revealed in this candid letter from one of the. Sisters. “We had to crass a river 16 times. It was only 3ft. deep, but the current was terrific. More than once during these 16 trips Sister and I were all but swept off our feet.

“Once we had to pass across a wall of rock with only a vine to hang on to overhead and a 10ft. drop to the river below. You should have seen us inching our way across. “On the way up the mountain, too, we crossed over more than one 2ft. wide trail with nothing but a sheer drop on both sides. “We can hear the waves pounding down at the beach three or four miles away, and we’ve been slapped down good and hard by these same waves while swimming.

“There are parts of the coast where no boat can land except for one or two hours each day. We are kept running from five in the morning till nine at night, and generally during the night, too. “I’ve been up many times with the nurse who was called out for a sick native, not to speak of the vigils kept with mania waiting for her pickaninny.”