TollandRCR wrote:
Another plague was imported to Hawaii, Hansen's Disease (leprosy). No one knows how or exactly when it migrated to Hawaii, but it seems likely to have come in with foreign laborers who had been hired to work on the sugar cane plantations as the native population fell. It probably came from an area where it was endemic, which would mean much of East Asia. Colonization thus delivered a second blow to the native Hawaiian population, the first being the diseases imported by Europeans and Americans (who also contracted Hansen's Disease). A leper's hospital and colony was established in 1866 on an island, Kalaupapa. Now that the contagiousness of the disease can be powerfully controlled, the island is trying to establish a tourist business. People are living with Hansen's Disease today.
When I lived in the complex of old, worn-out shacks in "Waikiki Jungle", Honolulu, called 'Koa Cottages' in 1970-71, where Frank Marshall Davis lived at the time, one of the residents was John Lima and his wife, Sara (who John & everybody else called Mama).
John was probably in his very late 60s, a small man, Native Hawaiian and a veteran. He only spoke pigeon, but I spoke it too. He had advanced leprosy-- one leg gone and all fingers gone and toes of the remaining foot. He reeked like death from the decaying tissues. He went to the Vet hospital every couple of weeks for treatment and meds. He had a prosthetic leg, but only wore it for special occaisions-- he hopped around, mostly.
He was a drunk and a marvelous character. He was MADLY crazy about Sara, called "Mama". He thought she was the most fabulous human ever to have lit on earth from heaven. She was HUGE! About 6-2", big-boned and fat. Obesity is regarded by many traditional Polynesians as a mark of extreme beauty and class. Sara couldn't talk. I never was quite sure if she was retarded or had had a severe stroke. I think the former. She liked to drink too, but though John drank alla time, he knew it was not good for Sara, so only on Saturdays, he would happily and lovingly buy her a pint of gin to go with the beers. Sara loved Saturdays.
We (mostly young hippehs) would all party all day Saturday on the shack porches together with John and Sarah and laugh and sing and dance into the night. Invariably, after everybody had gone to bed, John Lima would frantically toddle down the row of shacks calling, "Mama fall down!! Tony! Come! Mama fall down! George! Come! Billy! Mama fall down!" So half a dozen fellas all got up and managed somehow to carry happy, huge Sara from the lawn to her bed. Every Saturday.
Nicest folks I ever met, John and Sara. And totally crazy.
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