Inside The Historic Hawaiian Leper Colony That Patients Call 'Home'
Oct. 9 2012, Published 11:00 a.m. ET
By Debbie Emery - Breaking Celebrity News Reporter
Surrounded by palm trees and within earshot of lapping waves of the Pacific Ocean, Kalaupapa doesn't seem like a bad place to be banished!
The remote Hawaiian peninsula is home to one of the world's oldest leper colonies and once housed 1,200 patients suffering from the deadly disease, but now dwindling numbers and an influx of tourism to the tropical islands is threatening its existence, reported the Maui News.
"I've heard people say it would be a nice resort," said 81-year-old Barbara Marks, one of 17 lepers who remain at the tropical colony. "I don't want them to do that to Kalaupapa. I don't want it to change. It's our home."
Kalaupapa Leprosy Settlement first opened its doors to the sick and needy in 1866 on a distant point on the island of Molokai, and since then 8,000 people have been separated from their families and placed in the care of the settlement that was ministered by Syracuse nun, Mother Marianne Cope.
In an eye-opening series of interviews, patients provided an unusual inside look into their lives of isolation and the debilitating disease that has been a mystery of popular culture for centuries.
Sufferers described doctors taking "snips" of their skin to test for leprosy, being poked and prodded and stared at as if they were "a monkey show." The much feared illness led to countless buried loved ones, babies being taken a