The Dawson news. (Dawson, Ga.) 1889-current, 1920-09-21
CHILDREN OF LEPERS
SOUND and HEALTHY
COLONY NOT ALTOGETHER AN
UNCHEERFUL COMMUNITY.
SOME LIVE MANY YEARS.

LONDON.-An African leper col
ony, situated near the prosperous
Nigerian town of Zaria, is described
in the Daily Telegraph by Marjorie
and Alan Letheridge. They write:
Away outside the city of Zaria is
a sad little community. 1t is ap-
preached by an unfrequented road,
and one senses subconsciously that
one is nearing some abode of sorrow,
maybe a cemetery or native mad
house, or even a prison. But no; it
is something quite different; it is the
native leper colony.
Chance had never placed either IF
US in such close contiguity with the
real leper as on this occasion, and it
left US with a species of pitiful hor
rors that such things could be. 1t was
scrupulously clean, this colony of the
damned; the Emir sees to that. He is
nightly interested in the cases of
these unfortunates, and it is due to
his initiative that SO much has been
done, for the services of an English
doctor cannot often easily be spared.
Natives chatter usually; these are
silent.
The ring of laughter is absent;
even the children look serious as
though computing the chances of
their developing the plague which
has laid their parents low, for curl
Gus to relate children often escape
the scourge although living in the
leper settlement.
Outside the huts sprawl the human
wreckage, who may last twenty
years or more, wasting away literal
ly inch by inch. We saw women
with no fingers or toes, men whose
faces had withered and shrunk from
the ravages of the disease, children
who had developed the dreaded sores
which foredoom their owners to be
for always outcasts amongst men.
Forty Years Leper.
And yet it was not an uncheerful
community. An old woman showed
US her house, and was insistent that
we should see how she lived and ate
and slept. A youngish man shook his
fingerless hand at US, and then DEM
onstrated how it was feasible to do
every manner of operation with
merely a stump. He seemed to find
it almost funny. And an old woman
maintained that she. was the mother
of them all, and that she had been
according to her own computation a
leper for forty years or more. 1t is
possible, we were told, only death is
always waiting, and when it arrives
is horrible.
Your Mahometan native is not un-
like the Russian moujik. In the sick
and suffering, in the epileptic and the
insane he sees not something to
avoid, but rather something worthy
of respect, if not of generation,
something that has been fashioned by
God for some reason of his own, and
thus transcendentalizing all his other
formal works. And thus, beyond seq
regating these people at night, they
are otherwise free and even do they
marry.
Offspring Sound.
The idea is not pleasant, but, as
our guide said to us, "Why should
we interfere with them? 1t is not
their fault that they suffer. 1t is the
will of Allah, and if they marry of
their own why should we interfere?"
Which brought out the aforemention-
ed statement that two lepers may
marry and bring into the world per-
fectly sound children, an extrordi-
nary fact if accurate, one which
should nightly interest those absorb
ed in the fascinating study of euge
MICS.
We also learned that with imprOv-
ed houses, more care for sanitation,
and a general uplifting of the moral
tone leprosy showed signs of dimin-
ution, though it must be many a
long year ere it is placed under con-
troll in it's entirety. Meanwhile it
speaks wonders for the care of the
Emir for his people that, unasked
and unaided, he has succeeded in
thus far segregating these people,
who, incidentally, come from all over
the Emirate, being reported as un-
sound by their local headmen. In
addition, they receive a small sub
sistence in a financial way, and are
at liberty to buy what they like in
the local markets. After all, this is
a much more practical way of offer
ing charity than the hard and fast,
cut and dried manner in which char
ity is SO often extended in other