Kalaupapa
The following post is probably the longest post I have ever written, and certainly the hardest. I find it very difficult to talk and write about the things that are closest to me. This is a story that needs to be told, but I didn’t know where to start. I guess I’ll start where the story usually starts for me, and hope I can tell it properly from there. When people hear I am from Moloka’i, Hawai’i, they have one of two reactions. Either they say “Moloka’i? Which one is that?” or they say “Moloka’i!?! Really!?! The one with the leper colony?” And it’s true. My island is known first and foremost because of its unusual and tragic history: because Kalaupapa peninsula was used as a place to banish patients suffering from Hansen’s Disease (to use its proper, medical, name), a place to isolate them from society for fear they would spread their affliction to the rest of the population. Moloka’i lies in the middle of the Hawaiian archipelago, middle in age and middle in …