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AOC EMBODIES “PRETTY PRIVILEGE” — IF SHE WERE UNATTRACTIVE SHE WOULDN’T GET AWAY WITH SAYING SUCH DUMB STUFF: Father Damien ministered to native Hawaiians in a leper colony, now AOC calls him a ‘colonizer.’ “So according to AOC, you are a colonizer if you lay down your life for people you never met before, halfway across the globe. If you earn the plaudits of the local queen for your selfless heroism, you are a colonizer. But there’s even more to the story.”
the link is to a summary of his story.
In the past, the story of how Hansen's disease decimated the natives of Hawaii, and were forcibly quarantined to prevent the spread was well known.
They were given food, but no help in shelter, no protection to the weak, (so the strong could steal their food etc), a distant water supply, and very little medical care.
Father Damian, a Belgian, went as one of the priests who was sent by the bishop for a short visit and just stayed there because he saw the need: not just in preaching, but in more practical things like building shelters (he was a farm boy and knew how to do such things), helping get the water supply to the village, and of course basic medical care.
Due to the lack of water and his refusal to stay separate, he developed the disease and died of it; but by then many had heard about what was going on (i.e. the neglect of the patients and his many fights with the authorities to improve things), and indeed, shortly before he died, Mother Cope and some other nursing Sisters from America came to set up a more professional hospital treatment.
John Farrow (Mia Farrows dad, a Hollywood director) actually wrote his biography after hearing about his story during his travels in the South Pacific, and Robert Louis Stevenson, who also heard about his story during his travels in the Pacific, wrote in his defense when some of the "christians" in Honolulu tried to libel him as dirty, bigoted, and immoral (in those days, leprosy was considered by some as an STD, since there were some similarities with the skin/bone lesions of tertiary syphilis, and of course, because these "good" people assumed all the natives were immoral and they deserved to get the disease. /sarcasm).
link
the point of Stevenson's classic letter ridiculing these holier than thou hypocrites is that these effete types weren't getting their fingers dirty, so how dare they criticize one who did.
Hmm... sounds like my criticism about SJW who feel superior to ordinary folks but don't really get their hands dirty.
No, I didn't treat those with Hansen's disease during my two stints in Africa, because it is now easily treatable if found early, so they now treat people as outpatients. Indeed, one of my friends, an irish nun, ran such clinics, visiting villages periodically to examine the patients and give out a supply of medicine, when I worked in Liberia. She was funded by the Knights of Malta, one of their many charitable works.
Another nun I worked with, in Zimbabwe, Sister Humberta, had worked with these patients in the 1940s. Once I had a patient with strange nodular lesions so I asked her if it looked like Hansen's disease, and she said no: It didn't smell as badly as her patients. (it turned out to be kaposi's sarcoma, probably from HIV, which at the time was not recognized as a disease).
something to remember when you read "romantic" stories about working as a medical person in third world countries, or in the USA for that matter, where some of the homeless have little access to hygiene and indeed are often too mentally ill to realize they need to wash.
oh yes: Father Damien is the patron saint of those with HIV/Aids, who like those with Hansen's disease were often ostracized out of fear and loathing, but now, thanks to President Bush, are often getting treatment in local clinics instead of dying a slow miserable death.
this movie about Father Damien is not bad (an Australian secular film, not a churchy one) if you want a better view of what he did.
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