Inside the Land of the Living Dead

Adeola Akinremi, on a voyage of discovery, visited Uzuakoli Lepers’ Colony located a few miles away from Umuahia, the Abia State capital. He reports on the ruins of what was once a vibrant leprosy research centre in West Africa, the sorrow of the lepers and the pains of their caregivers

I was still in bed when I heard a knock on my door. It was the taxi driver. I pleaded with him to wait. It was 6.30 am.  A few minutes later I followed him downstairs.

He showed where he had parked within the hotel premises. We had a quick conversation about the journey. The time it would take, the cost and the challenges of the road journey.  We agreed.  Adventure followed adventure.

A few minutes after leaving the hotel, the car started to jerk seriously. I chuckled.  Then, I muttered a few words to myself trying to understand what it was. I noticed my driver trying to reason with himself too. We did not talk to each other. I was afraid. He was afraid too.  But I did not worry too much about it. By this time, the image of Uzuakoli had formed in my head from past information that set me on this voyage of discovery.  I cast a glance at the driver once more and I saw him coercing the car to work using the gear freely from one to five. We would reverse and we would move forward. We did this many times until we arrived at Uzuakoli Lepers’ Colony.  For our single journey, the car rumbled through villages with brick houses surrounded by tall trees and tucked away inside what appears like a forest. But my driver, Uche told me they are not forests, “but just the way our villages are.”

At exactly 9 am, the car pulled to a stop in front of the entrance gate of the colony. We read the big signboard to be sure we were in the right place. The signpost reads: Uzuakoli Lepers’ Colony. There was nothing more. With the driver, I quickly found my way inside the colony. The roads inside were bordered by tall trees suggesting a colony that was well planned before its present ruin. The roads were narrow such that the bordering trees could lurch against each other whenever there are thunderstorms from a heavy rainfall.  I saw old-fashioned colonial bungalows with good driveways too as we drove through the colony that Friday morning. Surprisingly, no one stopped the car for a check until we arrived at the hospital where the few lepers in the colony are abandoned to fate.

Once inside the colony, I went straight away to the medical department, where the patient records generated, used and stored.  I met four nurses engaged in idle conversations in the local dialect. My driver later told me the conversation was about young girls in the city. I asked the nurses for information about the colony, but they declined in choruses. “No, we can’t do that,” one said.  “Our boss who knows the history has travelled,” another volunteered.
Then, one of them started to laugh.  “There is nothing to be frightened about,” I told them.  “I am here to help.”
By now, inside me, fear was mingling with hope: the thought of not being able to do my assignment and the receding hope from the woman that had laughed.

Soon, a short nurse with a small nose with tiny beads of perspiration like pimples all over her face volunteered to talk. She said: “Uzuakoli Leprosy Centre was established in 1932 by the Methodist Church. At that time, leprosy was incurable and greatly feared. Sufferers were usually taken into the bush and abandoned. By the 1950s the Leprosy Centre had become one of the biggest in West Africa, with an internationally reputed research centre, which was involved in developing the drug Dapsone, but today the leprosy centre is in a sad state with a rundown hospital.

“It has been 12 years since we had electricity and we have not opened the kitchen to cook for the inmates in the last eight years. There is no running water too.  When we go down there to see the inmates in their wards, you will understand the real meaning of abandonment.  Now, they cook by themselves using firewood.”
As she continued, I turned around to see the colony again. It was decrepit with decayed buildings centered on a gigantic, but crumbling Methodist Church that once offered spiritual cleansing to the inmates and served as a place of hope as indicated on the wall of the church. All that is now gone.

The  colony stretches across a valley a few miles beyond the town, its extensive land covering some substantial square hectares.
The nurse who had volunteered the information continued: “There is no government presence here. Our main source of support comes from the outside. The German Leprosy Relief Association gives a little grant to keep body and soul together for the inmates, but as you can see, the impact is not there.”

Indeed, the colony has suffered years of neglect. Its beauty, its sweetness and her resourcefulness have all disappeared. What remains of the furniture in the medical department are carcasses. The seams of the cushion have become frayed and are falling apart. The whole environment appeared like a place that has been hit once by drought.
The patients’ records in the medical departments have had their days with termites, just as those keeping them have grown weary for lack of welfare.

A nurse said: “We are working here as if we are not in the government records. The Ministry of Health that has supervisory function over this colony shirks that responsibility. We don’t get any support and our salaries are delayed or in most cases unpaid for some months. I’m sure they don’t believe this place exists anymore. The government no longer looks after us as workers here despite the hazards we are exposed to. I can tell you nobody wants to work here anymore. The patients are completely abandoned by the government. Drugs and food are not supplied to Uzuakoli.  Now the patients here suffer in silence awaiting burial.”
Near the medical centre are male and female inmate wards. They had shutters, but no windows. There are no mosquito nettings which means inmates are exposed to malaria in addition to the disease that brought them there in the first place. The wards are dark both day and night for lack of electricity for over 12 years.

In the female ward, an 80-year-old inmate lay on the bed sweating and groaning. A fetid smell oozed from her body racked by considerable pain. “She has been in that position for many years. She is an abandoned inmate. We cannot even trace her family. We talk to her only by using sign language. She is sick of pain and the struggle for existence,” said one of the nurses at the colony.
In the same ward, another inmate, Rose Nweke from Lokpanta, in Abia State, has been in the hospital for one and half years. Her swollen leg emitted a bad smell too, but she still managed to walk without support unlike the 80-year-old inmate. A fair-complexioned lady in her mid-thirties, she said: “I came to the colony almost two years ago and I have had to do it all by myself. We suffer many things here that make life not worth living anymore. As a leper, I would always need assistance to get around, but I can tell you I have had none. We live in torment everyday.”
The story was the same in the male ward. The inmates were sorrowful. Just like the biblical Job, one of them, Ime Esong, an amputee who moves around with the aid of a rickety wheelchair, said: “I can no longer rejoice, my hope has disappeared; I have come here to die.”

Ime Esong arrived in Uzuakoli in October 2012, from Cross River State. He said: “Since my leg was amputated, there has been no help around here. Where we stay here is like a goat house and the mosquito is our president here. There is no light, no good toilet and I am wondering how the federal government can feed millions of prisoners while lepers have no help coming their way. We are dying of hunger here. Government should help us before we die here. Leprosy can affect just anyone; we deserved to be cared for.”

When asked about his family, he intoned: “I am an abandoned leper looking up to God only. Just as nobody likes to be sick, nobody likes sick people too and if you are a leper, your case is worse. I have been like this for more than 20 years.”
Anthony Elijah, a 22-year-old leper sat on the edge of his bed. He looked weak and tired. He was abnormally thin with hollow cheeks, as if suffering from other diseases other than leprosy, but Elijah quipped: “I go all day on an empty stomach and here there is no one to ask for alms, even if I am a beggar.”

Elijah has a word for the authorities: “If you fail to help us, your conscience is dead. We have committed no offence; we are just sick people. When the missionaries were here, they helped the lepers, but now government has turned a deaf ear to our cries.”
Halfway down the male ward, Emeka Ikpe a 32-year-old leper sat with his numb and deformed hands, he was seen scribbling something on the paper. A nurse told THISDAY he is the most admired inmate because of his smartness and eloquence. “He speaks impeccable English language,” she said.
Ikpe became an inmate in Uzuakoli in 2009. He recounted his experience: “The problem started when I was just a10-year-old boy growing up in Lagos. It started as a sore and we didn’t detect it on time. My parents tried to find out what it was but they couldn’t because in Lagos there is nothing like leprosy. The hospitals they took me to couldn’t detect what it was before it developed to this state.”

Ikpe is also an amputee just like some other inmates. “On getting to this place, I started taking multi-drug therapy (MDT) to take care of the symptoms and at some point, I had to go to Abakaliki to amputate the leg because this right leg had become useless and had a great stench,” he said.

He continued: “I came to Uzuakoli on February 11, 2009. I managed the sickness to get through secondary school in Lagos. I refused to collect my certificate because life had become short and brutish for me. I thought I was going to die. I rushed back to my village first before I came here. The case became so serious to the extent I was brought to this place on a stretcher. By then, my right leg had become so bad that I could no longer use it and that was why I got it cut off.”
Before leprosy struck him, Ikpe wanted to become a lawyer, advocating for the rights of the less privileged. He said: “I wanted to be a lawyer because I was looking forward to the day I would study law in a university, go to law school and be called to the bar before I contacted leprosy.”

Though his dream may have hit the rocks, Ikpe added: “I am now a song writer like Harcourt Whyte, a leper who was here and became the writer of hymns they sing in many churches today.
“I was in that dilapidated building writing some songs, when you arrived.  I have written over 15 songs in this colony and I seek support from Nigerians to live this dream to the fullest. If this place has been what it was in the past, why would I be murmuring or having a headache or thinking about what to do in life? Somebody could have volunteered to assist me since I cannot go the studio and I would call the rest of my colleagues together the way the late Harcourt Whyte used to do in those days. We will assemble ourselves and give God the glory, sing praises and worship.”

Truly, Ikpe is a songwriter. With his twisted fingers he managed to hold the pen and he wrote some words down as proof. He later showed to this reporter a collection of his songs. From one titled: Devil Struck Me to Be against My God, he wrote, ‘If I am vanishing and fading away; my soul will never be too weak to sing worship to the Lord. Even though my bones and muscles are going weak to clap and dance to the Lord; my soul and spirit will twist together to worship and adore Jehovah.’
The World Health Organisation defines leprosy as a disease that is passed from person to person by droplets from the nose and mouth of untreated patients with the severe disease. However it’s not highly infectious.

According to Leprosy Mission Nigeria, which is run by a UK-based charity, over 90 per cent of people affected by leprosy live in developing countries where resources are scarce.
Capable of causing disability and even blindness if untreated by attacking the nerves under the skin, leading to loss of feeling, paralysis and unfelt injury of the hands, feet and face, WHO adds that the official figures show that almost 182,000 people, mainly in Asia and Africa, were affected by leprosy at the beginning of 2012, with approximately 219,000 new cases reported in 2011.

Among other challenges, leprosy victims still face legal barriers to travel, education, and employment. In some cases, discrimination makes it impossible for them to marry and raise a family. The International Bar Association recently launched an international campaign to get rid of these unfair laws against leprosy victims. For instance, in the United States, rules still require all incoming immigrants and refugees to be screened for Hansen’s disease, another term for leprosy. Taiwan imposes a leprosy check on all would-be residents. And it was only in June 2012 that the UK Border Agency confirmed that leprosy was not valid grounds for refusing a visa.

And because leprosy is no longer a massive public health problem, governments are becoming very complacent, cutting budgets and training for local health workers.