DESPITE their physical deformities, members of the leper community that once stayed in Pulau Jerejak before their relocation to Sungai Buloh lived like people in the outside world.
Fond Memories of Leper Colony
The Star Online Newspaper - Thursday December 29, 2005
They received visitors and also went on boat rides to visit relatives and friends in other states for short periods before returning “home”.
Retired pastor Yue Fook Cheong, 68, from the Burmah Road Gospel Hall, said the island’s residents dressed normally and did not hide their deformities.
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IN PRAYER: Some of the patients at the leper colony attending an open-air service conducted by a Christian group from Penang island in the 1960’s. |
“Although we never shook hands, we shared the food they cooked and fruits they grew on the island,” said Yue, who visited the leprosarium every Tuesday in the 1960s with another pastor Yeoh Khiam Heong and, sometimes, S.S. Adams, an Australian missionary.
There, together with the Christian islanders, they prayed, sang, preached and visited the sick at the clinic as part of the work under the Brethren Assembly. On Sundays, the Christian islanders held their own worship sessions.
“During Christmas, they would be very happy when we brought them gifts collected from church members in Penang,” Yue said.
Even after the community’s relocation to Sungai Buloh in Selangor, Yue said, they kept in touch and some of them still sent gifts for occasions like children's weddings and births.
At Pulau Jerejak, babies born to leper couples would be taken off the isle to prevent them from getting infected while coffins were brought in by boat if there were deaths.
Bible teacher Ung Kim Cheng, 68, remembers being part of a visiting group that hired a rowboat and rang a bell on a tree to call the Christians when they reached the isle.
One sight which has left an indelible mark in Ung's mind was that of a leper with stubs for fingers playing the hymn When the Trumpet of the Lord Shall Sound on the trumpet.
Today, all that is left of the leprosarium on the west coast of Pulau Jerejak are several derelict houses defaced by graffiti, some renovated for re-use over the years and abandoned again.
Near to the former leprosarium is the Jerejak Resort & Spa that opened last year.
Neither Yue nor Ung have been to the isle after the leprosarium, along with the tuberculosis hospital and quarantine station were closed when Pulau Jerejak was turned into a restricted area in 1969 for the rehabilitation of criminals.