It's been a week since I arrived at Sorokdo, which translates literally to "Little Deer Island." The reason for the name is the shape of the island, which resembles an animal of some kind if one looks at the map. But it does happen to be inhabited by quite a few deer including, reportedly, some albino deer as well as wild boar.
It's a very interesting place to be. The volunteers are mostly around my age, and it's a great experience to be working as part of a team of Korean young people. We are "individual volunteers" who stay for several weeks at a time but there are also "group volunteers" which come to the island and stay for a shorter period of time. Among the other volunteers are some Christian missionaries who do leprosy volunteering projects in China as well.
The schedule is from 5:00 AM to 5:00 PM. We wake up early, and go to the hospital (really an assisted care facility) where we wake the residents to change their diapers and get their breakfast ready. Breakfast is usually finished by 6:30 and then we eat, and rest until 9:00 AM. Then we go back and help them wash their faces and hands, and before long change diapers again and get ready for lunch. In the afternoon we escort them to physical therapy and Karaoke, and take them for walks in the park or visit with them.
Sorokdo Island is basically a vestige of Japanese colonialism. The entire island is a state-owned leprosy hospital. About 550 residents currently reside here, though the island once held 6000. Most live in the villages, but if they can no longer manage to live by themselves in the village they are moved into the old folks ward in the hospital, which is where the volunteers come in. The volunteers also help out in the village with regular activities such as housework and cooking, cleaning, gardening, but i haven't been able to visit there as a volunteer because we are needed in the wards right now.
The patients in the wards range from 70 to 100 years old. Many of them are blind. Some are missing both legs. It's interesting to see how they get along, as different parts of their body fail them. They all have very distinct personalities as well. There is one guy we call "grandfather pervert" is a double-leg amputee with half-body paralysis. He asks pretty young lady volunteers to help him with something and then grabs their arm. We try to make sure that only the men have to change his diaper.
In our ward there are about 35 patients, with more women than men. Mostly I am responsible for eight men in the men's room, but I make rounds and visit with all the elders. Some have lost most of their social skills and can't really communicate. Some are quite lucid but they have no motor skills. Some don't have any appetite but can speak and interact quite well. One guy can barely move at all, I think he's suffering some sort of generalized paralysis which may be going untreated, but he always eats his entire meal. There is one guy in our ward, Jeong Gye-sik haraboji, who has all his wits about him, he can see well and speak very clearly but he has lost most of his fingers and both legs. He said he lost both legs to frostbite one night after a bout of heavy drinking when he was living in the village. He's 70 years old and he has a friend who can walk and do most things by himself except speak. So they get around pretty well between the two of them. Jeong Gye-sik is like the boss in the ward, he knows what time everything needs to be done and exactly how it has to be done, so I always ask him if I have a question. His nose is collapsed and his eyelids droop low giving him a glazed over expression but he's quite lucid and detail-oriented.
I've had some good conversations with some grandmothers. One lived with an American Soldier in Pusan when she was in her 20s, probably during or before the Korean war. Then she caught leprosy when she was 30 and moved to Sorokdo. She can't speak very much Korean or English, but she understands everything in English and Korean and her accent is very clear when she does speak English. There is also a grandmother who they call "Miguk Halmoni" who is reportedly born of an American father. I had trouble figuring out how that could be since she was born before the war and it would have to be an American missionary or perhaps a businessman of some sort. She seems to understand English but she doesn't speak at all so it's hard to know anything about her past.
One grandmother told me that she knew a lot of Japanese people before the war and she thought the Japanese are very warm-hearted people. She's blind and has her legs amputated. It was nice to hear such a sincere sentiment from a grandmother on an island that is strongly associated with the worst abuses of Japanese colonialism.
There is a volunteer here who has been working for three years. We call him "uncle," he is a lay buddhist with a shaved head and wears monk's clothes. He insists he is not a monk but has been wandering around as kind of a layman-monk for some 30 years. Before he was here he worked in a Buddhist Hospice for the elderly and another leprosy village. He also spent several years in a Buddhist temple. He's an interesting old guy, 50 years old, likes to drink and take walks in the forest. He showed me all the woodland paths on the island. After breakfast one morning we went for a walk and spotted 15 deer. Some of them are pretty big too, with 2-foot antlers.
As time goes on, the government will have to find something to do with this island. The villages are slowly emptying as people pass away or move away if they have children who can afford to support them elsewhere. There is a lot I could write about the history of this island. Many of the residents were estranged from their families due to government insistence on quarantine. Many of them performed a lot of forced labor. The oldest man in my ward worked on the island during the Japanese occupation and did a lot of labor during that time. Now he is blind but he can still walk fine. But he has a kind of nervous disorder where he is always mumbling and grunting and fidgeting. But he can communicate simple things like if he's hungry or needs to go to the bathroom. He doesn't wear a diaper and can use the toilet by himself.
It's almost time to go back to work. I will leave it at that for now. My friend Siyu is scheduled to visit this afternoon, I hope he doesn't miss his bus from Seoul.
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