Itu Leper Colony, Calabar, Nigeria, ca. 1930-1940

Tinted lantern slide showing two patients in Itu Leper Colony. The men sit in a shelter and seem to hold wooden tools. The colony was founded by the Calabar Mission after a leper visited the mission general hospital and dispensary at Itu in 1926. Spreading the news that he had been offered help by a Dr Andrew Buchanan Macdonald, sufferers came for help, first camping on a sandbank in the Cross River. After a flood, land was leased from an Ibu chief and the colony began to be built by the mission, with a hospital, housing, treatment rooms, amenities, a church, a school and leisure facilities. There was also a home farm, and industries were set up in order that the colony could be self-supporting. Dr and Mrs Macdonald were to move from the general hospital to devote themselves to work amongst people suffering from leprosy. In recognition of this work, Dr Macdonald became a Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (M.B.E) in 1934. This slide comes from a set on mission, culture and industry in Calabar, southeast Nigeria generated by the Church of Scotland and the United Free Church of Scotland (which was incorporated with the Church of Scotland in 1929.)