| caption: |
expedition in the Tangkhul area |
| text: |
There were lepers here. The compounder found one at the first dispensary. He was a young man, a buck in his twenties. Already the disease showed a little in his face, a thickening here, a coarse lumpiness at the lips. We were still talking to him when the crowd drew back, and through the (23) gap came hobbling a woman with a child of eight or so at her skirts. |
| text: |
She too was a leper. Crude soles were tied to her feet with string; the sores had developed there, and she could not walk barefoot. Even shod, she shuffled painfully. The little boy turned round, hugging his mother and laughing up at her, and we saw, in the sharp sunlight, the first patches of leprosy on his back. We sent them away. She would not go to the leper asylum at Kangpokpi; and there was nothing that we could do. |
