Excursion

When we first arrived at the Hansen's museum for the first time, I couldn't help but to admire how pretty the grounds were. All of the landscaping was beautiful with all of the live oaks, ponds, and bushes. Once we entered the museum, I was a little confused with all of the memorabilia. I was seeing armadillos, vintage scooters, and a Chinese New Year costume. All I kept thinking was "what do any of these things have to do with Leprosy?" Thankfully, our tour guide was very informative and explained it all to us. It turns out that approximately 80% of armadillos have leprosy and can transmit it to immunocompromised humans. The scooter and Chinese New Year costume were displayed to show what the patients, who were not allowed to leave facilities, did for fun. Back then, they believed that leprosy was very contagious. So, when patients were taken care of at this place, they spent the remainder of their lives there. I will say that I was a bit surprised at just how nice everything was for the patients. I assumed that our tour guide was going to explain to us the abuse the patients endured or something. But, it turns out they were taken good care of!

I enjoyed looking at all of the old artifacts within this museum. They displayed old wheel chairs, assistive devices, and policies and procedures from 1946. The policies and procedure book from 1946 was my favorite thing to look at. Seeing how they were required to do certain things back then just blows my mind!

After visiting the Hansen's Museum, we traveled to the Whitney Plantation for a guided tour. I was expecting to visit a huge extravagant plantation house; I kept comparing it to the house that was in Django Unchained. However, when we finally made it to the house, it was not exactly what I was expecting. However, this is because the house has been preserved to look exactly how it did in the 19th century. Nevertheless, the house was still extremely interesting and I enjoyed touring it. 

Besides the house, we also toured several monuments, a church, and the slave quarters. One of the slave quarters was original and we were able to tour it which was very neat. When I was walking through it, I noticed the walls and floors being paper thin. In fact, the slats of wood making up the walls had spaces in between them. There were two beds in one hut, even though around 10 slaves shared a hut. I keep calling it a hut because I feel that they do not meet the qualifications to be called houses.

Overall, the tour at the Whitney Plantation was very informative. I learned a lot about  what a slave was expected to do, how they lived, and why things were the way they were on the plantation. I would definitely recommend my family and other to visit museums such as these, for they offer much information!