Trudi Sanderson was born in 1926 and trained as a nurse in her early twenties, spending a year in Czechoslovakia with the Red Cross in 1948. She was in Lambarene with Dr Albert Schweitzer for two 2–year periods in the 1950s, during which time she built and administered the leper village. She left in 1958 and came to England. During her time in Lambarene she had daily contact with Schweitzer and in 1955 was with him on a three-week sea journey to Europe.