Today began badly. We all had a restless night with the children taking it in turns to wake up and cry. I was worried about Rosa’s baby too and kept dreaming that gangs of people were setting on me and beating me up and killing Mungo.

At about 5.30 the kids woke in the next room and at 6.30 the alarm went off for me to go and get bread. By the time I’d got back (15 escudos for 20 rolls) Christian had shat on the bathroom floor and the kettle wasn’t on and nobody was up.

I got the kids breakfasted and cleaned up a bit and then had a row with Grant because he complained he had no handkerchiefs

At that point the Tepanos came to pick me up.

We were going on a trip to the campo

I checked with Rosa that the baby was a bit better and then went out with Mungo, by then a bit sleepy. I jumped up on the back of the lorry and literally cooled down as we trundled out to the country. Maria’s mother, Mamaflora sat next to me and his brother Santiago opposite.

Mamaflora became a good friend, always calm and wise.

A young boy called Sergio who I haven’t quite placed yet was there too. They were all awfully sweet to me. Mamaflora gave me a cardigan to wrap Mungo in, who cooed himself to sleep and she told me what all the beaches were called as we passed them. When Mungo sneezed I explained about the English tradition of saying “Bless you” to stop the devil getting in and they laughed and asked if we had many devils in our house. I said no and asked if there were lots here and Santiago said there used to be lots before 1968 but now not so many. And we joked about Mungo being Tatane Matamomoke – devil with the blue eyes.

I was amazed throughout the day at the patience of the men with Mungo. Santiago played with him for ages and Sergio had him on his lap on the way home and Daniel always had a word for him. They were far more attentive than the women in fact.

When we got to the beach the boys whom I didn’t really know went off fishing – one had a very neat wet suit and we made a little fire outside the cave I rested in on the way back at the camp with Louisa Pakerati on Labour Day. It was very dirty and I understood a sentence saying so in Pascuence. We peeled and cooked some tarot and Maria gave us all bread and meat with a bit of egg

Mamaflora and Maria then went off to look for shells – Mamaflora for little black ones and Maria for shiny mottled ones. She counted hers afterwards – 150 there were.

Maria (Tepano who was my student and married to Daniel) brought her lessons with her and her English book and checked things with us from time to time. Anna and I went for a short walk together and I learnt a few interesting things about the tourist side of the household. Daniel charges 250 (escudos) a day and 150 for outings. Anna gave some clothes away and sold an outfit for 500 to the maid who, according to her , has a pretty rough life. She is not often given lifts in the truck and works very hard but had a tougher time before with another employer. There is a certain amount of squabbling going on over some shirts which Anna gave to both of them[?] The maid is called Loretta and is Chilean.

When the boys came back they brought a huge sack of fish – all sorts, yellow, grey and some were chopped up and put on to boil. The intestines were roasted and I was offered a bit of one which I didn’t like too much. Mungo slept while we ate and just woke in time to gobble down a bit of fish and watermelon.

Then we drove on to another beach with very blue water. The boys went off again, with Daniel this time and the females and Santiago hung around the truck. I had quite an interesting conversation with Flora Leontina Fati sister of Jose Fati who works at the co-operativa. She has a lot of relatives in Tahiti and wants us to take letters to them when we go back. She writes to them in Tahitian because they no longer speak Pascuence. She began teaching me a song too and I’m going to see her on Monday I have a feeling that the relationship of Maria to her mother was not too good. Flora stopped talking to me when Maria came over.

After the second fishing trip we drove to the volcano which was amazing – quite different from the other one., Rano Kau.

There were statues on the outer slope with cows and calves grazing amongst them. The volcano is unambiguous in its shape – sheer sides and a huge crater. We climbed up – me with the Mung and refusing offers of help from Santiago – and then the most unexpected sight met us – this great peaceful lake with reeds growing in it. I’d forgotten how peaceful a lake could be. There were cows there too and it looked very verdant and rich. The quarries lie on one side of the volcano only and you can see half carved statues and statues hardly formed at all, and some half way down the side of the volcano. Some had a sort of intimate look – those still in their matrices with a shelf of rock above them.

We climbed right to the top of the crater wall and looked over down the side which was quite sheer and made me feel very nervous with Mungo wriggling in my arms. I was full of wonder at the whole weird scene – on the one side a sheer drop and on the other, way below, this reedy lake and a group of cows

We climbed around with Santiago holding my hand anxiously from time to time and finally over the top and back to the truck. We drove off and picked up the two’jovenes’ (young boys) on the way and Daniel rattled away in Pascuence all the way home. I was dropped off with a couple of fish at about four o’clock.

I washed some hankies. The frig is full of meat from Luis and the statue is finished. He’s out tonight, supposed to be visiting his mother but Rosa says he’s lying because he’s gone to a fiesta at Milarosa’s house. Apparently Milarosa has two children – both grown up, and Maria/Suzy has four. One lives with Elvira by the port and one with Milarosa. All four are girls. It’s curious the way people won’t admit to all their children.

Friday May 12th 1972

Didn’t manage to write anything yesterday for no very good reason. We were busy though. After getting the bread and dealing with the kids we went down to the church via the Paoas where I handed in the clothes we had borrowed – and some biscuits. I think it is almosr obligatory to take things when we visit people. We must go on doing it. They still seemed a bit strained.. I met them at the airport too – sitting on the little wall by the altar in a row.

I spent a couple of hours in the morning organizing Grant’s cards in the church and then it came on to pour with rain and Mungo was tired so we both had a sleep in the padre’s spare room bed. His house is really crawling with little wood boring insects who leave piles of dust everywhere.

I came on home afterwards with Mungo and had a dreary sort of soup for lunch and wrote to Mum while waiting for the plane which was very late indeed – about 5.30. We saw off little Anna, the New Zealand tourist from the Tepanos. Maria was huddled in the truck with a stomach ache. Milarosa was at the airport. She called to see Rosa yesterday with a little boy who I think is hers.

A box came from Carlos full of fruit with two bottles of Pisco and some antiseptic from the Unctad couple who must have met Carlo in Santiago. No letter or anything so we don’t know when they’ll be back.

We had quite a jolly supper which I served not giving myself any “a la Chilena” but then I had some meat afterwards. There was Pisco and the lights went out so we ate and drank by candlelight. Luis’s statue is varnished black now

Afterwards Grant, Luis and I set off for the post office – Luis maintaining he was just coming for the walk and then slipping off to a fiesta somewhere half way down the road.’ It was very windy and there were lots of people at Alvarez buying cartons of eggs and newspapers as usual. But there was no ice cream this week.

I got two letters from Mum and a birthday card for Mungo. We went on down to the hotel to celebrate and bought a bottle of wine and were joined by Tula and co who drank most of it and wandered off, rather to my annoyance. They are an empty little bunch. On the way home we met Sergio ( not sure who this is now but not Sergio the schoolteacher) and his aunt and two little cousins He was very drunk and asked me to buy apples for his cousins which we did and then for five escudos to buy a little egg for himself which we didn’t, thinking it had gone far enough. He kept mauling me and staggering about.

Luis arrived home a little after we did and Grant and he set to finishing the Pisco and both got to bed about 1.30 pretty drunk. I’d left them to it a while before and lay in bed listening to creaky old Luis singing drunken Tahitian songs with his guitar.

This morning the place had a very ‘morning after the night before’ appearance with the floor covered in cigarette ends and no washing up done. As usual we got the kids breakfasted. Grant has started instituting a few rules like no”Da me” [give me} but “Per favor” [Please]. This was such a success that he told them not to shit about the place either but in the bathroom. Unfortunately this wasn’t such a good idea because as soon as Rosa came out and found Christian shitting nicely on the lavatory she said “Why can’t you go and shit outside?” So one really can’t win.

Chico is a nice, basically very intelligent child. I wish we had more ways of keeping his curiosity and interest in pictures and music alive. He’s really hungry for things to play with. The other day he retrieved my [empty] Norinyl [birth control pilll) card from the dustbin and played with it for the whole day cherishing it and keeping it in the bottom of the disused frig. I felt a bit outraged at first and felt it to be oddly immodest but – what the hell.

We went down to town at 11ish. I went to the ECA and then to the hospital to check that Mungo’s BCG thing was all right since it looked as if it was eating up his arm. It was OK in fact. There were lots of people milling about there. I saw Nora for only a minute or two. Spoke to a woman who had lost a baby. Said, I hope correctly, that it was sad but there was time for plenty more,

I hadn’t had any miscarriages then or I certainly wouldn’t have said that.

After that I joined Grant at the school where he was talking to Sergio and a tourist. Mungo wanted to be held by both Sergio and the tourist who were touched by his affectionateness but unwilling to be sullied by his grubby feet. Afterwards I managed to get the last batch of cards filed at the padre’s house and we came home because Grant was feeling very sick. I suspect the kidney he ate last night wasn’t too good. He took to his bed and was sick in the afternoon.

It has become very cold and I long for an electric fire.

I talked to Rosa a bit tonight. She says she only went to school for 7 years because school was very expensive then in Chile. She doesn’t want any more children because she had such a bad time with the last one. It’s now quite a joke that Luis “goes to see his mother” in the evenings. Rosa says “Mentira!” [lies]

I cooked fish tonight. A nice change from boiled food.

Spent an hour or two with Chico and Fifi (Rosa’s daughter from next door) tonight going through “Developmental Psychology Today” because it is full of pictures.

Because the university forwarded everything that arrived there for Grant we often had magazines Like Psychology Today to which he subscribed then.

He (Chico) was enraptured and forgot about his warm milk. I was pleased to see Fifi drank hers. She wasn’t going to until I said it didn’t matter whether she did or not. Her mother forces her to eat a bit too much. Mungo has been totally off food today. I gave him some herb tea – was the only thing he’d take.

Funny how quite unconsciously we started imposing our cultural assumptions on the kids when their parents were gone. Please and thank you. Use the toilet! Really it wasn’t our business.

Saturday, 13th May

I felt really ill today with an awful sore throat. It was drizzling when I went out to get the bread and lots of people were up because of the plane. Tula went off apparently. The kids were naughty at breakfast and did things with chewing gum. Grant was late back from the plane because he went down to Alvarez to change some travellers’ cheques and the bank manager walked in.

Money matters were complex for us. The exchange rate at the bank was unrealistically low because of inflation in continental Chile. Our day to day funding from the Australian National University went through the bank but other arrangements were made for exchanging supplementary funds in dollars or travellers cheques. Foreign currency was much in demand.

Last night was punctuated by disturbances. First Luis left the gate open and horses got in and and ate the maize and then dogs chased the horses so their hoofs pounded by the house. Next Mungo woke and bellowed inconsolably for ten minutes or so. At about 2.30am Luis came in and clattered about with food and then at 6am Mungo woke up.

After Grant returned [with the bread] and we had eggs for breakfast we set off to get Jose Fati’s foot size to ask for some boots from England for him. He was out on his verandah and Grant drew round his foot. He said he couldn’t ask us in because his son was ill in bed. I didn’t believe this – not quite sure why. Anyway it came on to rain and we hung around on this wretched verandah and every time Mungo put his bare foot down Jose said to beware of the humidity of the soil. He told Grant a lot of nonsense about the old days and said his brother went to Tahiti. He’s Mamaflors’s brother. He has a swing and ducks in his garden.

I’m not sure why Jose Fati’s information was dismissed as “a lot of nonsense” because he became a very important source of historical and traditional information later. Perhaps he was testing Grant’s ability to judge information. That seems a bit devious since we were getting boots for him, but islanders sometimes had a way of teasing us!

By the time we got away and down to the church I felt really terrible and crawled into the spare bed at the padre’s house. It felt marvellously soft and comfy. I had a short nap and then Grant put the Mung in with me. By the time he slept I no longer wanted to but decided to go home and fetch a nappy for the Mung before going to Maria’s for today’s lesson. I left him in the padre’s bed and set off down the short cut. I must have taken a wrong turning because I landed on a road I couldn’t recognize at all. I was just puzzling it out when a man and two little boys came down the path, obviously strangers. They were ever so English as it turned out. He was a doctor in the Gilbert and Ellice islands for two years and was on his way home with his wife and two little boys.. He explained where we were and it seemed I’d done a full circle and was back at the church again.

I decided not to go home then but to go on up to Maria’s which I did. I told her about the doctor’s family and that they wanted a trip around. She was pretty busy today with three tourists – the Basque with the fastidious manner, a rather nice Frenchman and a Chilean I didn’t see.

She gave Carlotta a lot of instructions and then whispered to me that we should go down to her mother, Mamaflora’s house for the lesson and get out of the way. I think she was keen to get me out of sight too because I looked a bit grubby and sweaty, not having managed to get home. So we went and Mamaflora made us tea whilst I gave a dictation to Maria which was an incredible sight. She has no idea of spelling yet, at all and had simply written what I said as phonetically as she could. I’m not sure how to cope with that.

Mamaflora is a sweet lady. An awfully good teacher too. She taught me as we ate tea in the kitchen. Her kitchen didn’t have a fridge or a sink. A hunk of meat hung from a hook on the wall and she washed up in a tin bowl which she placed under a tap. She did, however, have a little washing machine. She has a dog too, with a name. Maria gave it bits of bread now and then. Maria has promised us a kitten in a couple of weeks for Mungo.

Mamaflora also told us an interesting superstition. She said she knew we were coming because she dropped a spoon– a soup spoon is a female coming, a knife is a man and a small spoon means a child.. Maria thought this was a bit silly and seemed contemptuous.. She [Mamaflora] also picked Mungo up and showed him a picture of a stag on the kind of cheap tapestry that people often have here and said “Mira – tatane” (Look – a devil”) sort of jokingly. The devil is certainly ever present as a joke or a threat or whatever. Grant turned up and had a quick tea and then Daniel came to pick us up.

Mamflora seemed disappointed that we weren’t staying longer but I just reconfirmed that I’d come on Monday afternoon which pleased her. I was aware again of the lack of respect or affection from Maria to her mother.

the evening I talked to Rosa a bit more. She said that the present doctor was no good and made her suffer three days during the birth of her second baby . Fifi [her first] was born by caesarian and there was a much better doctor there then. She claimed she was given no pain killer at all for the second baby. She and Luis met at a dance in Santiago “for Pancuence”

The tourist doctor’s wife said I ought to clean up and cover Mungo’s vaccination which is now a great pit in his arm. I have, despite the Chilean doctor saying it’s OK as it is. I put gentian violet on it too because, really, it’s getting to look terrible.

At Piriti our days revolve around Georgina, Carlo and their children, with Georgina’s family always coming through the door or calling us out of it. Beyond the house are the people who feed us, teach us, argue with us, and take Mungo into their arms. This page follows the published diary from 28 March to 9 May 1972. I have kept the names as they appear there, including uncertain spellings. Where two people may share a name, I have left them separate unless the diary makes the connection.

1972

With me, and on the journey here

Julia

That is me: Grant’s wife and Mungo’s mother, arriving with eight nappies, a notebook, imperfect Spanish and more curiosity than domestic skill. I meant to collect plants, child-rearing practices and string figures; the diary became a place to put my exasperations and affections as well.

Grant McCall

My husband, Mungo’s father and the anthropologist whose genealogies, parish records and census cards give us our reason for being on the island. He can explain a statue or sort a family tree while I am wondering what to cook for lunch. We are fond of one another, though our rows and his impatience also have their place in these pages.

Mungo

Our son, eight months old when we set out and one year old by the country expedition. He is my passport into kitchens, queues and conversations, though he also crawls into black dust, protests in church and requires the endless washing of nappies.

Mum

My mother in England, the person to whom I send letters and from whom I am so pleased to receive them. She and Frank send Mungo a birthday telegram, no small excitement on an island where a plane’s arrival is an event.

Frank

With Mum, he sends that unexpected birthday telegram for Mungo. I do not explain his relationship to us in these entries.

Julia’s former boyfriend

Unnamed. Before I met Grant I had hoped to marry this “very suitable” man; when that came to nothing I booked the Morocco journey on which Grant appeared.

Grant’s fellow driver-guide and first tent-mate

The second guide is unnamed, as is the pretty woman who initially shares Grant’s tent. They belong to my account of meeting him at Victoria Station, where I was quite convinced I wanted him and tried to be sensible about it.

Derek Freeman

He sees us off from Canberra and gives Mungo a rattle: a small, rather lovely send-off for such an uncertain expedition.

Bengt Danielson

The Kon-Tiki traveller whom we visit in Tahiti on the way out. He welcomes us in a beautiful open Polynesian house and talks with Grant; he and his wife later send us island luxuries, even a replacement hotplate.

Marie Therese Danielson

Bengt’s wife. She shows me the family albums while the men talk, and their kindness follows us across the sea. The albums include their grown daughter and adopted son, whom the diary does not name.

Pat

A correspondent whose address I briefly lose from my head and whose letter later reaches me. The diary does not establish whether this Pat is the archaeologist Pat McCoy below.

John

Someone for whom Grant makes a tape during a power cut. No further identification is given.

At Piriti, and among Georgina’s family

Georgina Riroroco Tuki

Our flamboyant landlady, who finds us stranded with luggage and a baby and offers part of her family’s house, Piriti. She teaches me the island’s shopping and social rounds, borrows my scent and clothes, throws a party for Chilean generals and secures a lift to Santiago. I am often cross with her and miss her all the same. The Easter Day entry calls the hostess F.; the later articles name Georgina, but do not explicitly explain the initial.

Carlos Mardones, usually Carlo

Georgina’s Chilean husband and our host, capable of butchering a sheep and making splendid bread. With Georgina away he cooks, watches children and grows increasingly tired of it; he also complains about my housekeeping. He later flies to Santiago to find her. His surname and the shorter form of his name occur in the diary.

Coca, or little Georgina

Georgina and Carlo’s daughter, named for her mother. She is about six, comes to the house at weekends, wakes the other children, and sometimes needs taking to her grandmother Luisa.

Little Carlo

The boy named for his father; one of the affectionate, slightly grubby children of the house. Because the journal also calls his father Carlo, the bare name in later entries is not always safe to assign to the boy.

Christian

The youngest of the three children first living at Piriti, still at the T-shirt-and-no-nappy stage. Later he tramples another child’s matchbox car, perhaps less benign than his first appearance.

Victor Sylvester, called Sicto or Sictor

An older boy who lives with Grandma Luisa and arrives at Piriti with Coca after Carlo leaves for Santiago. Georgina does not acknowledge him to us as her son, although he knows who his mother is. He is quite separate from Soledad’s baby Victor.

Fifi

Another grandchild taken in by Mama Luisa. She is at Piriti when I am house hunting and wants me to walk her back to her grandmother’s as darkness falls.

Luisa Tuki, or Mama Luisa

Georgina’s mother, Juan’s wife and grandmother to a great many children. I first mistake her for a woman of ninety; looking back, I correct myself and remember how many children she had borne and how important she became to me. I take Coca to her and later Mungo seeks her out to settle one of our domestic rows. She is not Luisa Ika of Tahai.

Juan Riroroco

Luisa’s husband and Georgina’s father, at whose house Coca and many other children may be found. The diary gives him little stage time of his own.

Maria, whom Soledad calls Suzy or Suzie

Georgina’s sister, pregnant when I meet her, already a mother, and a friend I grow to love. She works at the hotel, offers wine and darkly observes that we might sleep better while Georgina is away. Her names are worth retaining together: there are many other Marias.

Graciela, Maria/Suzy’s daughter

Her mother’s fairish eldest girl, later seen helping with the wash while Carlo makes a cutting remark about Maria. Do not silently join her to Graciela Huki, who appears in another family.

Milarosa, Milagrosa or Mirarosa

A sister of Georgina’s, named with several spellings. She brings us tinned sweet potatoes, sometimes minds Mungo and becomes part of the argument that sends Soledad away. The diary mentions tension between her and Georgina.

Victoria

One of Georgina’s sisters, named in my later notes but given no scene of her own here.

Alviras

Another sister of Georgina’s whose waterfront house we call at; someone there is carving a spirit figure. Her name is recorded only briefly and may be heard imperfectly.

Luis

Georgina’s brother and Rosa’s husband, living next door. He carves a small souvenir moai, has a finger painfully infected by a fish spine, and on one wet day declares himself ill and takes to bed with aspirin.

Rosa

Luis’s wife, our quiet neighbour with a baby and a meagre house. She comes over with bananas, eats tiny meals, washes and cooks, and sometimes leaves me minding the children; my irritation with her is one of those reactions I cannot quite justify to myself.

Rosa and Luis’s baby

Unnamed, at times left in a locked bedroom while asleep. I offer medicine during a feverish spell, regret the presumption at once, and later learn the child is all right.

Veronica

Georgina’s sister-in-law, young, lively and often on the move. She bounds up to kiss Mungo, tells me difficult things about a child she lost, and joins our cinema conversations. Looking back, I wonder how life turned out for her.

Soledad, called Sole and at one point Florencia

A young woman who comes in and out of Piriti, dances beautifully, guides me on walks and has a baby, Victor. She first says she is Georgina’s daughter; when I later check Grant’s genealogy, I doubt that claim. She sometimes leaves Victor with others and arouses Carlo’s anger, but I see her tired, precarious life too. Later a different Florencia appears beside her, which makes the two names hard to untangle.

Victor, Soledad’s baby

Three months old at our first meeting. He cries when I pick him up, cries through the night when his mother is away, and is later said to have sores after another child drops him. He is not Victor Sylvester.

Florencia from down the road

Named beside Soledad in the May birthday entry and playing guitar with her when Soledad returns. Earlier the diary also uses Florencia for Soledad; these later appearances may refer to a different girl, and the text does not settle it.

Pacomio

The old banana man, arriving with enormous branches rather than a polite shop-sized bunch. I later identify him as the father of the teenage boy brought back from Santiago for burial. He slips cigarettes to friends at the funeral, as Grant observes.

Friends, teachers and hosts

Elena

A neighbour who teaches me two cat’s cradles almost as soon as we arrive, and whose shell costumes I later see at the dance. An excellent beginning for my string-figure mission.

Sergio Rapu

The schoolteacher with fine English whom Grant meets early and often. He receives our books and is spoken of as Rufina’s possible husband; in a later note I add that he became governor.

Alfonso, written Alphonso Rapu in one note

Sergio’s brother. In a later note I say he led an island uprising in 1964; I do not meet him in these pages.

Padre Melchior, also Melchior

The kindly old priest with beard, few teeth and a dusty wooden house where he tells me I may nap. He lets Grant work with church records. Graciela Huki is called his sister; he later leaves for Santiago.

Father Sebastian

The priest from whom Maria Tepano says she learnt some English before asking me to teach her more.

Kiko

A gentle, diffident man despite his importance in island music and church singing. He teaches young people Rapanui culture, befriends me and sometimes lets me bake bread in his wood-fired oven. He remembers American peanut butter; Grant and I later bring him some from Santiago.

Maria Tepano, whose real name Julia later gives as Maria Teau Fati

My English pupil and a generous teacher of Pascuence in return. Her lessons grow into stories of older island life, and she trusts me with an account of the illness that damaged her once remarkable memory. She keeps a very chic tourist house.

Maria Ihe

The sensible woman at the government store who shows me the bill-and-list system when I badly need someone to make it plain. Her surname is “as far as I could hear.”

Maria Hito

Meets me near the harbour, explains when fish may be available and invites me home for a drink. There I meet Anna.

Maria Pakerati

A tall, dark hospital worker with whom I make friends through Mungo. She appears again in the birthday expedition wearing a straw hat.

Maria Leon Hei, also written Maria Leon Hey

Invites us to lunch and later helps put me right about whether the market is open. I forget the middle part of her name when asking the way and walk into a different Maria’s house instead. The lunch is smart and rather formal; Grant’s request for her genealogy makes her wary.

Maria Hei

The name I ask for in error while seeking Maria Leon Hei. It leads us to the kind woman who had helped me at the ECA, apparently another Maria; the journal does not give enough to identify her securely.

Maria Paoa

Invites us to drop in on Sunday. I record the invitation but not a developed portrait.

Giorgio Tepano

The husband of a Tuki woman I meet on the way to church. She asks whether Grant will change dollars, and tells me her father has invited us to lunch. Giorgio himself does not appear in that little exchange.

Giorgio’s wife

A Tuki woman whose own name I fail to catch. She stops me on the way to church to ask about changing dollars, and passes on her father’s lunch invitation.

Maria Ika

Her family hosts Mungo’s first birthday expedition. Luisa Ika is also present there, and the diary does not explain their exact relationship.

Luisa Ika Pakerati, also Luisa Pakerati

Mana Ika’s wife at Tahai, with a vast family, a tourist house and carvings. I spend a day talking with her, sit beside her at mass and later take her insistence that Carlo’s allegedly antique statue is modern with some pleasure. She is a different Luisa from Georgina’s mother.

Mana Ika Nohoe

Luisa Ika’s husband, who drives us out to Tahai and later takes a great company into the country for Mungo’s birthday. He talks of carvings and a secret cave, and contributes to the household debate about how much milk a baby needs.

Alberto, one of Mana and Luisa Ika’s sons

Sent to New York to be brought up, the diary says, but home again after six months; the family album preserves pictures of him by a television. Distinct from the other Albertos below.

Olga

A daughter in the Tahai household, about fourteen by my reckoning. I play cat’s cradle with her, though she knows only the Korean version, and later walk with her on our country outing.

Gabriel

The handsome son on the birthday expedition who likes Mungo and takes us bouncing off in the truck to fetch water.

Patricia

The Chilean girl who has been with the birthday-expedition family for three months and already seems part of it.

Graciela Huki

She gives us tomatoes and, on the expedition, crushes a tablet for a poorly Mungo. Later I call her Melchior’s sister and she points us toward a possible house owned by her father-in-law. I cannot say she is Maria/Suzy’s daughter of the same first name.

Valeria Paoa

Our hostess at a rather stiff family lunch, sister to Rufina and mother of a three-year-old boy. Her mother and other children make shell necklaces in the more lively kitchen.

Valeria’s mother

Unnamed, surprisingly young looking to me, busy threading shell necklaces and caring for a small grandson called Alberto.

Anerica Riroroco

A little girl punching holes in shells for necklaces in Valeria’s kitchen.

Alberto, five-year-old grandson in Valeria’s household

Looked after by Valeria’s mother. Small and withdrawn when I see him, but skilful with a matchbox car and ready to defend it from Christian. This is not Mana Ika’s son or Alberto Edmunds Paoa.

Rufina

Valeria’s sister and the elected Miss Easter Island. The photographs do not make her look happy to me; others say she returned after years on the continent and that her family found her changed. Valeria says love for Sergio Rapu kept her from a trip to Australia.

Margarita Atamu

The small, bustling woman who guides us to Valeria’s and later becomes something like a mother substitute to me. She feeds us sopaipillas, gives brisk instructions about washing and once has the dust scrubbed from my legs before mass. I love her because I feel safe with her.

Petero

Margarita’s husband. They have no children of their own, foster Roberto and later become friends with whom we go riding into the country.

Jim, renamed Roberto

The half-American little boy fostered by Margarita and Petero, about Mungo’s age. I am told a complicated story of his parents’ separation; what is certain on the page is Margarita’s affection and that he becomes Mungo’s playmate.

Roberto’s mother and American father

Unnamed in the diary. Their interrupted plan to marry, his departure with the troops and her journey to Santiago are told to me second-hand; I cannot certify the gossip as their own account.

Jose Fati

The beret-wearing older man at the co-op, whom I later remember as a very good informant of Grant’s.

Maria Atan

An older lady I speak to after mass; her husband is the round-faced old man with a little English and a hat brightened by a pink scarf. The diary does not explicitly say she is the elderly Atan lady who accompanies Mana Ika on the Tahai visit.

Alberto Edmunds Paoa

A man from the hotel whose elegant family house we visit for tea, cake and a much-needed wash for Mungo. He is away working that afternoon, so his mother and sister receive us.

Alberto Edmunds Paoa’s mother and sister

Unnamed hostesses. His mother, reddish-haired and pale, says she has French blood, plays with Mungo and finds him a top to wear.

Carlos Bruner

Someone we call on in the hope of cigars for Grant; he is out, and the diary adds nothing more. Not our host Carlos Mardones.

Carmen Duke

A policeman’s wife I meet at the ECA. She says she learnt Pascuence in a year, an achievement I cannot help admiring while I still struggle to make myself understood.

The waterworks man

Offers us a ride and the use of a government house, if we will tend the generator behind it and, with it, the island’s water supply. We decide that is a little too much responsibility to take on.

The matrona

The hospital matron who sees Mungo, issues his little health book and becomes someone I can visit when I feel low. She plays guitar while telling me island gossip; I realize I do not know her nearly as well as I thought.

N.

An initial in the Easter feast entry for a woman with two half-American children, a boy and a girl, who works at the hospital. The articles do not give enough to match her securely to a later named hospital worker.

P.

An initial for the man whose family gives the Easter earth-oven feast and then invites us to his town house. Grant is offered brandy there. His first name is not supplied in that article.

H.

The initial I give the Easter Day hostess’s husband. Later I name Carlos as our host at Piriti, but do not explain this initial.

J.

An occasionally aggressive child in my Easter Day account. I cannot safely match the initial to one of the children I name later.

Nora

A friend at the airport and later at the funeral, where she takes me to comfort a newly widowed woman. She and the boys make a special detour to drive us home.

Raul

A mourner we meet walking home alone from the teenage boy’s funeral. No further relationship is stated.

Other people I meet, hear about, or try to understand

Adriana

Next door, painstakingly making a shell-and-feather costume when Georgina takes me visiting. I note the five kinds of shells and the ingenious thread made from unravelled flyscreen.

Pedro

The eight-month-old son of the red-haired dressmaker and hotel chambermaid. She also has a daughter of about six, unnamed.

The red-haired dressmaker

An unnamed island woman who speaks English from her years working for the Americans. She cuts Georgina’s dress while we wait, with a tape measure and enviable confidence.

Maria’s sister-in-law

Present when Georgina and I visit Maria/Suzy; the diary does not give her a name or enough to place her in the larger family.

The younger Pakarati

Brings a sheep home for Carlo to butcher; no first name is given.

Joel

A young man I meet on the visiting-and-gossiping round, wearing a band around his head. I learn little else about him.

Tuli

The Frenchman with a pigtail who says he lives here for free. I cannot fit him into the island’s family tree.

“Juan something”

A strikingly good-looking young man whose surname I fail to catch. There are other Juans in these pages; I do not know which, if any, he may be.

Maria and Georgina’s many other relatives

Some greet me with kisses at the airport before I can work out who belongs to whom. I name a few individually above, but cannot identify them all.

Miraflora

Someone I meet at the airport; even in the diary I follow her name with a question mark. The published entry supplies no surer identification.

Ivan

A neighbour who receives the head of Carlo’s spiny fish and pays, it seems, in pisco. Later he brings news that baby Victor is better. The diary gives only his first name.

The Edmunds Rapahango family

Our companions on an outing to Anakena. The diary gives the family name but does not name the individuals in the party.

Veriveri Tuki

Our host for lunch after the horse ride to Rano Kau. We arrive an hour late, filthy and with Mungo smelling dreadful; I think he is a little offended.

Juan Ivan

Provides the horses on which Grant and I trot out to the volcano. No link is made to neighbour Ivan.

Romero

A shopkeeper from the continent with goods brought in on the plane, sometimes comics or ice cream. A grim story from him later receives a correction through police gossip.

Sergio’s English teacher

Unnamed in the diary; her English strikes me as rather poor.

Orlando, written Orland Paoa once

Runs tourist enterprises and would like Grant to lecture to his visitors or join an outing. Grant holds back, knowing favouring one enterprise could cause trouble with others.

The elderly Atan lady

Rides with Mana Ika to collect us for Tahai. The diary does not supply her given name in that account.

Pat McCoy

The archaeologist married to an Easter Island woman, though he is away from the island during these entries. Anna is his sister-in-law. He is not demonstrably the Pat to whom I write.

Anna

Pat McCoy’s sister-in-law, encountered at Maria Hito’s stylish house and later serving lunch at Maria Leon Hei’s. She shows me a letter saying Pat hopes to come in June or July.

Juan Tuki

A three-month-old baby I meet during a visit to a household where we are handed pisco and lemon under the name of water.

Carmen Tuki

A twelve-year-old who insists on carrying my shopping and repeats the Spanish I cannot understand ever more slowly, holding my hand.

Alicia

A little girl supposed to be cleaning, later making music with a scraped cow horn by an unfinished house. When I produce cat’s-cradle string she runs off with it and eventually returns it laughing.

Alicia’s companion

Another little girl at the unfinished house. I forget her name, and neither child knows the string figures I seek beyond the Korean cat’s cradle.

Norida … Pakerati

The child whose long name I catch only at beginning and end. She has four sisters and a brother, walks me part of the way home after mass and teaches me the words for moon and stars.

Marcella

A pleasant young girl with whom I manage a little Spanish while walking home.

The girl next door and her boyfriend

She returns from mass beautifully dressed in silver and white; he gives me a lift, and they recur at the airport. The articles do not name either securely.

The Chilean generals and their party

Fifteen or so airforce visitors at Georgina’s loud, cognac-and-Pepsi party. Two are generals, none named. Their plane gives Georgina the Santiago lift she seeks.

The Chilean student engineer

Unnamed party guest who looks rather scornfully at Georgina’s emotional farewell.

The disappearing geologist

A Chilean university geologist said to have vanished in 1968. Grant hears a theory about the American base, which remains just a theory in the diary.

The Scottish air hostess

Meets me near the church, frustrated by a Spanish-language bargain over a carving but still taken with the island.

Paddy

One of Georgina’s Irish visitors, a distant connection who takes us out for lobster. Carlo expects the pair to be paying tourists, while I later suspect Georgina offered them reciprocal hospitality. The misunderstanding helps sour the household mood.

The other Irish visitor

Paddy’s companion at Piriti. I say one of the pair works for UNESCO in Montevideo, but I do not make clear which one.

Carlo’s former girlfriend and “godmother”

Both unnamed visitors during his irritable stretch without Georgina. The first jokes with him at the hotel; the second calls at the house. I can only guess what they think of me.

The visiting Chilean sociologist and her husband

Unnamed, and hardly favourites of mine during their long conversation with Grant. Mungo’s contribution is to soil the floor in front of them.

The teenage boy brought home for burial

About sixteen, killed in a car crash on the continent. He is unnamed, but his return changes the airport’s bright social ritual into a funeral procession and draws the community to church and cemetery.

The boy’s mother, father and brother

His mother is carried from the church in grief; his father is the banana man Pacomio; his brother is the judge’s secretary. I record their roles but only later supply the father’s name.

The young widow at the cemetery

Her husband died two months before. Nora and I put our arms around her; she plays with Mungo, and I hope to meet her again. A later entry says she has five children and is mother to the plaited girl who knows Alicia.

Tula

A friend of the matrona at her party. Later I hear hostile, contradictory stories about him: an allegation about sexuality and drugs, and his own account of bothering women tourists. I have no way of deciding what is true.

Craig

Another of the matrona’s friends at her party. He has no separate scene in these entries.

The woman with a newborn in a blue shawl

Three days after the birth she says she has plenty of milk and, with two boys and a girl, enough children. Her encounter helps me see how family size is changing.

The mother of two boys at Anakena

Another woman who says two children are what she can educate. I remember the remark when thinking about large families of earlier generations.

The woman who gives Mungo apples and me kisses

Unnamed and called “mad” in the diary with affection. One of the small island encounters that makes me feel a sense of belonging, however provisional.

The New Zealand visitor at Maria Tepano’s

Pleasant enough, but her wish to discuss the island’s needs in front of the Tepanos leaves me uneasy and distracts from our language lesson.

The Chilean wife at Valeria’s

Unnamed woman who takes over making holes in shells from Anerica. The text does not give her family position.

The head of FACH

A smart, bespectacled visitor at Alberto Edmunds Paoa’s house who gives us a lift home. The diary does not name him.

The girl from Papiano’s house

Carrying a bottle of oil, she walks with me along the shortcut after the storm; I manage to lose my way once we part.

Maria Luisa Pakerati Tuki

A woman who invites me to visit “the place” the next morning. The next entry describes our day at Luisa Ika’s in Tahai, so this may be a fuller form of her name, but the journal never spells out the equivalence.

People in stories, books and later notes

Bill Mulloy

One of the Americans with whom Sergio Rapu spent his childhood years. In a later note I credit Bill with important archaeological restorations on the island.

Emily Mulloy

Named with Bill in my account of how Sergio Rapu came to speak English so well.

Percy Edmunds

In my later historical note, the old sheep-ranch manager whose two large families left descendants still influential on the island. He belongs to the background of the people we meet, not to a personal encounter in 1972.

Salvador Allende

The Chilean president whose election the journal gives as the reason the American base closed, leaving behind its generator and other odd domestic relics.

Pinochet

Named in my later note on Sergio Rapu’s eventual governorship, after the diary’s present.

Sir Harry Luke

A historical writer or traveller I invoke while speculating about Easter Island’s future; I do not meet him on the island.

Malcolm Fraser

In a later note I remember an artist’s unkind comparison of the Australian politician to a moai, prompted by the statues’ stony, unreadable faces. He has no part in the island household.

Anne Frank

In the prologue, the diarist whose pages I remember when I say my own notebook became a friend and confidante. I spell her name “Ann Frank” there.

Helen Garner

The diarist I think of when deciding whether to use initials for people in my published notebooks.

Helen Reid

Her observation about women’s modesty comes back to me when Maria Tepano speaks so easily about breasts.

George Eliot

I return to Middlemarch every ten years or so; its steady moral voice puts me right when I am inclined to mope.

Dr Spock

I take his baby-care book to Nora, though I find her busy teaching Spanish instead.

John Wayne

The actor in a film Soledad has seen. She tells me its plot, and I cannot make out a word of it.

This page will grow as the published diary moves on. So far it ends on 9 May 1972.

We went to see the waterman today

With a view to following up his offer of a house to live in.

but he was busy oranizing the water supply which needs electricity to pump it. Then we went on down to the church and I read for a bit whilst Grant worked and Mungo sploshed about in puddles.

Luis (Georgina’s brother) today has announced himself sick and has gone to bed with two aspirin and two more for later. Soledad said, smiling, that baby Victor is sick and has sores on his legs. Apparently a child dropped him.

May 9th Tuesday 1972

Last night I went out to meet Grant at about 5 o’clock. I walked down to the Juzgado [court house] but Grant wasn’t there and hadn’t been there all day. I felt a bit weak and low so thought I’d visit the matrona. I think I got her out of bed. She invited me into a room after running around with an air freshener. The storm the night before had taken its toll cos there was a pool of water on the front room floor. We sat in her room and I told her about Soledad and how rotten I felt not giving her things. She told me Soledad was a bit mad anyway

She said Tula (her friend) was being thrown off the island for homosexuality and drug pushing. She was told by a friend who said “Do you know you have a friend who……” The gossip she hears is certainly vicious. She played the guitar while we talked – I feel I don’t know her at all.

On the way home I met a girl from Papiano’s house who was hurrying along with an oil bottle. She walked with me up the short cut but I got lost after I left her and ended up coming over the fields in the dark which was very difficult.

Today I’ve been quite busy. When I got up this morning Rosa wasn’t up and the kids were romping around being aggressive and difficult. They’d peed on the bathroom floor and thrown banana skins about. I gave them breakfast and cleaned up a bit and then Grant and I set off for the padre’s house. I alphabetized his cards and then went to the ECA where I got talking to Carmen Duke, the wife of a carabiniero [policeman] who claims to have learnt Pascuence in a year. Very few people at the ECA today though I was a bit late. I also bought some cheese at the co-op at 60 escudos a kilo.

When I got home Luis was carving a statue and Rosa had made a chicken stew. It was a bit watery but Mungo ate some. After lunch, at which the children behaved piggishly I wrote to Mum and prepared my lesson for Maria. At about two Rosa came in and said she was going to get camote [sweet potato] for the baby [and would I mind the baby and I explained that I had to go around 2.30.

Anyway she didn’t show up at three and all the doors and other bedrooms were locked so I went over to her house to check. I couldn’t see the baby and was alarmed but apparently the baby was locked in her bedroom asleep.

She came back and then I went to Maria’s. We had a nice time there. Grant joined me around 6. I learnt how to make sopaipillas – a sort of fried bread – and gave my lesson. Maria was a bit unwell. I had a good Pascuence lesson which I taped.

We had meat and tarot for supper and caramelized condensed milk. A lot of boys gathered in the course of the evening to go to the cinema.

Maria told us she used to have a photographic memory (in the real sense of the term) and would tell stories to her friends in the old days but she was very ill when she was pregnant six years ago and had to have several blood transfusions and it affected her memory and her general health. Now she mustn’t get anxious or overworked and needs change. She says she is anaemic.

Over time, the lessons with Maria covered all sorts of olden times stories and practices.

I met Ivan today who says that Victor is better but Rosa’s baby is ill tonight. It has a cold and swollen glands. Before I realized it had swollen glands I gave her a third of a children’s aspirin for it. Now I wish I hadn’t because if it is seriously ill it won’t help and I’ll probably get blamed. And in any case I shouldn’t have given someone else’s baby aspirin under a year old when the instructions on the bottle begin. It was extremely foolish not to say criminal of me and I shall never do it again. But one wants to help so.

The baby of course was perfectly OK but it was a good lesson.

I met Tula today. He says he’s being thrown out for bothering women tourists!

Mmm.

All the kids swarmed in and started gobbling bread. I’m trying to get them to ask before taking things – I don’t know quite why but I feel it gives a sense of order of which there is little enough here. This morning Carlos told the children he was “Going to find mama”

Luisa Pakerati and a son left for Santiago this morning – so did Melchior. We gave collares for the first time. (giving shell necklaces to friends leaving the island was customary)

7.30pm

Just returned from my Emglish/Pascuence lesson at Maria Tepano’s. Her real name is Maria Teau Fati. There was a New Zealand girl there today who put a bit of a strain on the situation, nice though she was. I felt reluctant to discuss the needs and wants of the island in front of the Tepanos, which she wanted to do. My lesson wasn’t as good as last time because of the distractions.

The Tepanos refused to be godparents to Rosa and Luis’s baby because they had too many commitments they said.

When I was learning Pascuence Maria picked up a postcard of a Tahitian girl with bare breasts and immediately taught me the word for breast without embarrassment - interesting that Helen Reid noted that women were very shy about their breasts. Very unPolynesian. Certainly once at the airport I noticed elaborate covers around breastfeeding women – but also I’ve seen one or two women feeding babies without this – at Soledad’s aunt’s for one

Rosa took over today and it’s not been too bad. I washed up but let her cook. She’s a bit less withdrawn now and asked me if I wanted more babies today.

I’ve been stamping Grant’s census cards and putting them in order for him. It takes hours with a hole punch.

Grant had this primitive but effective way of sorting data about people - male female married single and other categories. Each person had a card with little circles round the edge. Each circle was a characteristic and could be punched out. Then a knitting needle could be slid through the holes and all the men would emerge, or all the old people etc. It seemed very cunning at the time.

Sunday May 7th continued

We left at 7.30 am to go to mass. I met Maria Tepano (my student) and her guest at mass. The girl insisted on saying “beautiful” in my ear at the singing. Mungo wiggled and wanted to play. The mass was very full today and the singing a bit orthodox and melancholy. I sat under a statue.

After mass I talked to Maria Atan – an old lady, the wife of the round faced old man who speaks a bit of English. He was wearing a hat with a pink scarf tied around it – looked very dashing. I said Hallo to the widow I met at the funeral and How are you. She answered “Riva raki” [So so]. She’s the mother of the little girl with the plait who hangs around with that slightly crazy Alicia. She has five children.

After talking with the old man from the co-op who wears a beret (Jose Fati, a very good informant of Grant’s) we made our way to Valeria Paoa’s with the help of the fuzzy haired tubby woman called Margarita Atamu.

Margarita and her husband Petero became good friends of ours, partly because they were fostering a half American baby Roberto, who was the same age as Mungo. They played together and we sometimes went out on horses with the boys to the campo. Margarita and Petero had no children of their own. She’d been the cook at the sanatorium before almost everyone came back into town.

Margarita was a tiny woman who took on the role of mother substitute for me and was full of advice especially on hygiene. “The important parts to wash are here and here” On one occasion she took me aside before mass and authoratively ordered someone to get water and a cloth and scrubbed the dust off my legs. She was always bringing us sopaipillas (a sort of fried flatbread) and I reciprocated when I could. I loved Margarita, I think because she made me feel safe.

She’s a relation of Valeria’s and is fostering a little one year old called Jim (renamed Roberto), whose American father took the mother to the States for six months (so the story goes) and sent her back to get her father’s permission because she was underage. Once she was back on the island the troops pulled out and apparently someone on the island wrote to him that she was playing around with other men on the island. He then took no notice of her any more and she finally gave the baby to Margharita and went to Santiago.

Margharita is very fond of the baby. She described how he was shy in public but at home ran about without a nappy. She said he ate soup. She also said there were two sorts of blood – strong blood and mas o menos (more or less) blood. If you have the former type you shouldn’t go out in the sun too much. She doesn’t like the sun. She said that the measles hit the teenagers hardest and it was only her nursing that saved one of them. Some people died in an epidemic.

We were given fried eggs for breakfast. Valeria (who was asleep when we arrived because she had been playing cards the night before) sat with us. Before lunch we sat about a lot. I went out to the kitchen at one point where there seemed to be a bit of life. Valeria’s mother (incredibly young looking) was threading a shell necklace. Little Anerica Riroroco was punching the holes in the shells though later the Chilean wife took over. The mother said it took half an hour to make a collare. Three children were sitting at the table. Valeria’s mother looks after a little boy called Alberto (5 years old) who she says is her grandson. Her mother is Chilean and doesn’t want him. He was born small ‘2 kilos or less’ and he talks less than the son of Valeria who is three. He seemed pretty thin and unfriendly but he played quite intelligently with a matchbox, pushing it along like a car. When Christian trod on the matchbox purposely he lashed out at him and chased him away pretty savagely.

After lunch we talked a bit and it emerged that Valeria's sister, Rufina was Miss Easter Island. She seems a bit joyless about the whole thing now but she got the photographs out. Apparently the thing was settled by vote. She had a chance to go to Australia but she didn’t go because she was in love with Sergio Rapu, according to her sister. I remember the matrona saying Rufina always looked sad because her family rejected her after she’d been 8 years on the continent. Most of the photographs showed her looking very strained and not very pretty. She’s the girl Sergio is supposed to marry.

Valeria gave me a funny baby garment for Mungo when he needed changing – also two Chilean nappies.

I felt the Paoas were very unrelaxed about us and was glad to leave around three o’clock.

We went to the house of the man at the hotel, Alberto Edmunds Paoa which was really very elegant with a beautiful kitchen. His mother and sister were there and gave us tea with cake and jam! And Mungo was given some milk. He [Alberto] was working this afternoon. His mother looks very unislandish with reddish hair and pale skin – she has French blood, she says. She loved Mungo and played with him and found him a little top to wear. He had a wash in hot water, for they have it there. There were lots of well established trees in the garden – a hibiscus and a tree with yellow flowers.

I’m trying to note what electrical gadgets and modern imports each house has. The Paoas – two record players and a fridge in the living room. A treddle sewing machine. The Edmunds Paoas – a double sink unit and a gas stove with an oven and an electric stove. A glass fronted cabinet. Both had plastic flowers. There’s no escaping them. I find the public areas of these smart houses a bit sad and lifeless. The kitchen of the Paoas seemed so much realer than the living room. Both households had upholstered chairs. Just before we left the head of FACH came in – a very slick character with glasses – rather attractive. He gave us a lift home. We went out again to visit Carlos Bruner but he was out. He has cigars for Grant.

I am quite startled to remember Grant liked cigars (but not cigarettes) in those days.

This evening we went to the town cinema and saw a film about the Harlem Globetrotters.

The ramshackle tin building was much more popular with the islanders that the FACH (the one run by the Chilean airforce) one, perhaps because it was in the heart of the village and a lot more rowdy!

It was packed so we had to stand. Costs 8 escudos. Lots of people I’ve never seen before. Lots of audience participation, from the kids mostly.

Today we have possibly found ourselves a house. After breakfast we went to see Graciela Huki (who is Melchior’s sister incidentally – I discovered her walking along arm in arm with the boring sociologist lady). She told me about a possible house belonging to her father in law. Today we learnt that it is up on the hill behind the church and had no water – only a rain tank. We were going up to take a look when the waterworks man passed by and offered us a lift. When we explained what we were doing he said he had control of a fiscal (government) house which we could have as long as we looked after it, and he drove us to it. It’s a bit nearer town but still fairly isolated. It has two bedrooms and water and electricity. All we would have to do is remember to switch on the generator if the lights began to flicker. It has the town well and the chlorinating plant in the back garden and a few guava bushes but not much else. No furniture to speak of either – but still a strong possibility.

In the end we decided that taking on responsibility for ensuring the island’s water supply was too scary!

I came home after buying a lot of stuff in the ECA which is now out of flour and down to small tins only of coffee. Carlo was sitting at home looking miserable. He’d cooked some pieces of meat in a dispirited kind of way but said the soup was no good and gave it to the dogs.

Rosa and Luis came by from next door. Luis had his arm in a sling because a finger was badly infected with a fish spine. He was going to have the spine removed tomorrow and was taking antibiotics. The children were sent from their grandmother’s to Rosa’s this morning and now Fifi is here with us. She just asked if she can go back home to her grandmother’s. She wants me to go with her because it’s getting dark.

Fifi’s grandmother, Mama Luisa, took in several of her grandchildren from time to time. One older one, Sicto, lived with her all the time.

This afternoon I called in at the matrona’s. She was doing lots of washing up after a party on Sunday. Tula, Craig and ? went. She likes them a lot and says things are better with her boyfriend now. All the people from the hospital went.

I called at the co-op but nothing there at all. On the way home I met a woman with a three day old baby. She seemed well and had lots of milk, she said. The baby had a nice blue shawl and very red lips.

Last night the dogs barked a lot because a horse got into a cornfield. Tried to buy wine but couldn’t.

A couple of things I remember from conversations. First on Sunday going to Anakena beach the mother of two boys, when asked whether she wanted more, said no – “one could educate two” Today the mother of the three day old baby said she had two boys and a girl and that was enough.

(In the past sixteen to twenty children per family was not unusual)

Seems Soledad is coming back. Arrived with a bundle of stuff and she and Florencia are playing guitars out there. I wish she wasn’t. Everyone gets in such an evil mood when she’s around.

May 4 Thursday 1972

The plane brought in the Conjunto ( Rapanui dance troupe) today. Also a dead boy from the continent. About 16 – died in a car crash.

Tonight one of our dogs got run over. I brought it home and cried in front of two policemen. I think they think I’m mad.

The police presence was nothing to do with the dead dog and the carabinieros just happened to be there for some other matter. Not sure what. Tomorrow has a lot more about the funeral of the boy (and also the burial of the dog).

May 5th

I was a bit drunk last night. I got up early to see the doctor about my cystitis and the assistants insisted on me going first even though there were about four people first including Kiko and his little boy.

Kiko was a very important person in the island community although I remember him having a simple and diffident personality. He had a marvellous voice and was a leader in the church singing as well teaching Rapanui culture - music and dance to the young and being manager of musical groups. He was a good friend to me and I used to cook my bread in his wood fired oven sometimes. He had a penchant for peanut butter from when you could get it at the American PX! When we finally went to Santiago for a bit he asked us to find some and bring it back, which we did.

They took my blood pressure and my temperature before letting me in to see the doctor and I managed to get over “Cystitis”. (Not easy in sign language!) prescribed two sorts of tablets, one of which makes me very drowsy. I came back to the house and drowsed away just about managing to wash the nappies. Carlo was in a better mood joking about “make ai”I have forgotten what that means but it was probably lewd) just like when Georgina was here.

I went down to the plane at about 2.30. There were more people than usual because of the conjunto returning and the dead boy and his mother.

The people meeting the conjunto all had leis and looked very bright. The judge’s secretary is the brother of the boy. The old banana man is his father. He didn’t seem too distressed but kept slipping cigarettes to his friends according to Grant. The funeral was this morning and Grant has gone to it . Late.

Carlos has a small package from Georgina with, fortunately, a package of 100 cigarettes. But he grumbled because he’d been expecting two.

After the plane had gone we walked down (to the post office) to fetch our letters.

This was a weekly ritual. All us hopeful recipients to be of letters would crowd into the little space and the names would randomly be called out one by one. We usually got a lot because the university forwarded everything that came for him including a cookbook series. The books were a bit of a torment as the recipes needed things we couldn’t get but it was nice to look and dream.

It was dark and one of our dogs got run over. I thought it might be OK at first because it could move enough to get to the side of the road. I dreaded it surviving crippled because there aren’t even guns to shoot dogs here. Grant kept being very tough and saying it was life but it seemed terrible to leave the poor creature. Anyway we walked a few yards to Alvarez and then went back to see the dog who had died by that time. It was only a matter of minutes.

We went on to the post office and Mungo had a little parcel and I had a letter and so did Grant. He was angry because I was sad about the dog. I don’t know quite why I was. I never liked it much when it was alive.

We went down to the hotel for a drink because it was Thursday.(plane day) On the way we passed groups of people going to the dead boy’s house.

At the hotel, which is very full this week, we were joined by the LAN man and some Chileans including a reporter who is doing a talk on the island for radio. It (the hotel) struck me again as being a place of gloom. I came home after the first drink by myself which shocked a group of people I stopped and talked to. Then I found the dog. I tried to explain to the two bewildered passing policemen. I cried. They were embarrassed I think. Anyway I got the animal home and put it in the cornfield. This morning, rather to my surprise Carlo wanted to bury it. He was just a little upset. So the kicking of the dogs isn’t simple.

Carlo’s money has come! It came in a big wadge of notes and he’s so pleased. He’s going to Santiago tomorrow unannounced. I hope Georgina isn’t up to no good. He made bread today and it rose higher than ever before. The only fly in the ointment is that Rosa has come to stay. She lurks and cooks and eats tiny little meals and doesn’t drink her drinks and altogether makes me feel voracious and wicked.

We went to the funeral of the boy who was brought back from Santiago yesterday. I didn’t go into the church because of Mungo but stayed by the tree. At about 5pm the cortege came up the street. The coffin was in a lorry with four uniformed sailors beside it. It drove up the main street towards the church very slowly with the family following and saying prayers and carrying flowers – just some branches.

The mother went into the church first and the others followed. Lots came late. The wall to the left of the door had a row of teenage boys sitting on it. Near the tree with me was a little half Chilean half Pascuence family who didn’t want to go in because “it was hot in there for the baby” The man was related to the family. There were two other children of about one outside with their mothers chatting away. Two policemen had come too and hung about outside the church. The doctor arrived late and went in. Lots of uniforms everywhere because of the father’s military connections.

There was some singing in the church. The mother came out first being virtually carried by two uniformed military types. She was all in black but very few others were. The row of girls near me giggled – I think at the sight of the mother.

After she had left, the cross was carried out and the coffin behind it and all the rest of the congregation behind that. We all walked down to the cemetery. There was singing and a bit of chatting at the back. Throughout, the number of children struck me as high. There seems to be no attempt to disguise death from children. (Indeed Carlo buried the dog this morning with them looking on).

I kept in the background at the cemetery until Nora arrived. She said she wanted to go and talk to a woman whose husband had died two months ago and so we did. She was standing in front of her husband’s grave and crying a little. We both put our arms around her and tried to comfort her. When Mungo came she played with him. It was getting very cold and dark and the crowd was silhouetted against the sky. I liked the woman very much and I hope we see her more.

I felt it was a fine way to be buried – even with all the pettiness and chatter. The community was pulled to the church despite themselves. If anything could send a soul on its way, a ceremony like that should.

Mmm. Now I’m a bit closer to the end myself, I can’t think of anything worse than all that shenanigans. A nice no flowers no fuss cremation will do me.

I’m not sure how much support individual mourners had. We met Raul on his way home alone. At the exit to the graveyard the mother (I think) was saying goodbye to all the mourners like a mother at a wedding.

We were given a lift home by Nora and the boys in a jeep. They came our way specially.

I do feel a great sense of belonging here, though, lord knows, we certainly don’t. I like the mad old lady who gives Mungo apples and me kisses. I enjoy being spoken to by everyone even though I have so little to say. Perhaps it wouldn’t be so bad to move into a Pascuence family. I had lots of little encounters with people this morning about the lack of butter and everything else this week.

Mungo’s first birthday. We are out in the country with Maria Ika’s family and spent last night in a sort of tent made of the lorry top. We left yesterday after a very well attended mass with an announcement about having a dance to raise funds to look after the coconut trees at Anakena.

Unlike most Pacific Islands, Rapanui did not have indigenous coconut trees. The ones at Anakena beach were planted, perhaps to create a traditionally Polynesian feel for the only good beach on the island which would please the tourists.

We went home and gathered up a bit of food and were picked up by a lorryload of the Ika family. We drove out to a beach not far from Anakena and immediately set to making an umu. A smallish hole was dug and a fire lit in it with stones on the top. When the stones were hot enough, fish entrails were roasted on top and a few fish the boys had caught. Later the stones fell into the hole and banana leaves were put on top of them. On the banana leaves was first put poi, which I helped to make. It is a paste of bananas,squash, sugar and flour. The poi was in basins of tin. After that went meat, a lamb we’d picked up at Vaitea and sweet potatoes and more banana leaves. Finally the whole thing was buried in earth and left. Other cooking was going on. Three hens were killed (slowly) and plucked and boiled for Mana because he can’t eat meat. I plucked one while it was still warm. It gave me a very odd feeling.

I took Mungo down to the rock pools for a bit and then walked to Anakena Beach with a couple of the women and a little boy. It was hot but the sun was going down and when we came back it was quite dark. Lots of people were on the beach. Most of the town seemed to have taken to the country this weekend because of Labour Day. Before we set off, trucks kept passing the house.

But anyway when we opened the earth oven, a great plate of lamb and lobster and a great dollop of poi was given to us. I noticed that we were served whilst everyone else just dug in. Felt a bit out of it at that point.

Patricia, the Chilean girl who has been here three months, is very much part of the family now. There was plenty of food. Mana Ika had gone to fetch Luisa (his wife) at this point. He brought out two loads of people including a tortoiseshell cat. The cat stayed around the whole weekend getting fatter all the time.

We went off to get water in the truck with the handsome son (Gabriel), who likes Mungo, and we got thrown about in the back a bit.

After eating Luisa prepared the “tent” for us. On asking where the rest of the tribe were sleeping we were surprised to be told “in a cave”. They all slipped off and away into the cave except for one little lot who had a makeshift tent. Mana Ika’s sister slept there with some others whose name I don’t know.

We slept badly with Mungo waking up again and again because he was uncomfortable too. I ended up sleeping on top of his basket and he in my place.. Just as we really settled it was dawn and everyone came up out of the cave and set to making coffee and banging on our roof. Apparently it got awfully hot in the cave.

We had coffee and bread and cheese and I had a look at the cave which seemed small for all those people. The lorry was loaded up with the boys who were going to fish with guns. Grant went too. I went with Luisa to the front, a little way along the coast. Others came too, to look for shells (for making the shell necklaces which were almost always given to those departing and arriving on the island) and to swim.

I saw an interesting antique yesterday – a stone (found by the sea) for blowing and making a trumpet noise. None of the kids could get a sound out of it. After I left the beach with Olga I felt Mungo needed a drink and so we headed for a camp in La Perouse Bay. It was a hot and rocky walk with the sun sizzling down on my back. I was relieved to reach the camp where two little fires were going and a group of boys were playing a guitar. Graciela Huki, who gave us tomatoes, was there and so was Maria Pakerati with a straw hat on. I explained that Mungo had diarrhoeia and Graciela produced a tablet which she administered by crushing it and mixing it with water and holding Mungo’s nose while she poured it down his throat.. It seemed to work cos he’s better today. She gave him a cup of tea and some soup too. She has also offered us a house which we are going to see soon. She’s a nice down to earth woman without the streak of fantasy that so many people have here.

By this time we had decided we needed to find our own space, however grotty. My housewifery was never going to please Carlo and we wanted to be nearer the centre of the village too.

Maria Pakerati accompanied me back to our camp along the coast which is supposed to be quicker than the road. We stopped for a rest in a cave about half way and she asked me if Grant was a good husband. I said yes indeed but he wasn’t a very good father but it would be better when Mungo learnt to talk. She nodded sagely. She told me she was one of sixteen children, eleven being girls.

Grant getting to be a father was a work in progress. He was better with our second boy and very good indeed with our third. And when he got grandchildren he was patient and lovely.

Back at the camp various little things were being cooked but we were really waiting for the boys to bring back fish. I desperately tried to find shade for Mungo but he wouldn’t stop crying.. The other half of one of his big teeth was coming through.

When the lorry returned there was much cooking of fish. By this time the camp was getting pretty mucky with heaps of fly ridden scraps here and there. Luisa Ika gave me a mug of rice for Mungo which he ate.

We drove home around four o’clock rather to my relief. It was lovely to get out of the sun and the house seemed positively luxurious. We brought a lobster home for Carlos. He’s really suffering from lack of cigarettes.

In the evening we went out to go to mass only to find it had finished. I had diarrhoea by this time and kept having to dive into the dark guava bushes.

I was feeling terrible so Grant took us to the hotel where I had a lovely lavatory and a stiff cognac and fruit juice. While we were sitting there our banana friend (Old man Pacomio) came in with his rucksack on his back. We bought him a drink . With lots of mysterious beckonings he called the barman over and slipped him a couple of cigarettes. Don’t know why. Afterwards we went back to his house and were given a bunch of bananas. I staggered home feeling rather high.

Today I went down to the meat market to get the family’s sheep ration. I got half a sheep for fifty escudos.. Lots of people were there and a couple of babies. – Victor (baby of Soledad who lived in the house for a while) being one. He’s really growing now. He seemed hungry and was sucking a bottle teat. The babies were nicely dressed. There was quite a queue at the meat kiosk. Miragrosa (a sister of Georgina) pulled me in behind her. Soledad was there with Florencia from down the road. She seems to be living there now. Florencia’s mother was sitting on the grass with Victor.

While we queued a lorry came with the sheeps’ carcasses and lots of sheep heads which were piled into the kiosk pretty briskly. When I asked how much meat our family should have, Soledad and Mirarosa went “Shsh” and said ten kilos. Apparently the ration is 1 kilo per person. I wondered if there was any allowance made for the different cuts of meat or the heads which Mirarosa’s father has about six of.

We started walking back – me with my half sheep in a blue bag carried by a little boy. Then we were given a lift in an open jeep. He brought me all the way home for which I was mighty grateful.

I nearly didn’t go to market today at all because when I dropped Coca off at Maria/Suzy’s she told me there was no market today because of the holiday yesterday. But, going home empty handed, I met Maria Leon Hei who said she had it from the horse’s mouth that there was a market. Rumour is confusing sometimes.. Maria/Suzy also told me that the father of her baby works in the hotel and she’s getting married soon because her father says she’s no good having so many babies without being married. She also says she’s going for a holiday in Santiago in September.

We had a telegram today! From Mum and Frank for Mungo’s birthday. I was really delighted. Such a surprise. It’s a radio telegram.

I gave my lesson to Maria Tepano today. She has a very chic tourist house with a frilly lavatory seat cover. A Chilean plastic surgeon and his wife are staying there now. Very jolly and speaks English. Mungo behaved incredibly nicely and I taught quite a bit and learnt quite a bit of Rapanui but forgot it as easily as I learnt it.

Grant is making a tape to John and I am writing this in the main room sitting at the yellow table with a candle in front of me because the electricity has faded out twice tonight.

We’ve had a nice day – a real holiday. After the plane this morning (which took off twice because there was a new pilot who wanted to practise), Grant and I took horses from Juan Ivan and trotted out to Rano Kau volcano up the hill.

It felt marvellous to be out and away from everyone on this stolid old horse who didn’t want to trot. The coast stretched out jagged and lined with white foam behind us and the sun burned down on the back of my neck and the scenery that I’ve been looking at for a month came alive with weeds and rocks and obsidian in the grass.

We reached the volcano after about one and a quarter hours and it was a staggering sight with sheer walls and muddy puddles on the bottom which was very big too.

There were two very different volcano craters on the island. Rano Raraku housed the quarry where the moai were carved with some left still attached to their matrix. Rano Kau , however, held water and reeds. In the old days, according to the old people, villagers would make the long trek to do their washing up there. Wild grapes grew there too.

We hurried back to lunch with Veriveri Tuki and arrived about an hour late, filthy with Mungo smelling like a sewer. I had him in the carrier on my back on the horse. I think our host was a bit offended that we arrived so disorganised but things improved. We had a nice lunch with lobster salad. His daughter looked a bit annoyed too, I discovered subsequently, because Grant had refused to change her husband’s money into dollars.

People always wanted to get dollars as the Chilean currency was very unstable at the time with rampant inflation.

Like the Hei lunch it was duller than the encounter that brought forth the invitation.

But people are gossiping with us now. A woman who dropped in to ask Veriveri to buy cognac for her, was thoroughly slated as a drunkard after she’d gone. The old man who is Georgina’s uncle said that Georgina was a bad woman for skiving off to Santiago and she keeps a bad house. And of course we should move into his instead. His tourist house is immaculately kept with candlewick bedspreads and shells and plastic flowers.

I do think we should begin reciprocating more conscientiously. One thing I am doing is giving an English lesson to Maria Tepano on Tuesday. Wonder if it will work. Hope it snowballs into a little class.

The lessons with Maria Tepano became important to us both. I taught her the language needed for handling tourists and she told me fascinating stories about the days before the plane and how things were managed.

Anyway after lunch we rode home and took our horses’ bridles off (made of rubber straps and string) and let them out on the lush grass in our backyard, well manured by Mungo’s nappies.

After a bit of a rest we trotted off again up the road to Vinapu in the cool of the late afternoon. I noticed again how very far away from the town the little old man who came back from the cinema with us lives. Half way up the hill with horses grazing around him. No water presumably. He has very yellow eyes and speaks only Pascuence. I wonder what his story is.

It’s hard to describe the beauty of our last ride. – partridges fluttering out of the grass – stones - ferocious erosion by the seashore and horses swinging their tails – riding back into the sunset with an old lady calling out “Iorana korua” to us. The row of silver tanks along the seashore, like a modern ahu. And the hills rolling.

When we got home the radio was blaring and the kids dancing and Carlo was a little drunk. He’d been given a momentary lift by two glasses of alcohol and a packet of cigarettes from Alvarez.

I’ve been feeling a bit ashamed about my feelings about Carlo. He has a lot to put up with just now and I’m sure a lot of his impatience with me is just symptomatic of this.

Tonight the electricity has been going off and on a lot. There’s a moth in the journal and I’m going to bed.

A rather bad day. I woke up feeling sad after queer dreams and I stayed haunted most of the morning.

I went with Grant to the ECA to collect a map but the manager never came and we hung around the rather melancholy little group there who said the flour had run out. So have the cigarettes incidentally.

I went on down to the church with Grant and then on home, feeling obliged to cook bloody Carlo’s lunch. Wewq had the fish we bought yesterday and so I skinned and cooked that, cutting my fingers like mad on the spines. I cut off the head and asked Carlo if there was any particular way of dealing with it so he gave it to Ivan next door and drank half a bottle of Pisco in exchange and came back furious with Georgina for not sending any cigarettes this week. Said he was going to get her back. He ate and enjoyed the fish for once.

I went down to the plane this afternoon but wasn’t very chatty. Then tonight, at about 7.30 Grant showed up, having bought masses of stuff at Alvarez and expecting all sorts of excitement. I just didn’t feel that way. Then he complained about bones in his fish and I’m just sick of him and Carlo going on at me. What have I done to deserve all this carping? I’m not lazy and I do have a right to some consideration instead of contempt from Carlo and arrogance from Grant.

I had two letters from Mum and one from Pat. I wish I could be properly alone tonight. I feel emotionally and physically overcrowded.

Friday, April 28th

We’ve been here just a month now. The time has gone awfully fast. I wonder what we have achieved. Grant says he feels more rapport with his contacts. I suppose I’ve made a few acquaintances and friends. More faces are recognizable now – even Maria Leon Hey. In the right mood I can talk a fair amount of Spanish and explain most things. I still don’t use the right tenses though.

Today I woke up feeling a bit low after last night’s rage. My hands were infected and Mungo had diarrhea and needed all his bedclothes washed. I reckoned it was high time I did the sheets too and so had a pile of washing. There was a scorpion in the washing water too.

After I’d finished I got a soup going even though I said I wasn’t cooking lunch and Rosa (Carlo’s sister in law) came over with her baby. I can’t exactly explain why I find her so irritating. It’s partly because she is so silent I think. She moves and eats as though she doesn’t want anyone to know she is doing it. There’s an obscure smugness about her too – and her little girl is sulky.

On my way down to church I was accosted by a girl, a Tuki who has married a certain Giorgio Tepano. She wanted to know if Grant would change some dollars. I said I’d ask. Her father has invited us to lunch tomorrow. We’ve got lots of invites to drop in on Sunday. It seems to be the done thing Maria Hei asked us and so did Maria Paoa.

I met Veronica a couple of times today – she always comes bounding towards me like a mountain goat and never seems to know what to say when she arrives. She usually gives Mungo a smacking kiss which doesn’t please him any. He’s become a bit unsociable lately – overexposure no doubt!

I picked up a little twelve year old girl today who insisted on carrying my shopping bag. Her name is Carmen Tuki. She was incredulous at my lack of Spanish and kept saying “Mira” and holding my hand and saying the thing I didn’t understand again, even slower. She has the Tuki face with a huge jaw and hungry eyes.

She came down to the beach with me and we played with Mungo there for a while. I bought her an apple finally and after I’d met Grant at the Juzgado (court house) we went our own ways when I told her I lived far away. She was rather reproachful that I wouldn’t let her come too.

On the way back I got talking to the two little girls who hang around the unfinished house in the main street. Alicia, the eldest had an old cow horn with bits chiseled out of it which she was scraping a stick up and down to make a sort of music. She began singing a song in a jeering sort of way. She was bored and mischievous and asked asked if I’d like to go into ‘her’ house. She showed me these big empty windowless rooms and said there was “muchar trabajo”(a lot of work) for her.

There were many half built houses in Hangaroa. The building paused when materials ran out and didn’t get going again, sometimes for years due to shortage of materials and people’s circumstances changing.

Then I wondered if she or her friend knew any Kai Kai and got my string out. They only knew the Korean Cat’s Cradle but Alicia decided to snatch my string and run off with it. I wasn’t having that and after a deal of hassle some boys chased around and she came out laughing insanely and gave it to me.

On the way home the freckled lady who kisses us gave me an apple for Mungo. She always seems to have apples.

Acting on information received from Grant I bought some cheese at a Hucki house on the way home.

I notice a few little things disappearing – Mungo’s spoon, his doedicurus cloth.( I cannot remember what on earth this was. How much more have I forgotten?) Things go off the line I suspect.

There were two places that showed films on the island. The FAC cinema was in an airforce building and well organised. The village cinema was constructed from beaten out oils drums and often chaotic with audience participation and commentary.

We went to the FAC cinema last night and saw a terrible film called “The Singing Cowboy”. It was a Mexican musical. The rest of the audience was made up of mostly children (some very young) and Chileans. There were three mothers with small babies too. There were wooden benches to sit on and a notice about parents keeping their children with them and not introducing dogs. A man sold little lollipops and chocolate (5 escudos). The entrance fee was 8 escudos for adults and 4 for children. The man from LAN was there with his little fair haired wife and so was Florencia from down the road. The cinema is in an old warehouse and starts at 8.30pm.

Because there was no television on the island, both cinemas were very popular.

After the film we walked home and Grant had an attack of coughs and sneezes and he took an antihistamine. This morning he stayed in bed awhile. But its hot again today for the first time for days and no sign of more rain.

I went to the ECA frigorifico today to buy butter but there was none. Only big blocks of frozen meat at 40 escudos a kilo. Men sawed them irregularly into two. I bought one chunk for 95 escudos. I felt a bit low and inadequate today and rumour has it that there are to be more tourists in the house this weekend and I find that awfully disrupting.

My role got problematic when tourists stayed because while Grant and I were not tourists to be waited on, we were not quite part of the family either and Carlo would get bad tempered.

After the ECA I went down to the port with Grant, he leaving me at the land office. I sat on the beach awhile and two middle aged women came by, one of whom turned out to be the wife of the ranch manager whose name I forget , and a tourist. The wife said she liked it here but the people were difficult to work with and rather lazy.

Then Veronica turned up in a peculiar sort of bikini and we got talking. She told me (I think) that her baby died at one year four months, a year ago. She breast fed her for 25 months [??]. She had to have a caesarian and showed me a deep scar. She says she can’t live with her mother because of “problems” She’s 20.

Veronica, like Soledad was a young woman of no fixed address. I often wonder how life turned out for them. They’d be old ladies now.

8.30pm

I went down to see the matrona this afternoon leaving Mungo with Carlo. He apparently behaved very badly. Met Maria/Suzy (Georgina’s sister and by then a friend) on the way who was washing and said she was tired with so much work and she was glad to see I wasn’t carrying Mungo because I carried him far too much.

The matrona, Nora lives in a little house overlooking the harbour. She was washing lots of dainty little clothes when I arrived and she sat me down and produced a notebook with figures on births and deaths of babies. After collecting these I asked if I could have details on individuals and she said she’d have to ask the doctor. Then she got to talking about gossip and scandal and remarked how strange it was that people seemed to love you but told you all sorts of lies to hurt you. She has a boyfriend, the director of the school, and while they were going around together she was always being told that he was out making love to other girls when she knew for a fact he wasn’t. Now she has big problems because he definitely has a North American bird hanging around, though she is in Santiago at the moment. Nora has broken off the engagement but is more puzzled and hurt than actually fed up with the boy.

The “boy” went on to be the first Rapanui governor of the island and did marry a North American girl.

She seemed to want to talk about it very much and I just listened. She’s a nice girl – tiny and very pretty with very generous feelings about people but, maybe, not too much imagination. I don’t know. That was my impression.

On the way to the cinema last night Grant told me a few interesting things he’d learnt from his carabiniero [policeman] friend. Firstly that the rather horrific rape story we’d heard from Romero (a continental who ran a little shop selling goods brought in on the plane such as comics and sometimes icecream) was simply an investigation and conviction for the theft of a watch. Secondly that the one thousand dollar theft at the hotel was again the theft of a watch by an inept young boy ‘whose father had left him’ and who showed homosexual tendencies. He didn’t charge the boy partly out of pity and partly because the watch would have to be kept as evidence and the owner wanted it back. Both stories show the force of rumour and gossip here. Apparently homosexuality and bestiality both exist on the island.

I am shocked at my casual yoking of homosexuality and bestiality! My comment, though not dismissive, reflects the heartlessness of attitudes back then. We has still to go through so much (especially AIDS) before inclusiveness penetrated even the bastion of the census!

The bestiality he (the policeman) noticed when following up investigations into sheep stealing. In itself it is not an offence here.

Wednesday, April 26th

We got up late this morning, around 7.30am and Carlo wasn’t up. He went to the cinema last night.. Grant and I went out together this morning and got a lift to the co-operativa with two Chileans. The round faced one has a blonde wife with a flushed face who gave us some tomatoes and radishes and cilandro. I managed to buy a big pink fish and some eggs at the co-op and then went home in a red truck up on the back. After delivering the goods to the house I went out again to the ECA for fideos especiales (noodles, not very special) and a few other things. There was no queue but a little row of women outside who took Mungo off me and gave him a bit of cake whilst I did the shopping.

Afterwards Soledad turned up and bought two tins of Nido (powdered milk) and one of Cerelac (a sort of cereal for feeding to babies) and asked if I’d like to go home with her. I thought she was living in the house near the church where the mother of Georgina and her family lives – but no, she took me up the hill behind the church. On the way we called in at the aunt’s house who owns the bar and the two of them had a row because Soledad said that the aunt had taken a lot of Victor’s clothes. ‘Victor no got much clothes’ Soledad kept saying with her eyes full of tears and that rather sulky look she has. The aunt ranted on and explained to me in very fast Spanish that Soledad went here and there and didn’t do much work etc and I felt very awkward sitting there.

After that we went on up the hill behind the church and met her aunts and second cousins and people. I met a one month old baby girl Loli whose mother said she couldn’t breastfeed because she had so much washing to do the milk went away. She has no water in her house, 5 children, all girls in four years (one set of twins) and she has to come down the hill to wash things.

I met another woman there – Maria Tepano, who said she learnt some English from Father Sebastian and would like to learn more from me. I said I’d teach her.

After coming home to Carlo, who was a little annoyed that I hadn’t cooked lunch, I polished the living room floor again- rather badly, and feeling irritated that I had to.

Went down to meet Nora today but she was at the hospital preparing statistics for Chile. I took Dr Spock (a popular childcare self help book at that time) for her but she was giving a Spanish lesson to Tula the American and an Australian who are both living here now and doing nothing. I went along to the lesson, which took place in the garden, very formally around a table with bits of paper. Nora isn’t going to let any gossip get going there! She taught us the verbs ‘estar’ and ‘ser’ and ‘tenir’ and ‘haber’ with great ferocity and wasn’t just going to have idle conversation.

Tula and the American have been living on Anakena beach for a week. The Australian has only just arrived. As usual Tula asked if I had any cigarettes. They irritate me – those boys. I wonder if they ever get their own cigarettes or they scrounge everything off the islanders.

Today has been a day of maximum effort. On the way to mass this morning Grant told me that Carlo had been moaning about me to Rosa’s husband [his brother Luis]. He carried on about how I couldn’t cook ot clean or do anything and he was going to throw us out soon. I think we got the backlash of the Irish couple leaving without paying or offering anything and I was furious at the injustice of it all.

As mentioned last week this was a cross cultural confusion I think. The Irish couple felt they had reciprocated by taking us to the hotel but Carlo thought they were paying guests.

I can cook well and clean more or less but I’m just not used to doing it in these ways here. I suppose too I rebel against Carlo’s view of the female who should stay at home all the time.

Anyway I resolved to commit myself utterly to housework for a bit and see what happens. I polished the floor in the living room this morning and very thoroughly cleaned the bathroom. I assisted with the lunch but it was beans so I couldn’t do it all.

I got into huge trouble with Carlo once for boiling dried beans without soaking them first. I didn’t know then that you had to. After that beans were off limits for me!

I washed and dried everything after lunch and tea and generally fussed about, to his surprise and pleasure I think. He’s been much nicer to me since.

What a strange mixture of defiance and submission this was and.the feminist in me balks at all this now. Who, after all won? Not me.

Some meat was bought last night supposedly from a cow who died of thirst. I wonder if I should let Mungo have any – it’s been raining a lot lately so I don’t understand how a cow could die of thirst.

We went to mass this morning but arrived rather late and I had to stand outside. I didn’t really feel I’d been at all and tonight it’s really pouring down with rain.

Grant has gone to visit his policeman friend in the hope of getting some spicy details.

Mungo and Christian played with my knitting needles for hours this afternoon. Mungo now walks several steps without falling over. He seemed a bit off colour this morning with slight diarrhea. I’ve given him mostly milk today because it’s easier to digest than most things I think. Carlo says I shouldn’t needless to say.

The rain is battering the roof and Carlos seems to have tuned in to a middle eastern station of some kind – or maybe Fiji. It’s Cairo. It’s queer. It makes me think of Turkey

I’d taught in Turkey for a year after uni..

Grant has repented, all by himself, of bullying me so much and has promised not to send me back to Australia no matter what. He says, quite rightly, that it doesn’t make things any easier to have that threat hanging over me.

The padre has told Grant an interesting bit of confidential information. Apparently plans have been made to sell the island to Japan for payment of all Chile’s overseas debts. The Japanese haven’t accepted because the debts are so huge. Apparently the ECA chickens are a sort of loan in kind from Germany and have to be paid for in five years.

Coca’s here today being a bit devilish. All the kids got very wet in the rain

Monday 24th April 1972

Before joining Julia 26, I think I need to explain the dilemma she, and any partner of an anthropologist is in. The first priority is to comply, to adopt the way of life the couple finds themselves in, even if it goes against the grain. The doctor’s mantra “Do no harm” was for Julia “Don’t rock the boat” because if she did she would jeopardise the work. The only way she could do this long term was to internalise the rules and, on some level, accept the mores of the culture in the interests of being able to observe it So perhaps, after all, it’s mistaken to consider Julia’s attitude as craven and unduly subservient even if it seems that way to me now.

I’m keeping up the good work at home. Washed the plastic strip curtain today with great zeal and made a stew out of “the cow that died of thirst” . I didn’t give any to Mungo but I had some and it was very good indeed.

I took Coca to Maria/Suzy’s house today but didn’t go in because she said many people had been there yesterday and it was very dirty. After that I called in on Grant at the padre’s house and then went on down to the co-operative where I bought chorizo, two apples, nine eggs and a kilo of grapes for 60 escudos. I took the eggs to the Chilean woman’s house who lent us some on Saturday.She wasn’t there but a nice intelligent red haired son of hers deciphered the situation and took the eggs for her.

On the way back to the church I decided to give the grapes to Georgina’s 90 year old mother with asthma.

Georgina’s mother Luisa wasn’t ninety though she looked very old and had borne twenty children She became very important to me as the diary will tell.

I delivered them to someone who could have been a son.

Then I sat in Grant’s office [at the padres house for a bit while Mungo slept on the floor. Read a bit of a book by Sir Harry Luke on travelling in the Pacific. Bookworms are getting into Father Sebastians library though. It’s a pity.

The old wooden house was termite ridden and dusty but a cosy refuge from time to time. Padre Melchior told me I could have a nap there any time.

When Mungo woke I got him a drink of water from the padre who is a sweet old man with a long beard and hardly any teeth. He spends his time in his garden or the kitchen which is a separate shed. He gave Mungo a chocolate. The kitchen was very ramshackle but has a fridge. Every house I’ve been to so far has a fridge except Rosa’s (Georgina’s brother’s wife who lived next door to us) which doesn’t have water either.

I met a nice young girl called Marcella on the way home. We talked a little in Spanish. As we passed Veronica’s house she rushed out in a swimsuit to say hallo. She doesn’t know where Soledad is now but says Victor is well and she told me that there was a film on at the FAC cinema tonight. Grant has promised that we shall all go.

I spent quite a while on my Spanish today while Mungo played with the wheelbarrow upside down. Carlo is painting the door white. He seems to read my thoughts sometimes. I was just thinking how much better the place would look with a spot of paint and he decides to put some on.

The old man has just come by with a bunch of bananas for us.

Old man Pacomio often brought us huge branches of bananas from his place. Not little supermarket sized bunches!

Carlo is very tetchy and difficult at the moment. He didn’t really want the visitors but he waited on them while they were here and refused to eat with them. I ate with them but Carlo seemed a bit unhappy about waiting on me with the result that I never really knew what was going on.

In hindsight there was a lot of confusion here. Carlo thought the pair were tourists who would pay for their stay but Georgina had probably offered them accommodation on the island, maybe as reciprocity for some help on the continent. They were reciprocating as guests not tourists by taking us out. Incidentally lobster was not a prestige item on the island at the time but probably is now!

Carlo keeps telling me what to do with Mungo – told me to wash him this morning. I feel bad about not helping him more but he insists he’d rather I didn’t. I offered to wash his kids’ clothes this morning but he said I should look after my baby and he’d look after his. He continually goes on about how women are always complaining about their work and he does it with one hand tied behind his back. And he’s always going on about how women screw with him or “ciano”[?]. He maintains he has 13 children in all – 3 here (in the house), 8 in Santiago and two more in the village. He misses Georgina a lot and is depressed because she’s not coming back until the beginning of May at the earliest. He has nude pictures all over his wall now. But last night at the hotel an old girlfriend came up to him – aged 20 odd and he joked with her but did not appear to actually arrange anything. I think he’s probably pretty straight- laced when it comes down to it.

Mmmm.

Grant is back on his old “fit in or get out “ tack which has left me feeling utterly low this morning. I haven’t had my feelings so mashed around for ages. Mung woke last night with nappy rash pain I think. Now that it is not so sunny I think the nappies keep their infection through the wash. All I have is zinc ointment.

Carlo’s ‘godmother” came by this morning. She seemed a bit jaundiced towards me too too but maybe it just seemed that way.

I now wonder why I put up with all this masculine nastiness. I could have started another life -with so many decades ahead of me then. What stopped me? I began editing these diaries with an account of how Grant and I met but decided it was irrelevant but perhaps this bit of it is useful here.

My plans to marry a very suitable boyfriend had gone awry and I was consoling myself with an overland holiday trip to Morocco with an outfit called Sunseekers”

“The initial meeting of passengers was on Victoria Station where we were to sort ourselves into the vehicles and head initially to Spain. I arrived at the meeting spot and saw a guy standing at the head of a group. He had curly fair hair and an authoritative manner and introduced himself, with a faint American accent as Grant, one of the two driver/guides.

When I saw him all the cliches came true for me. A yearning. I wanted him for me. It was love across a crowded station, an arrow through the heart and all that. But I sensibly thought he was out of my league and got on with the holiday.. In fact I was right because a very silly but pretty girl became his tent mate”.

Lots more happened but that moment of intoxicating conviction never left me and it was that rather than anything rational that strengthened me in difficult times, especially on the island. I respect that feeling even now. Love is a powerful, if peculiar, force.

Talking to some other widows my age (Grant died three years ago). I realise there is an odd thing that happens to some of us. We still love and grieve for our lost ones but are quite relieved when we wake up alone in the morning (and are a bit shocked by this). We have freedom, and autonomy and with it, a new dignity. Fifty years ago so many of us did not question the leadership role men automatically assumed. This was very bad for both them and us. Some things are so much better for everyone now.

8.30 pm

I did the washing and felt slightly better after that. A cousin of Coca (Carlo’s daughter) was here and helped me. About 9, she was, and very pretty – a daughter of Maria/Suzy. Carlo said nastily that Maria/Suzy only ever thinks about the baby she’s having and not the ones she’s had. The little girl just smiled at this.

I went down to the church and collected my first few wild flowers on the way. I got some of the local names from the big girl who is often around here and her female relative in their garden. I was passing and they called to me.

A couple of boring Chileans have come by to talk to Grant. The woman – faded but intense, a sociological something or other here. And her little weasely husband seems to be helping her. Anyhow they’ve been yattering away in Spanish for two and a half hours. Mungo shat on the floor in front of them too. That’ll please Carlo!

I have a shocking cold at the moment and I have four tiny handkerchiefs.

The nice fair Chilean lady lent us nine eggs today because the co-operativa was shut as it always is on Saturday afternoons. Mass tomorrow. I feel the need of a little spirituality I must say. I’m tired of being grubby and inadequate as a speaker, a bird, a mother, a cook and everything else. Ah well, must try and collect a nice lot of wild flowers.

“Bird” meant desirable young woman in those days! (Later it was “chick”).

There has been quite a lot of rain today and there are still clouds in the hills.

Thursday 20 April 1972

School and hospital visits Plane day! We got lots of letters and amazingly ! the box. Grant’s delighted

A box of our stuff had been wandering the world since we arrived almost three weeks ago.

Also two remote connections of Georgina’s are staying until the Saturday plane [to Tahiti]. They are Irish and he works for UNESCO in Montevideo and is at the big conference going on in Santiago now.

It’s been a full day. We set out this morning at about ten and called in at LAN to find out the cost of going to Peru, then went to the school to drop off some books at Sergio Rapu.

In Peru we planned to try and find what actually happened to the islanders who were kidnapped from the island in 1888. Where did they go? Had any trace remained? In fact it proved to be a very sad story with official attempts to make amends ultimately making it worse.

I decided to visit the school today We had been given a hard boiled egg (in the queue) at the co-operative and I settled down to give it to Mungo at the school, but the minute we did the bell rang and hordes of kids rushed out and circled us and reduced Mungo to hysterics. They were finally shooed away by teachers with branches and leaves plucked from the garden.

After that we went to see the matron at the hospital, called Nora. She told us lots of interesting things – firstly that she has to overcome a lot of hostility and nervousness because people are terrified of leprosy being found in their homes. She can only visit as a guest and not a nurse. She confirmed that breastfeeding is uncommon (because people can’t, (even though they want to) and the importance of milk was disregarded. Bronchial troubles are common amongst babies but there is little diarrhea despite a lack of sterilization. Babies are generally healthy and over the normal weight with no malnutrition. Contraception is freely available and includes the pill (popular), the coil (unpopular) and a monthly injection which is gaining in popularity. There is a six monthly one in Santiago. Hysterectomies and sterilization are available too when mothers have had about ten children.

Most babies are born out of wedlock but what this really means I don’t know. A lot of single girls have babies I know but I think her (the matron’s) “illegitimate” means babies born in stable unions but unmarried. Must check that.

How evocative of another time “out of wedlock”seems now!

The food regimen that she gave us was one recommended in Chile. I doubt if it is totally accepted. One interesting fact – she said that a greater proportion of women accepted contraception here than on the mainland. Flexibility of attitude again? She has given me permission to copy from her records next Tuesday.

Last night the storm that had been brewing for two days really broke, with lashing rain that got in from all the nooks and crannies. The lights went out and all the children were scared until we got a candle going. Some roofs had blown off this morning. I felt very insecure as the rain smacked down onto the roof here.

We met the plane today after eating some pork soup and I said hallo to Maria who is to marry an Australian and her tjoothless old mum who always greets me like a daughter.

So many people are called Maria. It is confusing even for me now. I wish I had got into the nickname system used by islanders but because I was collecting genealogical information which required first name followed by father’s and then mother’s surname to form family trees, acquisition of that useful knowledge fell by the wayside.

Carlo got an extraordinary parcel from Georgina with all sorts of useless things in it like rice and bread which we can get here. But it did have two bottles of Pisco (a third broke) and some fruit and nice cigarettes for Carlo.

We went down to the co-operative this evening and bought sausage and peaches and pears because they’ll all be gone tomorrow. All around Alvarez [Chilean shop] were kids reading comics fresh off the plane and there was a thoroughly happy atmosphere everywhere.

Friday April 21 1972

I planned to go out with the two Irish tourists today on a tour of the island but Mana Ika’s truck broke down and they didn’t go with him so I didn’t go.

I went to the ECA and bought four cans of condensed milk and one of crema, a Nescafe and 10 jugos. I talked to various people there and was pleased at communicating more than usual.

Carlo has been fussing around like an old hen today and we’ve been getting on each others’ nerves a bit. He can’t decide whether to treat me like the visitors and wait on me or to expect me to do all sorts of things as the woman of the house. If he didn’t get so fed up with the way I did things I would do more. As it is he brings my food and lets me get my own coffee. I don’t know. It’s all so confusing. I yearn for the peace of my own place, however grotty.

Mungo has been squawking away for the last couple of hours and has thoroughly worn me out. Grant is so bloody imperious about his work not being disturbed and us, Mungo and I, having to go back to Australia if Mungo keeps playing up. Grant never for one minute considers doing anything to help me.

This afternoon we went to visit the man who controls the waterworks. He gave us a long talk on them and showed us the well and the chlorinator. His wife is a nice chubby lady and gave us chocolates and three eggs for Mungo. They have lots of hens around their place and they have a real live oven in the kitchen. Mungo was very good and rolled about on the polished wood floor because it was so nice and clean.

I noticed a child of about 2 with a pacifier in the ECA today. One of the ones Alvarez (Chilean shopkeeper) imports. Two people so far have asked me why I don’t have cigarettes on my shopping list. Everyone smokes here, it seems.

Carlo’s latest piece of childcare information is that I shouldn’t take Mungo out so much. He needs more quiet. (Like hell he does). It is raining now.

This morning the water went off by mistake. Some idiot at the waterworks turned the valve off and forgot to turn it on. Carlo fluttered about and black water came out of the taps for a bit.

We called in at the registry office today because we heard there was to be a wedding of two Austrians and wondered what their story was. Georgina’s cousin, who runs the bar and a man I don’t know were witnesses. Otherwise no-one was there except these two bright eyed little Chileans (as it turned out) who wanted to get married. We didn’t stay for the ceremony because Grant didn’t want to. I thought him somewhat rude to leave.

We posted vast numbers of letters.

I want to account for the picture in this post. It is in no way a photo but constructed by AI from the text in the blog written by me. At first AI made me too cheerful so Finn and I asked for a modification and the final artefact was pretty much as i remember that day.

I was a bit horrified - it felt as though AI had somehow robbed me and then I thought - it’s no different from words really, or an identikit picture in a police station. But actually there is a difference. I am the eye looking at myself, and is there an eye looking at me looking at myself endlessly?

There is a jokey story about a woman challenging a professor in a lecture who was trying to explain how the earth was suspended in the universe. ‘No,’she argued with him, “It’s held up by a big tortoise.” “and what holds up the tortoise?” the professor asked indulgently. “Another tortoise of course - and its tortoises all the way down” replied the woman defiantly.

As I count the tortoises on my way down I wonder if I am afraid of what is at the bottomlessness. Deceased husband Grant used to say it’s not worth thinking about and I can’t argue with that. It’s futile, no matter how many tortoises there are. But i am glad they are tortoises all the same. Slow and kindly with good shells. It can’t be that bad.

Tuesday 18th April 1972

A desolate sort of day with a high wind blowing. I’m full of cravings for fruit cake and other impossible things. I feel more muted than ever and Mungo has been grizzly all morning. He’s sleeping now, rather against my better judgment cos it means he won’t sleep tonight.

I just went down to the meat ECA today and bought some chickens and butter.

I am puzzled now about how often I say I buy butter which seems oddly luxurious to me now and I can’t think what it looked like. What I remember wasn’t butter but Flora margarine.

I was given a lift back by some men bringing a peculiar cabinet like item of furniture for Carlo.

I’m cooking for Mana Ika and his wife tonight and am feeling a bit nervous about it. Not sure I can produce anything at all reasonable. Carlo came in this morning and said that an insect had been eating the tomato plants in the night. There’s a sort of gloomy feel about today what with the wind making the banana trees flap and their leaves split and dry into fern fronds. The sky is quite grey.

I took Mungo up to play in the grass outside Rosa’s which is flatter than ours. I was a bit appalled by the poor little house she lives in. It seems to have no windows at all – just boards over where windows should be.

Wednesday 19th April 1972

I’m fairly exhausted after taking my first real walk here. I walked along the coast in the howling wind for a couple of hours with Mungo on my back and the dogs as an escort. It was really desolate and savage with spray from the sea flying high. In some places the surf had made a sort of suds which were whipped up and away by the wind. I could imagine a shipwreck awfully easily on the black jagged rocks.

I inspected a couple of shallow caves and looked at a couple of ahus (ceremonial platforms) along beyond Tahai. The hills were bathed in a sort of mist and it all looked very bleak and sinister.

I left Grant at the padre’s house reading through his collection of articles and writings on the island. It’s a cosy, very shabby little house beside the church and has a nice gate with vines growing over it. He has a terrific collection of books, many suffering from bookworm.

Last night’s supper with the Ikas went quite well. My chicken was reasonably tasty and all eaten up as was the salad and fruit. I felt it was a passable effort considering the frustrations involved in preparing it. They were standing on ceremony rather and I played Cat’s Cradle with Olga, the daughter most of the time. She’s about 14 I think. Interestingly she doesn’t know any (Cat’s Cradles) except the Korean one even though she comes from a traditional family. All the boys know Cat’s Cradle.. I taught her Utami.

This was a cat’s cradle that was accompanied by a chant which I suspect was lewd because eveeryone laughed at the end when your fingers let go of the string and it fell in a heap. I never found out! It went, as I remember:

Utami utami. Teherue teherue, pina pina ite vai tute, Mena tofera ah weh. String drops, lots of giggles.

The Korean Cat’s cradle was known by most primary school kids in England in the1950s and is a game where one patterned loop of string is passed from one person’s hands t to another’s transforming each time. If you do it right you get tramlines and can go on forever. If yoiu stuff it up you get fish in a dish and there is no forward move. It was a mild disgrace to commit this offence.

We are all going to the country on May 1st because it’s Mungo’s birthday and Labour Day

One funny incident. Carlo swore his statue in the garden was antique and Luisa from Tahai who’d come to dinner with Mana Ika, her husband, said it reminded her of one of hers which was stolen from Anakena. So they both trooped out and had a look at it and Luisa said it was not old at all, much to Carlo’s indignation.

Mana plans to build a new house and, so he says. “Get all the things out of his secret cave and put them in the main room.” Whether or not it’s true about the secret cave, that attitude is typical of everybody’s feelings here now.

Things should be exhibited not secreted. Perhaps this is a response to the need to give tourist houses an appropriate decor.

This morning Carlo made bread in this high wind. It was very difficult, he said, to keep the fire right in the garden.

We had a quiet day today. We got up at about 6.30 and went to mass. I sat next to Luisa Ika Pakerati and Mungo and I managed to stay for the whole service.

This was the Luisa I’d visited and talked to at Tahai

There was another baby about Mungo’s age on the other side and that helped. I always enjoy mass immensely even when the singing is a bit dowdy as it was today.

After mass I came home and found Carlo very tetchy because of the kids and I suspect, regret at having turfed Soledad. That came about because Carlo went and moaned at Milarosa (Georgina’s sister) and it got back to Soledad that she was going to be chucked out the next time she abandoned Victor. So she left yesterday afternoon rather tearfully. I gave her a cup of coffee and ten escudos.

Of course this left me in charge of keeping the place in order which I was not at all good at.

Anyway after washing five nappies I walked down towards the church to meet Grant. On the way three people gave me contradictory information about his whereabouts “He’s in the church” “Now?” “Yes now” “is he in the church?” “No church finished he probably at the hotel…”etc.

We finally met and then set out for Maria Leon Hei’s place where we’d been invited to lunch. I forgot the Leon bit of her name and we enquired after the house of Maria Hei and landed up at a totally strange house but nevertheless that of someone I knew, a nice woman who helped me at the ECA a few days ago. We got to lunch finally and a very nice lunch it was with roast chicken and potatoes with wine. It’s the first time I’ve come across oven cooked food here.

The atmosphere there was a little austere and I was grateful for Mungo who was nice and affectionate and pottered about and ate soup. I feel I rather buggered up that relationship by not recognizing her at the airport. The house is very smart by local standards with a sofa with soft cushions – a bit faded and unmatching – a radiogram on four legs working from a transformer – a table full of shell necklaces and statues. It’s funny how statues are liked by the populace itself – they are not just made for tourists. Lunch was sitting up at the table with napkins (paper). It was served by Anna, sister in law to Pat McCoy. The conversation was remarkably dull – learning the language, cooking, nothing about life here at all except that she has a resident member of Lan Chile in the house who has fresh vegetables sent tin every week. She got very suspicious of Grant when he wanted to take her genealogy.

Tonight I went to mass to count the people for Grant. Maria/Suzy, Georgina’s sister was there and the woman I met at the Ikas was there too and urged me to sit down. I’ve taken to crossing myself with the holy water like everyone else for the sake of not being too conspicuous. There was no singing in the evening service and few people – 98 odd.

On the way home I met a girl who asked me if I wasn’t afraid of the devil in the dark. I said I’d just been to church so how could I be. She walked with me a little way and then went into her house. A little girl walked further with me. She had a long name which began with Norida and ended with Pakerati. She has four sisters and one brother and was going to the pictures tonight. She taught me the words for moon and stars.

Monday April 17th 1972

I collected the rest of the ECA list today.

So many of the ECA items make my mouth water even now because they were such rare pleasures - tinned cream and tinned peaches! (One of the few times Grant and I came to blows was when I sprinkled crystals of salt instead of sugar on my bowl of them and he laughed. I threw the bowl at his typewriter and he hit me. Mungo went to get Grandma Luisa out the back to sort us out which she did. The typewriter was OK)

Confort too, that is the toilet paper that served for everything besides its obvious purpose. Long after we returned to Sydney people would look a bit askance at the toilet roll that sat on our table at meals.

I’m cooking lunch today cos Carlo’s gone to Entel.

Entel, the telephone office, was quite a walk out of town and the only place one could phone the continent or any other country. There were no phones in houses at the time.

He says he’s going to tell Georgina to come back as soon as possible because he’s fed up with doing the washing and looking after the kids. I took Coca down to her grandmother Luisa Tuki, as mentioned above and Juan Riroroco her husband.

This morning Milarosa looked after Mungo while I went to the Co-operative. It had no fish, only a lot of Santiago fruit. I bought grapes and apples for tomorrow when Mana Ika and his wife are coming. There were certainly a lot of kids at Luisa and Juan’s. I wondered who they all belonged to. I met Veronica, sister in law to Georgina this morning too, also with a little baby. I wasn’t sure if it was hers or not but she knew it was ten months old.

7.30pm

It’s been a quiet day. Grant’s still out.

He got very involved in the church records and the padre kindly let him work on them in his house.

I went down to buy fish today and couldn’t but talked to two little girls on the way Alicia and ? I can’t remember. They were supposed to be cleaning and scuttled off when someone called them. I ended up down at the harbour and met a girl who is marrying an Australian in Santiago and is going to Australia. She is called Maria and has a little daughter, half American. She says the American family wanted to have the girl and are always sending clothes for her. She told me about how she told her mother about the baby but I couldn’t understand a word because it was in Pascuence English.

I’m reading Middlemarch and I’m glad I brought it as it has a very brisk effect on me and stops me moping if I ever feel like doing so.

For some reason I need to read George Eliot’s Middlemarch about once every ten years. The strong voice and unwavering ethical compass reassure me. However each time, depending on my stage in life, I identify with a different person in the story. I’ve been the silly little sister, the mortified wife of a shamed eminent citizen of the town and even the flirtatious Rosamund..

Questions that raise themselves

Where is the island heading? Materialism – maybe further isolation and separation of families into definite pecking order. Maria Hei is of the upper group but at present even she has to go to the ECA. Supply is the leveller at present.

What are moral standards here? A) Soledad, probably promiscuous, Louisa Pakerati Ika, strictly monogamous c) Innumerable illegitimate children everywhere..

Moral standards!!! Promiscuous!!! What a little prig you were then Julia. But I guess all these years later we would talk abouit “sexual mores” but mean the same thing.

Religion and superstition – how strong now? “Aren’t you afraid of the devil in the dark?”

Infant mortality – how much gastroenteritis?

Gifts and exchanges – should we do more reciprocating? Today Rosa asked for one of Carlo’s avocado pears. Should I have let her have it?

Where does the money come from?

Most of these questions gradually got answered as time went on. Quite quickly I realised that the huge public service provided regular cash which percolated through the system and resale of items from the continent added more. Tourism, then in its infancy, was to end up making the island quite rich. Then there was fishing and a bit of agricultural production Huge cabbages used to come into town now and then probably overfed on fertiliser..

We spent most of today at Luisa Ika’s place out at Tahai and I looked at some statues for the first time. Grant explained Professor Mulloy’s reconstructions to me including a very big chicken house which I couldn’t believe was simply for chickens.

Professor Bill Mulloy was an archeologist who made many expeditions to the island and was responsible for restoring ceremonial sites, especially the ahus where statues had fallen.

Tahai is an astonishing place – so beautiful and rugged - and dead. I was filled with pity for the people who have to live in the shadow of these statues. Below the four big moai is something like a little harbour. It makes you feel quite excited at first because it suggests commerce and life at some time in the island’s history. And then you realise there is simply not enough water for it to have been a harbour and that it must have simply had a ritual purpose.

Oh Julia 26 -only now do I recognise your need for commerce and “life” and how you were trying to shape the place into something you could understand and like. You were not unlike the priests using rongo rongo boards for firewood simply because they didn’t understand their use and needed firewood to cook wafers for communion. I suppose homesickness took many forms and at least you did no harm.

The day at Mana’s was nice. He came to the house with an elderly Atan lady around 9.30 and picked me up after collecting a few tomato plants off Carlo and we picked up Grant from the post office. In the morning Grant talked to Mana’s wife Luisa and took her genealogy.

One of the most significant research tools for Grant was gathering family trees and working out links between people as well as the shapes of families. It was a time honoured ethnological practice.Often in the process, stories would be told; who made a clandestine voyage from the island when it was forbidden by the government, who died when and how, which families were related and hence not allowed to intermarry and all sorts of other issues. The genealogy book went on being a such a sacred object in our family that when Grant’s study caught fire in 1990, Mungo, then 19, ran in to rescue it and only retreated when his hair was catching fire. The charred relic was tenderly recopied.

She had ten children, the first two of whom died and they were married after four years of living together. She said she’d only slept with one man, her husband. She talked to other men, but with the body – no.

She works incredibly hard. Gets up at 5am and goes to bed at 12 or 1 if there is more work to be done. She gave us a huge lunch of salad soup. ( I can’t remember what this odd sounding dish was now) which we couldn’t manage, and meat with rice. She also served ‘pan’ and guava jam. The pan is a cross between bread and pancake and very rich. Mungo screamed about lunchtime and on her instructions I took all his clothes off He did have a bit of a nappy rash and she told me to wash him in warm water and put talcum powder on him and let him go without a nappy. “He’s a baby so it doesn’t matter”

She bore all her children at home with Mana holding her back and her holding the bed. They were all big babies, she said and Mana said they’d been brought up on fish soup and bread and not much milk. Interesting. Both Carlo and Mana have pronounced against too much milk.

One of the sons, Alberto, went to New York to be brought up there but came back after six months. There is a photograph album with lots of pictures of him by a television set and an electric stove and at the zoo. He’s home now looking none the worse for the ordeal.

In the afternoon all the boys came home from work and played with Mungo There is one son, several cousins and a nephew all very much of an age. They taught me two new cat’s cradles of which I think I can still do one. They all ate hanging around the kitchen. There seems to be no notion of sitting at table to eat. All water at Mana’s place is brought in from ten miles away although he is building a lavatory. At present there isn’t one – only a very public bench with a hole in it.

I talked to a neighbour a little as well – the woman with the two week old baby at the airport and Mana’s sister who has one baby boy of nine months who is still breastfeeding. She is very old and worn looking but the baby is fat and flourishing and obviously very much loved. I think that the husband has left her for the continent. Another tubbier looking woman was there with a little girl. They tried to show me some kai kai too. They also said for some reason to do with Mungo’s teeth that my next one would be a girl.

It wasn’t.

I felt full of life and easiness after visiting that family. They seem a happy lot and there’s always a lot going on. Mungo enjoyed it too and ate a great plate of semolina.

Saturday, 15 April

I forgot to mention that we went to a rehearsal on Thursday of the conjunto that went to Santiago today. It took place at the school and was supposed to start at 9pm but in fact got going at about 10.30. Quite a lot of people were there including the governor and the terrible tourist woman who claims to be a professor.

We all sat around the walls of the school hall and waited and finally saw the dancing. It began with a solemn pascuence chant given by the boys dressed in grass skirts and necklaces of straw and accompanied by a skin drum, two horns clacked together and other bits and pieces. The girls were a bit tense but danced wiggling their grass skirts and funny little bikini tops with tassels on them. They had none of the abandon of the best dancers here, like Soledad, and looked altogether a bit too well brought up. The performance warmed up a bit and included some kai kais with their chants.

Apparently the group has 50 costumes altogether. We only saw 30 – the grass skirt outfits and the girls’ feather skirts and flowered head dresses and Elena next doors’ shell garments that I saw being made when I went there with Georgina.

The dance left me with a very mixed impression. A lot of care and love had gone into the costumes but the dancing was anything but authentic. The grand finale was like something out of South Pacific with lots of waving goodbye and throwing of flowers (this was only mimed at the rehearsal). It all seemed oddly vulgar – even the kai kai chanting with the rolling drum in the background. I felt the meaning of this type of dancing lay in the doing rather than the watching and the conjunto was part of the revival of things touristic rather than artistic.

This comment seems very judgmental and unfair now.

The whole thing finished very late and we trogged home in the dark feeling cold for the first time. We’ve all got some kind of cold now.

Carlo told us at lunch that Georgina has 3 more children. The oldest is a girl who has for some reason been more or less adopted by the ex governor of the island and is living in Santiago now. The other two are living with Georgina’s parents.

That is Juan and Luisa, the parents of Georgina. Maria/Suzy, Milagrosa,Victoria, and nine more living. Luisa bore sixteen children in all. Luisa became a close friend later when we moved into the little house in front of theirs.

The ten year old boy smokes and is a little tearaway and the seven year old seems to be turning out queer, C says, because he likes playing with dolls and doesn’t like being rough. Carlo maintains that his way of bringing up kids is ‘straight” whereas the island way is uneducated and uncivilized. He also said that most young girls have a baby somewhere. Georgina did not tell him how many she had when they were married but he considers those before marriage her responsibility and those after, his. On the continent a man can be imprisoned for unlawful sexual intercourse. He himself served 20 days in gaol. But not so here.

Victor was crying this morning so I took him into our room. He was very hot and needed clothes taking off but basically he seemed to want company because he cried again when I put him back after about an hour. The bedroom next door is very foetid and stuffy. I wished I could adopt him because he’s an affectionate little boy. He’s a bit spotty now.

Mungo has a touch of diarrhea for the first time. The other kids have been fighting a lot today. Coca is home for the weekend. They really don’t have enough to do though, today. Coca has a pile of little shells that she is threading. I offered to take them out for a walk but Carlo says it’s best they stay quietly at home.

We’ve had a busy morning. After breakfast, around 7am, Soledad and I went to the hospital taking a bumpy short cut through the fields and guava bushes. When we got to the hospital, which is made up of a number of caravans and prefabs, Sole went in and had a long discussion with the sister from which she emerged in tears without her free milk ration. I think she had lost her book. Anyway she went on about the “fuckin Chilean woman” for quite a while.

There were quite a few people hanging around the baby section,which seemed to be divided into “control” and “casualty”. The casualty was run by two men, who could have been doctors. (They were giving injections anyway).

In fact they were nurses. There was only ever one resident doctor on the island.

The Control was being run by a Chilean nurse and the free milk and vitamins were being given out by a nun. A Chilean woman with three girls and a fourth at school was waiting. Another woman had a baby of about a year and then there was Victor and Maria/Suzy, Georgina’s sister who had come in as an antenatal patient.

When the matron turned up I was seen first. I got a little book. Mungo was checked over – hair, teeth walking ability and then he was weighed somewhat laboriously by me and him getting on the scale together and then me alone and deducting the second figure from the first, arriving at 10 kilos 60 gms. The matron checked which injections Mungo had had and we established what measles was and she said that the inoculation was only given in winter here. I was rather embarrassed at having to accept free milk because it seems a bit much coming here and taking advantage of benefits being given to the island because of its poverty.

Actually during the socialist Allende government years there were very good social services and not just for the island.

Anyway it will do for Soledad.

I saw a baby who had been born the night before at the hospital. All dressed in brand new pink clothes with a pink shawl. A boy, again – ‘with no name yet”

I found out where the Telegraph Office is today. Sole sent a telegram from a little box office near the Policarpo monument. He [the official] wrote it for her.

After the hospital we trogged over the fields again and Victor was put to sleep whilst we went off to buy some meat, having heard on the radio that some was to be for sale in the paddock down by the sea beyond the fishmarket. There was a little group of people around the butcher’s kiosk when we got there, and meat – that is steak rather than tripe or liver- was selling at 15 escudos a kilo. We bought three kilos. A tall fair Chilean boy played with Mungo for a bit. We met Romero (a shopkeeper) with a straw basket going down our way and Veronica coming back with lots of bones and blood. The butchery was done very crudely by just chopping hunks off the main carcass and hooking them on a scale. The head was sitting, with its horns, on the wall around the kiosk patio. There were avocados and tomatoes too. Sole made me do the buying – maybe because I always seem to go in front of people I shouldn’t because of Mungo.

(or more likely my ‘stranger’ status. This magic wore off after a bit rather to my relief.)

On the way home we called in at Alviras’s, another one of Georgina’s sisters who lives in the waterfront group of houses. Someone there was carving a statue of a spirit.

Most likely a moai kava kava, a skeletal figure that, alongside replicas of the statues, was a popular tourist item.

We also called in at the bar which was owned by Soledad’s “aunt” where we were given a drink of ‘water’ which was pisco, (a sort of brandy) and lemon in fact. I met a little baby there called Juan Tuki, about three months old. We got a lift back from the telegraph office.

Grant has a bad cold and Mungo is a bit off colour today too. I feel exhausted after two big walks with Mungo on my back.

I had a backpack style sling which served me well. People were always asking me why Mungo didn’t walk and I answered with one of my few Rapanui phrases “Hupe hype” (lazy). How unfair to Mungo! On the whole people tended to leave their small children at home but that wasn’t an option for me then.

Yesterday I found out that there’s a Pentecostal church here with 30 members Chilean. Also apparently Georgina does not get on too well with Milarosa – the ‘black’ sister. The only sister liked by Sole is the one I call Maria and she calls Suzie.

I liked her very much too and have called her Maria/Suzy in the diary because therenare so many Marias.

Thursday April 13th 1972

Today started on a bad note. At about 3.30 am Victor started crying and woke Mungo. This went on fitfully until 6am when Soledad returned from a night out. Carlo was furious with her and had apparently had nightmares. I had too. Sole was exhausted and slept sitting up on her bed after she’d fed Victor. If I’d known she wasn’t there at all I’d have fed him myself.

I went out with Grant this morning down to the co-op. It had nothing much so I headed for the harbour and met a woman called Maria Hito. She told me there were no fish now but would be at three this afternoon and would I like to come to her house and drink something. We went and I was introduced to Pat McCoy’s sister in law Anna.

Pat McCoy was an archeologist who had married an Easter Island girl. but didn’t live on the island at that time.

The house was the most stylish I’ve seen yet – soft cushions on the sofa, nice washed plastic flowers and not a lot of clutter. It is in the main street. Bright blue. Anna showed me a letter in Spanish from Pat, saying he’s coming in June or July.

After that I came home and found a tired looking Soledad and Rosa from up the way eating semolina.

Grant and I met the plane this afternoon. I encountered Maria Tepano again and didn’t immediately recognise her. I don’t know why I find it so hard to remember faces even when the personalities make quite a firm impression.

This went on to be a problem all my life. I believe it has a name now - just checked -Prosopagnosia, it is. Often causes offence. Fortunately not every face is unrecognisable but often quite important ones.

As usual we met all the people we know there, Sergio Rapu, the girl next door’s boyfriend, the governor, innumerable young girls who like Mungo and various relations of Georgina’s who I can’t identify but who greet me with kisses. The jolly one from the bar was there with little Juan Tuki. I met Maria Luisa Pakerati Tuki too and she invited me to the place tomorrow at 9am.

The box didn’t come and a search is being set up all along the route it took. I saw a young man doing kai kai (cats cradles) at the airport too. I also saw a middle aged woman with a little two week old baby. It had a very unsterilized looking bottle of water. She told me she wasn’t breastfeeding and then seemed to be with a great display of modesty and shrouding with shawls. I admired the baby and then as usual she said it wasn’t as good as mine with white skin and blue eyes – all the good things.

Grant said he found out today, and will be getting documentary evidence for the fact that there are about 70 children fathered by the Americans here.

I went to the ECA this morning after calling in at Lan Chile with Grant to find what had become of the box. (A piece of our luggage which got lost en route) The LAN office is a grubby little place on the FAC base near the runway.

After the Lan office I went to the cooperativa and bought six eggs and six little peppers. Then I was given a lift home and was accosted by a terrible American woman who is touring here at the moment. After that I left Soledad (the girl’s name I now discover who works here and I suspect of being Georgina’s eldest daughter) and went to the ECA which wasn’t too full. I was helped by a really nice sensible woman called Maria Ihe (as far as I could hear). She was nice and clear about showing me how to make my list and get a bill and then get the goods on the bill. I bought a small Nescafe, 2 toilet rolls, 10 jugos and one kilo of rice. After that I felt rather confident and went to Alvarez, the little shop on the corner and bought a bottle of vinegar for 30 escudos which seemed a lot.

Then Mungo and I went to the funny little junk shop with ducks and kittens at the back and we shared a jugos and I bought a tin of tomatoes.. It was a very peaceful ten minutes I spent there with my juice on the veranda waving to people who passed on horses.

The old man who runs the place has a silver moustache. It stocks very little – a few sweet potatoes, tinned tomatoes and one or two other tins and lots of shell necklaces, carvings and coral.

When I got home a chicken stew was under way made with a home grown chicken. I deduced this from all the feathers round the dustbin. It was a tough but tasty stew. I talked to Sole a bit and she told me the plot of a John Wayne film she’d seen the night before, only totally non comprehensibly. I couldn’t understand a thing. She also expressed her contempt for Chileans. For all that she’s called her baby after his Chilean father. She also told me that there is a Well Baby Clinic here and she’s going tomorrow. Tonight, to my surprise she’s going to an evening class. For senoras, she said. Something that sounded like Liberal Arts.

Mungo and I fell asleep after lunch as did Christian, and woke in stuffy rooms around 3pm feeling terrible. Christian moped in the back yard for about half an hour and then Mungo and I set off for Maria’s.. She wasn’t there so I walked to the shore and watched 11 little boys playing football on the green(?). I fielded the ball for them once or twice. We played among the rocks for a bit and then set off for home and found Maria doing the washing by the wall on the way home. She invited me in and gave me jugos and I gave her the little angel top I’d set aside. She told me that you can get free baby milk at the hospital. She’s a nice woman. She gave me some coral and sausage and two tomatoes.

I grew to understand and appreciate the gifting that was part of all visits and learnt to do it myself after a bit.

When I got home I made Mungo some scrambled eggs and the old man who gave us a bunch of bananas some days ago came by with another and a reproachful look.

I’d not been reciprocal I guess.

I got him coffee and fed Mungo and finally Grant came home and gave him some razor blades which he wanted. He’s giving Grant his genealogy now I think.

I’m tackling Rapanui language now I think. I don’t think I’ll get anywhere unless I do. Today I felt a bit inadequate and as if I was doing nothing – no baby studying or string figure collecting. I must try harder.

Tuesday 11 April 1972

We got up at 6am today because Grant was meeting Sergio Rapu at 7.30 at the school.

Sergio spoke perfect English, having spent many childhood years in the US with the family of Bill and Emily Mulloy. Bill was the principal architect on the island and had restored a lot of statues. He was a schoolteacher the but went on to be Governor of the Island in Chilean dictator, Pinochet’s time

I walked down with him. The town was very much alive with children going to school and trucks setting off for outside town. We met Sergio in his van and he took us to school. I went down to the fishmarket but as usual there were no fish. It was beautifully cool and I got a lift from the boyfriend of he girl next door who is going to dance in Santiago on Saturday. I did the washing when I got home and wrote to Pat. I had a moment of panic when I couldn’t remember her address – just complete blankness. It came back – at least I think it’s right.

I studied Rapanui for a while and at last a bit is beginning to stick. I can say the odd thing that makes sense to an Easter Islander. Sole and I went to the meat ECA and she bought two chickens and me one. We ate one of the chickens for lunch with noodles.

After lunch Sole said she was going to have her photo taken at the police station for her Chilean boyfriend (sweetie), one of the FACS officers who was here and would I like to come. So we trooped off to the carabinieri (police quarters) part of town at the end of the airport and went to visit a lovely little house full of strange things – dried fishes and a turtle shell – a tame pigeon and three little grey cats and a duck and two sorts of hens. We sat about for a while and looked at some photos of the woman’s family and then Sole took Mungo and had her photo taken with him and a big red flower. It cost, I think 25 escudos. The woman said she took all sorts of photographs. including passport photographs.

Many continental Chilean wives provided special services to the island, such as cake making, dressmaking and photography.

After the photography session we went to look for eggs in the cave Ana Kai Tangata down by the sea.. I was a bit terrified handing Mungo down over the volcanic rocks and I didn’t get right inside where there were baby birds but sat up on a rock watching ferocious spray bashing on the other side of my rock and seeing Sole paddling about down in the cave. I wondered if she ever felt trapped with the waves sealing her in every few minutes. She said it was very hot in there when she came back. She is very agile.

When we got home Carlo was a bit fed up because Victor (Sole’s baby) had been crying. Little Victor does get abandoned rather a lot.

It was a good day. I got the washing done too and darned Grant’s socks. Noticed that Sole doesn’t sterilize her bottles at all. I wonder if the clinic advises sterilization or not. What advice does it give?

One rather ghastly thing I heard today was that there are still five cases of leprosy living in the leprosarium. The youngest, who is only 24 has just lost a leg. It seems terrible that they should be out there on their own with two visits a week from the nurse except in cases of illness. They cook for themselves. What an awful sentence that must be. The doctor told Grant about it.

Leprosy, or Hansen’s disease probably arrived on the island in the late 19th century and many families lost large numbers of members to the illness. As with tuberculosis, malnutrition may have been a factor as the families least affected had access to meat from the sheep ranch whilst others did not. The sheep were raised for wool and tallow and surplus meat was apparently disposed of in the sea lest the incentive to work be eroded.

Chile annexed the island in 1888 and, in time, a policy was implemented (as in other Polynesian countries) of isolating sufferers in a colony on the outside of town. This place was called the sanatorium when we were there. Effective treatment in the 1950s and 1960s allowed people to slowly return to Hangaroa and live in the community. About four people still lived in the sanatorium out of town which had once accommodated and isolated many sufferers. I have heard that the sanatorium has since been closed and a memorial for those who died there has been created.

I was mistaken in imagining living in the sanatorium as a “sentence’ In fact I later got into the habit of visiting the sanatorium because it was a lovely place with orange trees unaffected by the pests that had ruined the trees in town. The people there seemed content and happy to have the odd visitor.

A few people in the village still bore signs of having had the disease. This did not seem to be a stigma, although Continental school children (those belonging to government officials stationed on the island) still used to mock islander schoolchildren by mimicking having no fingers and suchlike. It played its part in the complex tensions between islander and continental Chileans at the time, as will emerge in the diary later on.

At about three Grant came home with the little English speaking Chilean and the head of the cooperative and they stayed chatting for a while. I went for a walk to see Maria, Georgina’s sister but the place was all padlocked up.

I discovered somewhat to my horror that Florencia (aka Soledad) is coming to live here. She keeps pressing me to go to the cinema, go bathing with her. I don’t want to because last time she guided me round the American base and begged bread off the Chilean FAC base. I don’t feel it comfortable becoming an inseparable partner to her and she speaks the peculiar pidgin English that is more difficult to understand than Spanish. We (Grant and I) went to the hotel tonight after looking in at the FAC cinema and I chopped my toe up. Carlo keeps on about Mungo needing a corrale (playpen) and doesn’t like the food I cook. Ah well.

Sunday, 9th April

We got up at 6.30 this morning to go to mass. Grant wants to go to all three – 8am, 10am and 7.30 pm. We were quite surprised to find the church chocabloc at the early mass but were told people went to it because it was not as hot as later in the day.

I like the mass. It seems a really joyous celebration and an assertion of Pascuence identity. So much here is improvisation and voracious adoption that its good to see something unique – though I suppose the mass too is adopted. I felt much happier after going to the mass even with Mungo grubby and smelling and wriggling around.. I lurked around the church doors quite a bit, though I began the service inside and the old lady sitting next to me was not above giving Mungo the odd tickle. People were not quite as glittering as at Easter but still smart, though I noticed one old lady in bare feet.

Regarding “improvisation and adoption” mentioned above. Flattened oil drums for building and many other purposes as well as plastic flowers for tarting up tourist houses come to mind! I remember thinking before we left for the island that it would somehow be “ethnic” and being disappointed in the drabness of the cement buildings that predominated in Hangaroa. I would have liked a grass hut or two I think! Specially to live in.

I got a lift home with the girl next door and her boyfriend. She wore a silver lame and white dress and looked as though she’d stepped out of a bandbox. We’re going swimming this afternoon.

Milarosa, another of Georgina’s sisters came up to me after the service and I thanked her for the tins of sweet potatoes she’s given us. I do wonder why they have tinned sweet potatoes here. Surely they are the one type of food that could be home grown.

Probably remnants from the American base.

The children woke fantastically early today and larked around in their room. Apparently all Pascuence children get up early in town and Coca (Georgina’s daughter and oldest of the three kids in the house) wakes the others up.

LUNCHTIME OVER 12.30

Rosa (lived in a tiny house next door with Luis, Georgina’s brother) brought her little girl to lunch. I think Carlo wanted Soledad and Rosa to eat in the kitchen but they wouldn’t. Soledad took a surreptitious small portion at first and then more. Some kind of class system operating but not very successfully. Carlo made Rosa put the jugos in the fridge. The meal of nicely done rice and meat pleased Carlo. Perhaps that’s why he let Sole get away with eating with us (as she cooked). I still can’t fathom her status at all. Every chance she gets Sole goes for a solitary dance with the record player.

I went to Anakena Beach with the Edmunds Rapahango today.

Percy Edmunds was the sheep ranch manager on the island from 1904-29 and sired two big families whose descendants continue to be influential.

Orland Paoa is after Grant for giving a talk to his tourists and was going to take us both to the beach but Grant wouldn’t go.

Orlando Paoa ran various tourist enterprises and Grant would have been an asset because he spoke several language and knew a lot about the island. But to have helped anybody with tourism would have caused complicated problems which we didn’t need.

I was startled by the barrenness of the rest of the island. A few sheep, but not that many, on the yellow brown hills. I saw a moai. (Easter Island statue).

Moais are omnipresent these days and indeed I bought three in Bunnings the hardware megastore to make a little altar in the garden for Grant’s birthday a few years ago. Among many other figures, politician Malcolm Fraser was likened to a moai (and not kindly). The stony and mysterious inhumanity of the image seems to trigger mockery. Worse yet, appalling artefacts have emerged such as a tissue box where you pull your tissue out of a moai’s nose. It is sad. Nobody would demean a crucifix thus (not that such an object really lends itself to mundane adaptation). Anyway I for one affirm the beauty and nobility of the moai above and am glad it will stand long after I am gone.

Lots of visitors today, “eating up food,” so Carlo says bitterly. But I think he likes them to come. He was awfully bored tonight with no one here.We planted my seeds today. Silver beet, thyme, squash and beans. Hope they grow.

I walked down to meet Grant in the dark tonight. It wasn’t creepy but I was alarmed by a madman or a drunk and a dog and was glad to get home after missing him because the mass was already over.

On the island the important landing was the Thursday one from Santiago and we almost always met it. The airport on Thursdays was a social occasion with shell necklaces to bestow on incomers and carvings to be sold. When we first arrived, transit passengers could go on a short tour of the island before the plane left.

The plane Georgina was getting a lift with belonged to the Chilean airforce and was quite small.

The end of a rather frustrating day. Yesterday I was told I would have to cook because Georgina was going to the cooperativa to buy lamb at four centavos a kilo 1– very cheap and only available once a month.

I stayed in but, for one reason or another, Carlo cooked so it was a bit of a waste. I did look after the kids while the two of them (Georgina and Carlos) went to meet the Chilean airforce plane, however.

This was the first stage of Georgina’s manoeuvres to get a lift to Santiago on the plane. A party for the generals at the house was also being planned.

One of the younger Pakarati brought a sheep home and Carlo butchered it very efficiently. He laughed and said he was ”like a doctor”. It had the liver and lights and tripe in it but the entrails had been removed.

Later Carlo lit a fire out in the yard and made bread on a sort of griddle. He was in rather high spirits about this and came in with a bag of bread saying it was enough for three, four days.

I went for a walk finally, down to the little beach beyond the hotel and met Grant on his way home. The shore is very rocky and surfy with lovely rockpools. I noticed a large number of children galloping around on horses.

Carlo asked tonight if the girl who called in around breakfast this morning had wandered around because he was missing 200 escudos. Georgina said he was a silly fool. She bought a little shell bag today to take to Santiago with her when she has her legs treated. (Georgina had bad varicose veins.) Its opening is too small to put anything in but it’s very pretty.

Last night Georgina held a party for the Chileans from the airforce who flew in yesterday morning. About fifteen came, including two generals. They are all on a sort of goodwill mission on its way to Europe. Most of them spoke English. They brought a lot of cognac and Pepsi Cola. They were invited because Georgina wants to go to Santiago for free with the plane. At first no girls were at the party except me, but gradually more came. At one point there was so much noise that Mungo woke and had to be taken for a walk. Coming back from this walk I met a girl who came up to me and introduced herself as Georgina’s eldest daughter by a Frenchman.

This was Soledad who became part of the household from time to time and guided me on walks sometimes.

She said she was going to stay in the house while Georgina was away. She spoke garbled but comprehensible English and a little French. We went in together and since everything seemed to be so above board I said to Georgina (who was pretty drunk) “I’ve just met your oldest daughter”. She was furious and said “You know Coca, you know Chico, Christian – they my children etc etc no other, you understand?” and of course I said yes.

In fact I had either misunderstood because of my limited understanding of Spanish or Soledad was fantasising. I’ve just checked Grant’s sacred genealogy book and Sole is not amongst her children.

I get awfully irritated with her (Georgina) sometimes. She summoned me to her room this morning “una pocito parfum” I was still staggering around sleepily. I looked for the lipstick too but that seems to have disappeared for the moment.

I wonder now why on earth I took make-up with me let alone perfume! But I guess in those days it was what one did. I’m not sure I could put lipstick on now if I tried!

It is rather exasperating not having any control over what happens when. And I put too much water on the paraffin stove today and mucked it up. And Carlo told me not to use so much water.

My walk was nice though. I enjoyed that.

Tonight there seems to be yet another dance with the Chilean generals. Pretty cloths have been put over the furniture and there is a feeling of excitement.

I could do without it though.

Grant met some interesting people today. Someone told him that a Chilean geologist from the national university disappeared without a trace in 1968 Their theory was he discovered something fishy going on at the American base and was done away with by them.

Anyway I saw Soledad again today – this time with her baby who apparently has a Chilean father who deserted her. The baby’s name is Victor and he’s three months old. She was at the house of Maria, Georgina’s sister whom I visited with Grant this afternoon. She seemed quite a different girl – more withdrawn and not talking English at all.

The party went pretty well – plenty of dancing and drinking and Georgina got her lift to Santiago. She got very emotional, late on in the evening, and went on about having us in her house and how hard it was that she had to go so soon. A rather sophisticated Chilean student engineer looked a little scornfully at all of this “I’ve never met people like this before” he said.

This morning there was a good deal of washing up and a couple of Chileans came by with cameras and I took a photograph of the family with them.

We had fish for lunch with lamb stew later.

This afternoon Georgina and I went visiting. We called in next door first where where Adriana and her mother (?) were making a hula hula costume. This consists of a bikini top covered in shells and feathers and a skirt with strings of shells. There’s a head dress too. Big black shells for nipples and a ring of black shells circling them, otherwise all tiny little white ones with holes punched in them. For thread she used unraveled flyscreen. There were five sorts of shells in all being used. Apparently the hula hula is done in Santiago and for the tourists here.

We talked for a while at Adriana’s and then went on to Georgina’s sister, Maria’s.

We met her on the step and she was nursing a baby but she explained it wasn’t hers and moreover it wasn’t too beautiful because it was “muchas negrito” (very black) Maria herself is expecting a baby in a month. She usually works at the hotel but at the moment is off work and will be for two months after the baby. She was wearing a leopard spotted dress and produced a bottle of wine for us to drink of which Georgina drank most. Also there was a sister in law and the girl from the party. They told me that a certain Rufina was “Miss Easter Island.”

Once a year there was (and still is) an islandwide festival called Tapati Rapanui, that is Easter Island Week. Rufina was elected at the last one..

After this we went on to the dressmakers who speaks very good English (comparatively) because she worked for the Americans for three years. She has red hair and a girl about six and a boy of eight months called Pedro. Again I was told what a great loss the Americans’ departure was. She works at the hotel as a chambermaid but seems to go to Santiago quite often. I asked if it wasn’t awfully expensive and she said she didn’t think so. (Islanders got special rates on the plane) The dressmaker cut the dress very cleverly with a tape measure while we waited. I was very sleepy.

I have to get a poster with flowers on it for Georgina and see if I have any baby clothes for Maria.

Georgina goes to Santiago tomorrow and there is a great deal of excitement. She’s making a head dress out of dried flowers and cardboard now and has packed her red suitcase. There is to be another party tonight with meat cooked in the garden and “drinky drinky” Georgina is a bit cheesed off that I haven’t got any hairspray for her elaborate coiffure. She really is a bit predatory. She’s got at my shampoo now and I know for a fact they sell it here. All the same I shall miss being bullied and helped by her for the next little while.

This morning Grant and I went down to the cooperativa and I bought a kilo of tomatoes and talked to an old man there. I sent a letter to mum at the post office and waited at the fish market for a while but only a boat with lobsters came in. I made friends through Mungo with Maria Pakerati – a tall dark girl who works at the hospital.

I met a Scottish woman, an air hostess who seemed very frustrated by her dealings in Spanish for a statue. Someone wanted 300 escudos (9 dollars) for one he was making for her. She liked the place though.

After I left her at the church I called in at Maria, Georgina’s sister. Soledad was there too with little Victor. I stayed and talked a little and had a glass of jugo Noticed they had a little electric stove. I wonder who the man of that household is. Maria’s eldest daughter is fairish and called Graciela. I noticed that Victor was wearing plastic (rubber actually) pants but no nappy. Again he cried when I picked him up. He was left on the bed while I was there. They told me that most people breast fed for only two or three months and then got milk from the ECA

Details included because I had undertaken to record childcare practices.

She also said that Georgina liked fiestas too much and when she was gone we’d all get more sleep.

I grew to love Maria, Georgina’s sister for her dark comments and philosophical acceptance of life and the need to settle down and get married after the baby was born. Her husband to be appears soon.

This afternoon we went to the airport. We arrived about an hour before the plane was due and all the stalls were set up and people gathered. They sold carvings and shell necklaces and one had a couple of puffer fish. Various young girls whipped Mungo off from time to time. I also met Miraflora (?) and an American lady who knew the geologist who disappeared. A nice lady from one of the stalls gave Mungo a necklace. It is a strange emotion seeing a plane coming and going with all this ceremony. One feels a sense of loss.

After the party last night Georgina took off at sevenish this morning in all her finery. The plane returned, however, an hour later with one of the engines having failed. Georgina was then supposed to leave at one but didn’t. I got thoroughly fed up with the mountains of washing up that got left at each of the false departures and also at Georgina’s repeated scrounging. She got our one plastic glass and demanded a sanitary towel. I didn’t have any.

I’d brought a supply of tampons with me.

So she swiped the clean nappy that I put in the kitchen to dry up with. Then she demanded another so I said I wouldn’t give her one. She was amazed and assumed I did not understand her demand. She went away anyway. I felt very tormented about the whole thing but have decided not to be milked dry by Georgina. She has things I don’t have and I don’t suppose she’d willingly share her scent.

I went off in a rage this morning fed up with all the people and the commands and I was dead tired anyway having been woken at 5am by the alarm, and rushing to the airport for 6.30. (That is the LAN Chile plane) There were quite a few people there including the museum Rapu.

It was a great anticlimax when the plane (air force plane) came back. Georgina was quite pleased, however, because it gave her a chance to get washed and dressed all over again and have her hair done again. She wore the dress she had had made – long in pink and black Tahitian cloth and she paused on the steps of the aeroplane for her photograph to be taken.

I got a guided tour of the American base, much against my will today. When I went off for my walk I was accosted by Soledad and made to look at the sights of the American base.

Later I took off again along the coast and walked as far as the Moai Tahai. I saw some statues and then needed a drink of water. I called in at Luisa Pakerati’s (I found out later) wife of Mana Ika Nohoe. She runs a tourist house with carving as a sideline. She has an enormous family and a whole sheep hung in the kitchen plus lobsters in the fridge. She gave me jugos (powdered fruit drink) and Mungo condensed milk and pan – sort of heavy pancakes with guava jam which he scoffed. He was very much appreciated there and had a whale of a time with the younger boys.

There was one very beautiful older boy called Juan something and one with a band round his head called Joel. The Mongolian Frenchman with the pigtail lives there too. His name is Tuli and he says he lives for free.

Carlo is talking tonight about the grabbing nature of Georgina’s family. Apparently he put some meat away in the larder in a sack and it was gone in the morning. None of them were invited but they came to the party. He’s a bit bitter about that.

The ECA was the Chilean government store on the island in the 1970s and sold basic food supplies like flour and rice and oil. (There will be a list in the appendix) Also building materials and paraffin could be got there. The bulk of these goods was shipped to the island twice a year. Items were often in short supply or bad condition. (We sometimes had to sieve the flour to get the weevils out. But queuing at the ECA was central to the life of island housewives as I learnt early on.

We set off after breakfast – me with Mungo and no bag to carry things in. Grant came too. The meat ECA is in the American Base which is a sad place now. There are lots of little steel huts, each with a garden overgrown. Only the foundations of the casino and mess room and cinema remain with weeds growing. The meat fridge was given to the ECA by the base when they left so that’s why the shop is there now.

We queued for something like an hour at the first ECA in the out at the old American base because the manager hadn’t arrived. I sat about on the grass with Mungo and listened to the Pascuence wives talking. Someone gave him an apple. I noticed one baby of four months had a pushchair – very old but serviceable. One or two people pointed out ruins of the old American life – one said “We never thought it would come to this”. It seemed very sad. I bought a chicken, a kilo of apples and a kilo of potatoes and half a kilo of butter when my turn came. It came to about 100 escudos (4 dollars). They wouldn’t sell me half a kilo of lemons for some reason. After that we tramped across to the second ECA in Hangaroa which sells groceries. I copied out the first half of the list on the wall.

There is quite a bit about queueing in the diary. It could be peaceful, or tense and ridden with conflict, but on the whole it was good for me. I made friends, learnt Spanish and Rapanui and found out what was going on.

Everybody bought in bulk as far as I could see. Especially Rinso (detergent). I was all for buying two small packets but Georgina insisted I buy five. So no wonder the clothes here are all so clean!.

Mine never were because I didn’t ever master the technique of mercilessly scrubbing fabric. I used to soak our clothes in a vessel made of half a petrol drum split horizontally and then get in myself and rock it back and forward like a washing machine. Because the soapy water had been heated by me, a local dog used to jump into the drum as well and enjoy the rolling. Fortunately Grant wasn’t troubled by his appearance but as time went on the islanders were and he would be offered the odd garment. It’s lucky I was so young because I was an awful housewife by Island standards - didn’t make “amuerzo” (lunch) for my husband (because he didn’t want it) couldn’t keep floors shiny by scrubbing them with wire wool etc. After a mistake or two however I could cook a meal out of almost anything, a skill honed by post war rationing perhaps.

I got very irritated at the grocery ECA. Mungo was crawling about in the black dust finding cigarette ends all the time and I couldn’t understand anything that was said to me.

Georgina’s sister greeted me with a kiss today. Maybe one is accepted as one of the family when you stay as we are going to do. Finally Georgina sent me on ahead for home. I wasn’t sure of the way and my bag broke and a lorry came by and covered me with dust. I nearly wept with the frustration of it all.

After lunch I left Mungo with F and Grant and I went to see Sergio Rapu (brother of Alfonso Rapu) at the schoolhouse.

Alphonso Rapu led an island uprising in 1964 and his brother Sergio became governor later under the Pinochet government. When I was there Sergio was a schoolteacher.

The English teacher spoke rather awful English.

I cooked supper tonight under incredibly primitive conditions. Only one burner on the stove worked and that erratically. There was no light and someone or something had shat in a dark corner. I produced fried chicken and rice, however with a few ancient PX spices thrown in left over from the Americans. I also achieved a few odd onion rings with dried milk and cornflour!

Georgina wasn’t well tonight. Carlo teased her and said she was making theatre. I lent her my purple dress with a smocked waist to copy. I think it is a very unsuitable style for her but she seemed to want to copy it. She had a good look through the wardrobe today and seemed a bit disappointed I hadn’t brought more dresses.