A visit to the hospital, buying some meat, & prosopagnasia at the airport
12-13 April
Wednesday 12 April 1972 2pm
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.