Georgina and the Chilean generals
April 4-7, 1972
The next entries confused even me, at first, because they involve arrivals and departures of two different planes so I will clarify. The regular LAN Chile plane arrived from Santiago on Thursday, leaving news, cargo, mail and tourists. It left for Tahiti the same day. It returned to the island from Tahiti on Saturday on its way back to Santiago (and on to Frankfurt) but normally without cargo or much excitement for us, though there were exceptions to this.
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.