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The daughter of Napole\u00f3n Ika and Flora Paoa, Rosa today is 73 years old. With her 17 brothers and sisters, she belongs to the aristocratic Miru tribe.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy father is the son of a Frenchman who took refuge on the Island after his cargo ship, the \u201cJean\u201d, was sunk by the German cruiser \u201cPrinz Eitel Friedrich\u201d at the beginning of the First World War.\u00a0 He was rescued off of Poike by a sheep herder and brought to Hanga Roa.\u00a0 There he met my grandmother.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe initially lived on a small plot where my father planted corn to sell to the Williamson Balfour Company for their piggery.\u00a0 He also raised pigs and dairy cows and chickens and planted everything.\u00a0 We had enough to eat; what was lacking was clothing.\u00a0 The Company had a store but they didn\u2019t bring much variety, just cotton cloth, some with flowers.\u00a0 We grew up without shoes.\u00a0 When I got married, I got my first pair of shoes.\u201d![\"\"](\"https:\/\/moevarua.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/WhatsApp-Image-2019-08-29-at-14.05.32-3.jpeg\" "\\"\\"")
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\u201cMy wedding was organized by my parents.\u00a0\u00a0 One day my husband\u2019s family showed up and asked for my hand.\u00a0 I knew him from school, but we weren\u2019t friends or anything.\u00a0 Within my heart I didn\u2019t want to get married.\u00a0 I asked my mother why they wanted to marry me off.\u00a0 She had also married at 17 and my father was barely 14.\u00a0 She said so that I could have a husband and my own home.\u00a0 Really, people got married very young here because it was important to have children.\u00a0 There were very few people on the Island.\u00a0 There was no place to study and there wasn\u2019t any other entertainment, like now.\u201d\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n Rosa Ika later was able to study in Santiago in the Institute for Rural Education and then work in some of the mothers\u2019 centers in outlying areas, such as San Felipe, Nogales and Los Molles\u2026 \u201cthen I was sent back to the Island to organize supply co-operatives, start mothers\u2019 centers and youth clubs and organize craft workshops.\u00a0 In April of 1967, after the inauguration of the airstrip with 1,300 meters (built by the Longhi firm), we received the first charter flight with a group of American tourists brought by Lindblad Travel.\u00a0 They stayed in 40 tents that were set up by Hotelera Nacional HONSA.\u00a0 We received orders for floral necklaces to receive them and shell necklaces to see them off.\u00a0 We also formed a dance group to entertain the tourists.\u00a0 And we made rugs, reed curtains and mattresses for the hotel.\u201d <\/em> \u201cI separated from my husband, Diego Pakarati, after 9 years of marriage.\u00a0 In the Island there is a lot of wife-beating \u2013 although I never saw my father hit my mother.\u00a0 But the men here are tough and as inconstant as the moon.\u00a0 I think that they don\u2019t know how to love women.\u00a0 That\u2019s why the women get tough, to defend themselves.\u00a0 I was very weak and always ran into a corner, so that he would only beat me on my Kauha (buttocks). Now I feel fine.\u00a0 Nobody gives me orders.\u00a0 With Diego, we adopted Enrique Pakarati, who was born in 1958, and after the separation I raised him with the help of Father Sebastian Englert.\u00a0 <\/em><\/p>\n At that time people lived in two sectors of town — Moe Roa and Hanga Roa.\u00a0 The division was drawn from the church down to the fishing port.\u00a0 For New Year\u2019s Eve, there was a big party in Mataveri.\u00a0 Groups would sing and others would dance and the Company would give prizes to the best dancers.\u00a0 We also did Titingi, which means to knock on the door.\u00a0 The people from one sector would go to visit their families in the other sector, knocking on their door and sharing something to eat.\u00a0 Every year they would alternate the sector for visiting.\u00a0 There wasn\u2019t any liquor yet and we had good times talking and singing.\u00a0 Today you can\u2019t live peacefully with the young people drinking until late at night, playing electronic music at full volume, not letting anyone get any sleep.\u00a0 They end up drunk, running through town on their loud motorcycles at three or four in the morning and causing accidents.\u00a0 Civic education is sorely lacking\u201d<\/em>Rosa Ika relates an experience that she had with Pepe Varua, ancestral spirits which inhabit different places on this mysterious Island, sometimes showing themselves, even today, in dreams.\u00a0 \u201cMy mother would get up in the dark every morning to go to Mass with my father.\u00a0 She told me that she would often see someone walking in the dark near the house.\u00a0 Later I built my own house in the same place.\u00a0 The first night that I slept there, I dreamt that a man was sleeping on a bed in the living room and I asked him what he was doing in my house.\u00a0 The Varua responded that he has lived here for much longer than I have, so I should sleep soundly and nothing will happen to me.\u00a0 Since then I have felt very safe in my house.\u201d\u00a0 <\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Rosa Ika continues to work with the materials that nature provides, making ancestral costumes, hats, bags and lovely crowns, necklaces and hair pins.\u00a0 You can find her work at the crafts market at the airport. Rosa Ika Paoa The daughter of Napole\u00f3n Ika and Flora Paoa, Rosa today is 73 years old. With her 17 brothers and sisters, she belongs to the aristocratic Miru tribe. \u201cMy father is the son of a Frenchman who took refuge on the Island after his cargo ship, the \u201cJean\u201d, was sunk by the German […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":10436,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[138],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10454","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-testimonials"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/moevarua.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10454","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/moevarua.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/moevarua.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moevarua.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moevarua.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10454"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/moevarua.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10454\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moevarua.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10436"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/moevarua.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10454"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moevarua.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10454"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moevarua.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10454"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/moevarua.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/WhatsApp-Image-2019-08-29-at-14.05.32-4.jpeg\" "\\"\\"")
<\/p>\nSu hijo adoptivo her adopted <\/span>Son Enrique Pakarati junto al Sacerdote with the priest<\/span> Sebasti\u00e1n Englert\u00a0<\/strong><\/h3>\n
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<\/p>\nFeatured Reports:<\/strong><\/h2>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"