I have developed a very close friendship with Jaqueline. She is in her 60s, and she jokes with people that I am her adoptive daughter, the final addition to her 7-kid family. I moved to a little cabin she has on her lot. We do all kinds of things together. I help her communicate in English with tourists that stay in her other cabins, and used to invite them to share in the Tapati preparations. I use my computer to help her type up all kinds of educational materials in Rapanui. (She used to be the Principal of the island’s elementary school, and at one point the Head of Education in the island. Then she got in a fight with the Mayor because she didn’t want to go out with him, so he fired her). I teach her how to use Airbnb and Booking, and she teaches me about the way the island was when she grew up, when no plane had ever landed in the remotest place on earth. Sometimes we fold sheets and clean bathrooms side by side, and plan trips to Tahiti together which will never take place.

We laugh at the absurdities of life. We take tourists to the disco at night. We gossip about how her partner is jealous of her dog. We laugh to the point of tears when we finally agree that we can still claim to be dieting if we eat up to five fried dough pastries, but without the caramel topping.

Jaqueline Rapu is the least manipulative person I have ever met. This makes her naive at times. But it also makes her most lovable. Her idiosyncrasies include that she repeats what other people say immediately after they say it. She forgets too many things, including tourists at the airport, rice in the pot, and her youngest kid at the hospital. When I asked her what she loved most (so I could get her a nice birthday present) she told me that she loves “life and dancing and singing and people and church and flowers and colors and making things and building houses and painting walls and her grandchildren.” She is the definition of “una persona dispersa” (a dispersed person). She’s late to basically everything. She is an extremely hard worker. She hates weed. She can sleep for 4 hours and be ready for a full day of cleaning and attending and dancing and cooking and moving tables and refrigerators. Her hair changes from broom-like to stylishly church-done and back in the span of a few hours.

Six months after our initial encounter where I thought I had to be careful around her because of a possible mafia connection, Jaqueline has become an example for me of Fromm’s notion that loving is an art, and that someone who loves gives “that which is alive in him; he gives him of his joy, of his interest, of his understanding, of his knowledge, of his humor, of his sadness”. In her giving of her aliveness, Jackeline enriches people’s existences by enhancing their sense of life.

One time I read that, in response to a fan letter asking him about bringing a baby into a world that seemed to be falling apart, Vonnegut replied that what made being alive almost worthwhile was the saints he had met. By saints, he meant people who kept their decency in the midst of strikingly indecent situations or societies. Jackeline also keeps her impeccable sense of humor.