GOOD HAS COME FROM EVIL IN EASTER ISLAND

                                     GOOD HAS COME FROM EVIL

The most remote commercial airport in the world is on a tiny piece of land in the Pacific Ocean called Easter Island. The island belongs to Chile and is famous for the 887 monolithic human figures called moai.

Sometime in early March this year one of the many visitors to the island brought COVID-19. As a result several people of the indigenous Rapa Nui community became infected with the deadly virus. There were only three ventilators to serve the population of 7,750.




This was when Mayor Pedro Paoa had to make a very difficult decision. In the article by Mark Johanson on the BBC Travel website the mayor decided to end the tourism season in the middle of March. After that there were only five cases of the virus on the island. "By the end of April the virus had been completely eradicated."

Easter Island is 3,500km west of the coast of Chile and that distance helped to protect the country from the virus. But there is another measure,  an ancient Polynesian tradition, that has been passed down from one generation to the next.

It is Tapu. "Tapu is a sacred order to protect our health, to protect our life and to protect our elders and their ancient wisdom. It is a form of discipline rooted in Polynesian culture that has to do with restrictions but also respect." Johanson writes in "The origin of the word Taboo."

Until March 2020 the people of Easter Island kept eating, consuming, searching for money, building and destroying nature and their "fragile culture." Now they are on a path where respect for nature and reciprocal labour between neighbors "help to give islanders a shared sense of purpose."

Good has come from the evil of the pandemic, it has enabled "this plan of sustainability and respect for nature. Up until March 2020, we had a mask over our eyes and we couldn't see," Mayor Paoa said.

Easter Island is now based less on growing tourism and more on reverting to ancestral ways of self-sustainability that have been lost over time.

"Now our eyes are open and we are more keen to promote sustainability in words, actions and plans than we ever were before," Edmunds Paoa, President of the Council of Elders said.

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