“I’m nobody special. I’m just a housewife. I’m 100% of Poros origin, my mother delivered me with help of a midwife as there was no hospital on Poros at the time, it was in a house. My mother got pregnant again, but unfortunately she lost the child. Then the Nazi occupation started and my parents could not have children any more. My father was a sailor, he travelled the whole world as an engineer on ships, and by the end of 19th century he decided to leave the ship work and open a restaurant in the US. Unfortunately I can’t remember the exact date. The only way to find out would be to look at the bank statements from that time. I still have them.
In 1933 my father moved back to Poros. He was quite advanced in age but still healthy and in good condition. That’s when he met my mother. It was an arranged marriage. My father was 65 and my mother 30 when they got married. But my father looked so good you couldn’t really see the age difference! At the same time when I was born, that is 1935, my father built this house we are at now. He could afford it as when he came back from the US he brought a lot of money in gold.
Despite that, life was not always easy financially. Shortly after he came back, the government converted people’s gold deposits into drachmas by force, a process called “drachmaisation”. But my father did not mind so much as he had a big quantity of gold and only one daughter so he was still left with enough funds to build the house. During the 2nd World War the government confiscated savings from people’s bank accounts to fund the war. As a result of that my family was left completely broke.
Fortunately, my father was able to commission the building of a small boat at the shipyards of Chalkida (north of Athens), which he used for commercial purposes. It was the only boat on Poros with an engine. He started using it as a means of transport to bring people from Pireas (Athens) to Poros and also from Poros to Neorio (part of Poros island not connected by road back then). In the beginning he was the only person to do it, later on more people started doing it. In order to make revenue to survive we were renting rooms in our house. This is how my parents financed my schooling until the 12th grade when I was 18.”