No matter where you come from, Goa will always provide a homely stay. Once foreigners come to Goa,
they find a reason to stay back and live their lives here. Coming from more
developed countries, many find it difficult to settle down quickly. However,
the positives of Goa outweigh the negatives drastically.
Kornelia Santoro, originally from Bavaria, Germany moved to Goa
alone in 1994, for the first time. She made Goa her home in 1996, after she
married her Italian husband whom she met here. Prior to that, she worked as a
journalist for over a decade, for a newspaper in Regensburg. After the birth of
their son, Kornelia started writing cookbooks, and these have won the Gourmand
World Cookbook Awards.
If you enjoyed reading this article, you can help support our journalism by adding OHeraldo as a preferred source.
“I found a few things quite surprising when I moved to Goa. I
will get invited for dinner and your hosts will serve you but won’t share the
meal. They will wait till you eat, and then eat. Also, there is a kind of
rudeness as compared to Europe. In Goa we say thank you and please, but
especially when you visit a doctor, they will just say ‘sit’ and not ‘please
take a seat’. This does sound a bit rude,” says Kornelia, who has been living
in Goa for 11 years. “Back then Goa was different. Foreigners were more
welcome, and I am glad to have met my family and settled down in Goa,” she
adds.
Maria Inês Figueira is the Director, Fundação Oriente – India
and has made Goa her home for the past seven years. Before joining Fundação
Oriente in Goa, she was an adviser to the Portuguese Minister of Economy, in
the field of Contemporary Arts and Tourism, and Director of Communication of
the Portuguese Tourism Board in Spain. She lives with her husband and two
children. What makes Goa even more special to her is that her children were
born in Goa. “I have lived in London, Madrid and Portugal, and I realised it is
just places with different ways of working and all have a different mind-set
but in the end of the day it is all about you and how you perceive it. Goa has
a special meaning to me because my kids were born here. I don’t where I’ll be
in the next five years, but Goa will still be my home,” says Maria Ines.
What made Maria find it easier to live in Goa, is the
similarities she found with the state and her home, Lisbon. What Portugal is to
Europe, is what Goa to India; a laidback and easy going place. As I am married
to a Goan, it was easier for me to get into the fabric of the society. Every
place I go, I will miss something from another place, and you get conditioned
to wherever you are living. Also it is easier to relate to people here, and
everyone is open to talk and very welcoming. I had no problem settling down,
except for the frequent electricity problems. Even at 2am, I can shout out to
my neighbour and they will come running. In Portugal, no one will even answer
your phone at that time,” says Maria with fondness for Goa.
Robert James from the United Kingdom had visited Goa more than a
decade ago and as his friend insisted on volunteering, he visited El Shaddai.
On his next visit to Goa, he started a new UK Charity to support disadvantaged
children and young people through the ‘Mango Tree Goa’. “I founded Children
Walking Tall with a friend in 2004 and continued to run it for seven years till
2011, when it was passed over to Indian staff to run. Then I founded ‘Being
Children’ in 2013 and now I am working on ‘Goa Outreach’, which is a charity
for street and slum children in Goa,” says Robert.
“Some of the things I find funny in Goa, is now people have the
wrong sense of direction. They walk on the wrong side of the road and even
though they give a signal of where they are heading, they will still take a
left instead of a right. Also, something that really bizarre is there is no sense
to a queue and especially old women will cut every possible line and stand
ahead of you,” he shares his experience.
However,
he also finds Goa as his little peace of heaven when he is surrounded by the
joyous faces of the slum children he has seen grow up through the charities.
“The children who were in class 3 and 4 are now in first year of college and
one recently completed his class 12 with distinction. I feel proud when I meet
these youngsters now,” he adds.
