The Foreign Residents in the TRNC (TFR)
TFR welcomes 300th Member
By Ralph Kratzer
It is general policy of the association The Foreign Residents in the TRNC (TFR) to include members from all over the world in its ranks, who have settled either temporarily or permanently in Northern Cyprus. The only exceptions are Cypriots, because they are of course not foreigners …
Meanwhile the club has 320 members from 25 different nations, and a few weeks ago we were able to receive our 300th membership application from a lady named Merlyn Abreo.
Last Friday, at the TFR´s weekly get-together, chairman Heinz Nauroth and his committee members welcomed her officially and handed over a small reception gift.
Merlyn and her husband Gino fit to the multicultural TFR association with rare qualities, because they have had a really colourful life story.
Merlyn was born in Nairobi, Kenya. Her parents were originally immigrants from Goa in western India and came to Africa to find work there.
After Kenya´s declaration of independence in 1963, the living conditions for foreigners became more and more difficult there.
Therefore Merlyn decided in 1971 to go to England, more precisely to the county of Kent. With her later husband Gino, whom she had met earlier in Kenya and who had emigrated to the UK a long time before her, she had held contact mostly by letters all these years.
The couple met again in England and after marriage their first son was born.
But even in England, the economic situation at that time became worse, so the couple decided to emigrate to Canada in 1979. Gino, who was working in the oilfield equipment business, first found a job in Alberta and later in Calgary. Merlyn followed her husband and their second son was born.
15 years later Gino got an offer from Qatar in the Persian Gulf, of course, again in the oil business, and the family moved again. Both, husband and wife, were working in Qatar, both in the oil business, and the family spent 16 years there before they became aware of Northern Cyprus through a good old friend of Merlyn and decided to come over here for retirement.
In 2010, the couple arrived in the TRNC and they are happy to now meet like-minded people in the TFR club.
Welcome, Merlyn and Gino!
