Greek crisis: 'I'd like to go out and have coffee with a friend'

Eleni Trivoulidou and her four children struggle to get by on €700 a month, but she refuses to give up and leave the country

Asked what she would do with a bit more money, Eleni says: 'I’d like to go out sometimes and have coffee with a friend'. Photograph: Ren Mattes/ Ren Mattes/Hemis/Corbis

Eleni Trivoulidou is 45 and divorced. She has four children, mostly grown now: a daughter of 25 who's a student nurse; a son who works for her ex-husband, his father; and a boy and girl in their teens, both still at school. All four live at home.

Eleni worked for a while when she was much younger, but she was married at 19 and had her first baby a year later. After that, she looked after her children, until the youngest left primary school six years ago and she found a string of temporary jobs – housekeeping in a hotel, working in a cafe.

These past two years, she has found nothing at all. So her income is as follows: €180 (£145) six times a year from the government, because she has four children at home. Her retired parents usually give her something when she goes to see them, maybe €200 a month in all. But that's tougher now, because her father isn't well. He has difficulty walking, and has started forgetting names and faces. She thinks it's Alzheimer's, though it hasn't been diagnosed. And anyway, his pension has been cut.

Her ex-husband sends her €400 a month, which basically pays for the children's food, and he helps out from time to time with their clothes and a few utility bills. But add it up, and that's five almost-grown adults living on €700 a month. Thank heavens, as Eleni says, the house – also her husband's – is paid for, "or we'd all be homeless by now".

Recently, she got a job for a week helping out in an old people's home. "They said I did a good job, and I was good with the old people," she says. "But they couldn't keep me. They had to get rid of some staff; families are taking their elderly back, they can't afford retirement homes."

She got paid €150 for her week's work, and it was gone in two days. Eleni is remarkably sanguine about all this, a strong Greek woman who was born here but spent her childhood in Melbourne, where her father worked in a General Motors factory. When they came back Eleni was 13, and she and Greek school didn't see eye to eye; she left at 16.

She's now in evening classes for her school leaving certificate, and an accountancy qualification. She regrets not going back to work a few years earlier – when her youngest boy was two or three years old and the economy was still all right – getting her feet under the table somewhere in a secure job. But her husband didn't want her to, and she didn't push it.

Ask her what she would do with a bit more money and she has to think. "I'd like to go out sometimes and have coffee with a friend, rather than in each other's houses," she says. "Or take the children to a cafe. My best friend has a cosmetics shop and lets me pay for what I need, nail varnish, a bit of lipstick, when I can afford to. It would be nice not to make her wait."

Jobwise, she says, she's open to almost anything, "but I would cost more than someone in their 20s, because my youngest is not 18, so employers aren't interested. And its hard for everyone now, you know, not just people like me. My daughter's generation, they're working for €300 a month. How are you supposed to build something, start a family, on that?"

Eleni thinks she knows how and when it went wrong. "Just before the 2004 Olympics," she says. "The banks started lending money for anything. Lending for people's holidays. And the politicians were doing the same, spending, like they were crazy, without thinking, on the Olympics, and hiring thousands in the public sector, just so they could get elected again."

She has very little faith left in politicians: "I see them say things, I try to read between the lines, there's just always something else ... Look, they knew just exactly what was going on, all of them who've been in government for the past 15 years, and they did nothing."

So she won't be voting for a mainstream party, nor for "the fascists" of Golden Dawn (although she does think Greek immigration policy needs sorting out).

She's worried by Alexis Tsipras, the youthful leader of radical left grouping Syriza. "I'm not sure he really, truly understands what a state the country is in, whether the things he says should be done should be done," she says. "Whether it's for the good of Greece or not." Because that's what matters to Eleni. "I could go to Australia; I have the passport, I have a sister, I have aunts. It would be easy. But the children don't want to. And I feel like I'd be giving up. Why should I leave just because the politicians have brought the country to its knees? I want to stay and work. This is a beautiful country with beautiful people. And I'm not a quitter."

 

• Jon Henley is in Greece telling real people's stories. Please contact him if you have suggestions for people he could see or places he could go, or send him your personal story (not too long, please …). He will post as much as he can on the blog. Jon can be contacted on Twitter (@jonhenley) where the hashtag for this series is #EuroDebtTales, or by email (jon.henley@guardian.co.uk).