Chance meeting that changed life of boy nut-seller
A LANCE Corporal has told how he joined the British Army to “repay his debt” to the English family who saved him from a life of selling peanuts for £1 a day.
Gopal Vaakode was 12 when he met the Hanson family who were holidaying in Goa, where he was walking 10 miles a day selling peanuts to tourists.
Sometimes he would sleep on the beach, and other nights in a tent on the side of the road, providing for his three younger siblings and his mother.
He asked tourists Carol Thomas, 55, and Colin Hanson, 64, a couple, and his sister in law Linda Hanson, 70, if they would like to buy some peanuts. Instead they took him shopping for clothes and food for his family.
They promised the teen they’d see him when they returned next year – and by pure chance bumped into him on the beach, 12 months later.
It ignited a lifelong bond, and within days the family persuaded Gopal and his mother Peckrrva to let them help.
They sent money from the UK for food and supplies and paid for the family to live in a rented home in Goa every monsoon season, coming to visit them for up to six months.
Aged 19, Gopal started to visit his ‘foster family’ in the UK for months at a time, and on one trip joined the local cricket team on an away match at an army barracks.
A brigadier asked him if he’d consider joining the British Army – and he leapt at the chance, to repay the people and country who had saved him.
Ten years on, now 35, he lived in Mansfield, Nottinghamshire, with his wife Jasmine, 26, daughter Daisy, seven, and still feels like “luckiest kid in the world”.
He said: “The main reason I wanted to join was to make my family proud and say thanks to Linda, Colin and Carol for everything they did for me.
“I will forever be in debt to them, but joining the army was my way of repaying them by doing
something important in this world.
“There was a day when I had no food, nowhere to sleep and nothing to look forward to in life.
“Now I have a loving family with an incredible wife and an amazing daughter. I really could not ask for more.”
Businessman Mr Hanson added: “He has made us all extremely proud with what he is achieving in the army, and now he has a wonderful family too.
“It was an amazing journey, and we’re overjoyed to have met him.”
Joining the army was my way of repaying them.
Gopal Vaakode on the family who saved him from a life of selling nuts.