The Golden Anniversary of Galway’s twinning with the Britanny town of Lorient is being celebrated in the city throughout the month of May – and while countless civic ties have developed between Galway and the French town over the past 50 years, some of the strongest connections to Lorient are personal.

None more so than that of Galway woman, Marena Kampers (nee Corcoran), who as a 15-year-old student of the Mercy Convent in Newtownsmith, left her College Road home – and Ireland for the first time – to do an exchange to Lorient in 1977 where she met Valérie Monnet for the first time.

Fifty years later, the pair are still in contact, Valérie having tracked down her Galway pal more than ten years ago – no small task as Marena’s lived on the far side of the world for almost 40 years, settling with her husband and two grown up children in Wollongong, Australia.

“Valérie tracked me down on Facebook 40 years later,” says Marena, explaining that Valérie found her through her sister, Patricia, who still lives in Galway.

That was in 2017, four decades after the pair first met on the early Lorient exchanges – and the friendship they developed all those years ago was immediately rekindled.

That contact spurred a reunion in Galway in 2018 where Valérie and Marena were joined by Thierry Fouquet and Véronique Keriel – two more of the participants in the 1977 exchange programme – and their respective partners and spouses. The reunion was, says Marena, one “steeped in emotion, love, nostalgia and celebration”.

“When they arrived, the tears flowed freely – hugs, laughter and memories shared across languages and lifetimes,” she says.

They also managed to reconnect with some of the other host families in Galway, says Marena.

Caption: Marena Corcoran Kampers (second right), who is originally from College Road and now living in Australia, with Thierry Fouquet, Valerie Duval and Veronique Keriel in Claddagh. Marena first met Veronique, Thierry and Valerie 50 years ago when she was with students from the Convent of Mercy, Newtownsmyth, who went on an exchange programme to Lorient in Brittany. PHOTO JOE O’SHAUGHNESSY

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