‘Are you Indian?’
‘No!’ the Roma Princess answered.
‘Do you consider yourself Roma or Serbian?’
‘I don’t know!’
‘But didn’t Roma originate from India?’
‘It’s a myth!’ the Princess stated, staring at the ground.
An American anthropologist assured me the Roma traveled from India 1000 years ago, but they deny this. For fear of deportation? Fear of discrimination? He was not sure.
The Princess is fluent in Serbian and Romani yet claimed neither she nor any of her six children write in any language.
Inside her home the walls were painted in candycane stripes of green and white and pink. The furnishings were worn, yet plentiful. On a side table was the Mack-daddy of flat screen televisions, blaring CNN and hooked up to the Internet.
Do you use Facebook? I asked. All six kids affirmed they have their own accounts. So what kind of no writing is that?
Just as they build their towns like fortresses, one cannot presume solid answers from direct questions. These are a very private people.
The Germans have a system whereby Roma, from any country, can apply for financial aid.
Well-intentioned Westerners study these Roma tribes, offering education and modernization. Seems to me the Roma want for nothing except to be left alone.
We may judge their lifestyles, and we may pity and romanticize them, but they live the way they want to.
They are poor, by our lilly-white Western standards, but they thrive on a different currency. They love each other and they love their families.
Maybe I’m going all granola and soft here in my dotage, but I did ask permission to return for second visit.
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Glad to hear you have learned first hand more about Roma. Odd that they deny their original emigration from northwest India, unless of course deportation feels real to them, yes, that would explain it. I have a passion for being left alone, me, a fairly sociable and gregarious bloke. But I don’t want to be in anyone’s database. Period. OK, social security because I do need my check. PRIVACY is going to hell in a hand basket. It sounds like the Germans see the value of encouraging a Roma culture to exist within their own culture. Maybe the Roma are carrying the banner of freedom and privacy for the mainstream to see.