What is a Gypsy?

Gypsy is a confusing term. In the west, for example America, to call yourself a ‘gypsy’ means you like to travel, possibly on your own; less vagabond and more seeker.

In Europe, where Gypsies can be found in every country, they are ascribed a variety of nomenclature though mostly as Roma and their language as Romani. Also, they are deemed pickpockets, fortunetellers and generally unsavory.

The Gypsies of Serbia have been here 800 years. They live with their own kind and have no interest in assimilating. While they learn the language of any country where they settle and they adopt the local religion, they stick together. They live together, work together and despite 800 years they all still look alike, meaning there’s been very little outbreeding.

I am in no way attempting to provide a comprehensive history of these people, it is complex and I know too little. But I am fascinated.

In Serbia if you ask a Roma their nationality they will tell you they are Gypsy. They personally have no issue with ‘Gypsy’, to them it is not derogatory.

The Serbian government occasionally finds them a nuisance and their shantytowns are bulldozed. The Roma merely stack their slabs of cardboard that are their dwellings and set up elsewhere. They get around on wooden carts pulled by shaggy ponies and sometimes by what looks like the engines of mopeds, meanwhile Serbs whiz by in BMWs and Fiats.

Well intentioned American organizations, funded by Germany and France, have attempted to move these Roma to apartment complexes, claiming, “We want them to experience a better quality of life.” But this never works out.

More useful would be to find a middle-ground whereby the West subtlety enhances the pre-existing culture rather than trying to conform it.

My friend Igor Stojanovic and I are fascinated and plan to go deep into the settlements and discover more. Consider it data gathering for the ongoing Large Animal Research Station.

 

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3 thoughts on “What is a Gypsy?

  1. The Irish are their own brand of ‘Travelers’ and not related to the Gypsies, despite displaying similar traits. Gypsies fascinate me, their insularity at the same time as their determination not to go ‘home’ which would be India, as of 600 years ago! Meanwhile the FLDS, from the little I know, have a bad habit of old men forcing marriages on very young girls (they tell them they’ll all go to heaven this way)- and it is eerily similar to the Arabs we deride for their ‘child brides’. The Gypsies marry very young, but both the wife and the husband are equally young. Very different story. The other day I chatted with a 15 year Gypsy girl who told me she was a widow. She showed me a photo of her dead husband and he looked about 12. She said she was glad he was dead, he had mistreated her. I’ll let you know what more I learn about this visible yet secretive tribe.

  2. Fascinating, the differences in groups of people. You (I) could go nuts justifying the importance of la difference. In Colorado City, AZ, a fundamentalist Mormon group, numbered in the thousands in several states, close off their kids’ imaginations severely. What with me giving highest value to freedom of thought, speech, imagination, freedom to question, it is difficult to reconcile my “freedoms” with their freedom to raise their kids the way they want. (Don’t take the knee jerk reaction to FLDS the media seems to elicit, as they’re just people, good and bad, mostly good).

    I once had two fellows wearing white dinner type jackets in my cab. I asked them where their ancestors were from as I dropped them off at a nightclub. They told me they were gypsies and I said to them, damn, and I thought all gypsies were women, but yea, I said, I guess you’d have to have men, too. And I wondered if they carried car door shims (is that what they’re called—for stealing cars) under their jackets.

    Gypsies, Ireland has them too; I think they’re called Tinkers. I wonder if they ever go to Mass—Bless me Father, for I stole two loves of bread!

    Good luck in getting to know the Gypsies!

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