The Gypsy Chronicles

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Gypsy Stereotype


Romani Gypsy women are by tradition conservative in their sexuality and not at all as portrayed by Hollywood and pop culture. Although modern times are wearing away many aspects of Roma culture, it is important to note that in traditional Roma culture, most Roma women are virgins when married. This is checked. Chastity, yes, but more importantly purity plays an important part in traditional Roma culture .




The Romani word marime means polluted or unclean.

In Roma culture there are three concepts of cleanliness: clean, dirty with honest dirt and marime - which indicates pollution or defilement among the Vlach Roma; other groups use different words.

If one becomes polluted, purity must be restored. In severe cases of pollution a person can be banned from the group forever




Gypsy Fortune Teller Stereotype.

Gypsy Fortune Teller Stereotype.
Whether gazing into a crystal ball, reading palms and tea leaves or divining the future with a deck of Tarot cards, the stereotype of  Gypsy fortune teller  is alive and well in everyone's imagination.


Gypsy Fortuneteller

Though she may be considered a stereotype, with one foot in the real world, palm reading happens to be a practical way to earn money, especially if folk believe it is within your power to reveal important future events.


But  just as not all Romani women are fortune tellers, not all fortune tellers can read the future. This stereotype will never fade.










A common misconception about the Roma  is that they all enjoy a romantic carefree lifestyle - one where they are able to travel at will.  In actual fact many (particularly in Eastern Europe) are  traveling less for pleasure than fleeing for their lives; for they are much persecuted  and without  rights. This is not true freedom and far from carefree. See:

Suspino: A Cry for Roma





To increase ratings and sell newspapers, the Gypsy-as-thief stereotype is promoted and sensationalized by  news media all over the world. Stories are aggressively slanted against the Roma, portraying them as  mafia style gangsters, petty thieves and even child traffickers. Such false reportage results in one of the most negative stereotypes against the Roma people: People believe these stories without question simply because they 'saw it on the news.'
See:






Article Reposted from
THE GUARDIAN NEWSPAPER

Jake Bowers calls himself a modern Gypsy. After growing up on the road as one of 17 children, increasingly hostile public attitudes and the impending arrival of the first of his three children pushed him into a more settled life. He now runs the Gypsy Media Company, providing education about Gypsies and travelers through media, and presents Rokker Radio, a BBC program for the traveling community.

Being a Gypsy is an ethnic identity in the same way as being Jewish or English. It’s something that you take with you no matter how or where you live. I’m a modern Gypsy in that I don't make clothes pegs for a living any more – instead I sell words as a journalist. I’m a Gypsy in the information age.

Under the Race Relations Act, Gypsy people are recognized as an ethnic minority, but in the 1968 Caravans Act it says that people of a nomadic habit of life, whatever their race or origin, are Gypsies. Here you see enshrined in law the entire problem of Gypsies being viewed as just a lifestyle. It's something that is reinforced by the bizarre word "traveler". Traveling just refers to a lifestyle, and it’s about as useful to describe most Romany people as travelers as it is to describe them as smokers or cyclists. It’s a stupid word that I reject.

Although it doesn’t define us, the connection between Gypsies and traveling comes from a nomadic history that goes back well over 1,000 years, so it’s definitely part of our identity and culture. Most Gypsies in the world are now sedentary, particularly in eastern Europe, where some people haven’t traveled for generations. Probably half of the Gypsies in Britain haven't traveled.

My family goes back generations and generations into the mists of time in terms of travelling. Ironically, I’m probably the one in my family who travels most because of my job. I travel within the Romany community in the way that most journalists would travel, except that I often take a caravan with me. The community I work in lives that way, so there’s space for it.

Life in a traveling family is based on extremely close-knit ties. I’m one of 17 brothers and sisters – I know my first, second, third, fourth and fifth cousins and they’re spread right across the country. I came from quite a stable family; we traveled in the summer and had places to stop in the winter. When we stopped I went to school and we were well integrated in the community. But when we traveled I didn’t go to school.

In many ways prejudice was all around us, but we didn’t experience it directly. People get bricks thrown through their window, and suffer intense bullying at school, but it isn’t a uniform experience.

Most of my family is now either living on Gypsy sites where the nomadic way of life is outlawed or they’ve been forced into housing, so I’ve managed to retain an element of the culture that is denied other members of my family.

I was traveling until I was about 25. I lived in an old wagon down in Dorset and was getting loads of abuse. I didn’t have anywhere to stop, and often people would refuse to give me water. I had a horse and wagon, but even when I was living a picture postcard life people didn’t want me near them. My wife got pregnant with my first child and we decided that we didn’t want to live like rejects any more, because that’s the way society viewed us.

I remember one time we were traveling through a part of Dorset with the horse and wagon, and we found that all the verges on which our ancestors used to stop had been religiously blocked off with rocks and ditches. We couldn’t find a single bit of grass to pull over on. I went to a farm and asked for some water, and the fellow wouldn’t give me any. He said: "I wouldn’t piss on people like you if you were on fire. You’re wrecking the country."

It struck me that he couldn't have had any direct experience of Gypsy people. His perceptions were built up through a hostile media. I thought that if I was going to settle down, I might as well use the security that came with it to do something about these perceptions, so that those who were still traveling could live in a kinder environment.

My radio show is broadcast across the east of England; it helps the traveling community to keep in touch with each other, since Gypsies are now more settled than ever before. I hope it also helps to educate the wider community about who we are, because a lot of media coverage is still hostile. When you look at the tabloids and local newspaper coverage you can see every rule of journalism being broken: they never speak to the Gypsies or travellers themselves, and the tone is usually inflammatory.

I’ve just set up a website called savvychavvy.com, which is an engine for generating new writing by Gypsy journalists. We have funding to train 50 young journalists from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport.

I travel all over the country working with organizations that are dedicated to improving understanding of the Gypsy and traveler community. I've just returned from Wales, where the Croeso (meaning "welcome" in Welsh) project, which is part of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, is campaigning for the Gypsy and traveller community to be accepted in Wales – some 500 years after we first arrived there.

It's a complex issue: the settled community looks at us through a prism of stereotypes. The two main Gypsy stereotypes are the thief (or degenerate) who contributes nothing, or the romantic Gypsy unmaterialistic and carefree, who wanders down country lanes with a tambourine.

The only real hallmark of a nomadic culture is that it teaches you to stand on your own two feet. Hard times are definitely going to come, but so are good times. When things no longer suit you, move on. Our flexibility and self-reliance means that we have little to fear from a changing world and economy.

Many people only recognize Gypsies by their caravans – or traditionally horses and caravans. Before that it was tents. We’ve always changed the way we live and that will continue to happen. The fact that it’s largely outlawed in this country and in eastern Europe means you don’t see caravans on the road like you used to. But you can still see Gypsy people.

If you go to Romania, where there are 2 million Gypsies, you can see them on every street corner. They have lived in the Gypsy quarters of most towns and cities for up to 600 years, and no longer have any folk memory of travelling. Because when the travelling ceases, the community still goes on.

• Jake Bowers was talking to Charlotte BaxterGUARDIAN

ROMA REALITIES
Ljuba Radman; Romani Yag
Photo credit: Yves Leresche
 
Dispersed over five continents, the Roma  are in fact one people united by their common roots, identity, cultural aspects and language, Romanes, with its many different dialects. The Roma have traveled the world since leaving their ancestral home of India about 1,000 years ago. Influenced by each culture whose path they have crossed, the Roma have, in turn, often inspired those with whom they have come into contact, partly through their unflagging love of freedom and their music, often central to their existence.

 However, the Roma are not all musicians, nor are they mostly nomadic. After centuries of exile from different lands, persecution, and even extermination, the Roma heed no claim to any territory but rather seek legal recognition as a nation. In light of the Decade of Roma Inclusion in the European Union, sixty or so years after the liberation from WWII concentration camps, it is time for the Roma’s voices to be heard now more than ever. 




                       Photo Credit: Yves Leresche;  ROMA REALITIES







Danger! Educated Gypsy
 Ian Hancock
Bury me Standing
Isabella Fonseca


 
Lola's Luck
Carol Miller

 


Zoli
Colum McCann





The Gypsies
Jan Yoors






Fernanda Eberstadt;

Little Money Street:

“For young Gypsies, the motto is

becoming “adapt or die, though no one

is yet sure what that means."






Miloud Oukili:
A Wise Beautiful Clown

Miloud Oukili paints a smile on the faces of children that have already cried too much in their lives.  He teaches circus skills to the street children of Bucharest and founded Parada which has a presence in Italy and helps Roma of France to settle safely.

Miloud: "In our human pyramids the strongest of all carries the misery of the weakest one. On the streets it is exactly the other way round. There, the weakest of all must carry the strongest one."

Miloud was awarded the Unicef prize for his work. But more than awards, active help is needed, so that the pyramid of hope for the children of  Bucharest does not collapse.

“Life is hard and so is the circus," said Miloud Oukili. “If you are able to attain success in the circus, you will find your way through the difficulties of life as well. At least that is my personal philosophy. The circus is a way out of their misery. They are tempted to try it and find friends in this circus world. They are still children and children must play. In the circus they can make up for their lost playing time – for at least a little.




Hanul, St. Denis

July 4, 2010
The Gypsy Chronicles

There is a real desire in France to silence all stories dealing with violations of Roma rights, and so very few French citizens were aware of what took place this week, in a small shanty town called Hanul, located in St Denis - until after it happened.


If  Le Monde and other widely read French newspapers had reported on events leading up to the expulsion of Hanul residents,  enabling local citizens to stand with the Roma people of Hanul in support, there could have existed the possibility of change to the course of events, for there is power in numbers.

 A  sit-in was staged at the Hanul settlement in support of the Roma but on Tuesday morning the inhabitants watched helplessly as men in uniform came in and forcibly evicted them, then quickly bulldozed the camp.

To help, please contact Coralie of Parada Organization
Coralie Guillot - 06 24 88 60 75 contactparada@gmail.com
Saimir Mile - 06 68 10 72 27
lavoixdesrroms@gmail.com




Romanipe
To better understand Romani culture one must first understand  Romanipe
The University of Graz : Article, Romanipe.
Wikapeadia on Romanipen



The Roma Holocaust known as Porrojamos, or The Devouring  took place between 1939-1945

April 8 - International Roma Day.

May 6 - Ederlezi  is the first day of the early summer for Eastern Orthodox Old Calendarists and one of the most important holidays for the Roma in the Southern Balkans area and one of the rare holidays to be celebrated by both Muslim and Christian Orthodox Roma.
Ederlezi in regard to Roma Culture  See  UniGraz

April 8 - International Roma Day

May 24 - The procession of St. Sara - patron saint of Gypsies - takes place every May 24 as part of the pilgrimage festival in her honor in the town of Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, a beach town in southern France's Camargue region.
August 19 - Saint Sara Feast Day



photo credit: Nigel Dickinson



Saint Sara   as yet unrecognized by the Vatican  - never made a Saint by the Catholic Church,  is  patron saint to the Roma people. 







Romani Sayings:


Rom Romesa a Gadjo Gadjesa!


Turn sideways in the wind.


Nane chave, nane bacht.
If there are no children, it is bad luck.

A dog that wanders will find a bone.

A fly won't fly into a mouth that is shut.

The wind doesn't recognize
whose wagon it blows over.

Don't scratch where you don't itch.

Only in the village with no dogs
will walk the man with no stick.

What a year may not bring,
an hour might.

Bury me standing, I've been on my
knees my whole life.


IAN HANCOCK:


"A large sign in Romani on my office wall reads Education is the Passport to Freedom. I firmly believe this, and I urge that we make education our highest priority in the discussions that follow here in Brussels. I will not elaborate upon the weightier issues that stem from racism, their solution will follow in due course once proper educational programmes have been designed and implemented. Just as issues of employment and housing exist because of racism, their solution will come about because of education. And I am not speaking simply of education for Romani people, but also for the non-Romani populations." Ian Hancock




Sinead Ni Shunear:

"...resistance to literacy is a form of ethnic self assertion. Seen in this light, it is clear why the child's 'failure' in school may be viewed by his parents as a successful resistance to acculturation into an alien, suspect and hostile world"





Papusza 

Bronislaw Wasz

Roma poet


"Once Gypsies were playing music on a farm by the river and my father took me with him. While they played, I read a book. Some woman came over to me and said, "A Gypsy – and she can read! Well, that's nice. " I burst out laughing but meanwhile I had tears in my eyes; she inquired what and how and I told her about myself. She kissed me and went away, and then I read some more."





 


PAPUSZA Bronislaw Wasz Interview

with Jerzy Fikowski  English Subtitles on Facebook












Tony Gatlif
La Liberte'
Filmaker Tony Gatlif is a realist and original.

When asked  if his film work is influenced by Kusturica he had this to say:
"I follow my own road, shoot my own films. I love John Ford, for instance, and some of my frames remind me of Ford. But Kusturica is not one I love."
He dismissed as nonsense Time of the Gypsies' scene, in which the gypsies light up a river with candles: 
  "That's way too expensive for Gypsies," Gatlif said. "There are rich Gypsies, but they'd spend their money on jewelry, or on gold teeth."
Gatlif's realism and originality continue with his latest film. Of La Liberte' it is being said that it is his best work yet. It has everything: originality, solid script, good acting, great cinematography and the Gatlif trademark, an excellent musical soundtrack







Sonia Meyer's
 Dosha Flight of Russian Gypsies
to be released Autumn 2010.

Sonia Meyer  Blog

Sonia Meyer Website

Born in 1938 Cologne Germany. As a child Sonia did not play with dolls but with broken grenades and carried messages in the braids of her hair to the men of the resistance:

"It is spring. I am standing on a hill. Using a wooden mending egg my father is teaching me how to toss a hand grenade. From then on messages were braided into my hair, which I carried from groups of women and children to their partisan men who, for the safety of their families, lived in forest hide-out camps apart. At age six I had turned into a ‘runner’."

Astute and well spoken, novelist Sonia Meyer joins the ranks of Roma activists with her book Dosha Flight of Russian Gypsies.

Drawing from life experience she stimulates interest and understanding of Roma culture, history and present day events in Europe  and after the book is published she plans to step up public appearances, using the book as a platform to continue to educate.
 
You can tune into Sonia's insightful observations and hear her talk about Dosha with Doug Holder on "Poet to poet, Writer to writer"