World Ark Magazine - November/December 2008 - (Page 40)

ROMA ARE NOW THE LARgEST ETHNIC MINORITy IN EUROPE, AND HERE IN SLOvAkIA MAy MAkE UP AS MUCH AS 10 PERCENT OF THE POPULATION. There is a story they tell in Slovakia, where white storks build their massive nests of sticks and twigs high on the rooftops. The stork, it is said, drops swaddled babies down the chimneys of expectant families. The second version of this tale is less well-known. It involves the rare black storks, which are said to bring Roma babies. With the Roma population expanding so quickly, some joke that it makes no sense for the black storks to be so rare. This modern reworking of the popular folktale hints not only at racial division, but also at an underlying uneasiness about the growing number of the darker-skinned Roma. The Roma are a distinct ethnic group—like Jews or Kurds or Bedouins—meaning they have a shared genealogy. They are sometimes mistakenly referred to as Gypsies. The term Roma, the endonymic or self-given name of the people, is preferable. Not only is the term Gypsy considered disparaging by many Roma, it is also an imprecise term, since it has come to mean anyone who is constantly on the move. While the Roma traditionally move around a lot, it is their shared history, not their mobility, which defines them. The Roma lack a written history, and their origin was long a mystery. When they first arrived in Europe, many people supposed the Roma were Egyptian. The word “Gypsy” is derived from that assumption. But by the 18th century, most scholars speculated that the Roma originated in northern India. They based this theory on the generally darker skin colors of most Roma and the similarities between Romany, the official Roma language, and other languages that can be traced back to the Indian subcontinent. The Roma, it is believed, left India sometime around A.D. 1000, crossing western Asia and entering eastern and central Europe around the 14th century. Recent genetic evidence upholds this theory about Roma origins. Roma are now the largest ethnic minority in Europe, and in Slovakia may make up as much as 10 percent of the population. Exact figures are slippery, ranging between the official census number of 100,000 and the A History of the roma more realistic 500,000. The reason for this disparity is telling: Due to historical efforts to assimilate them or for fear of discrimination, many Slovakian Roma listed their ethnicity as Slovak or Hungarian on official census documents. Assimilation efforts largely failed, and in many towns and villages the Roma are segregated into ghetto-like settlements. Wherever this kind of racism and discrimination exist, hunger and poverty exist there, too. Bartholomej Bodor—Barthi to his friends— walks each day from his new home between the tracks on the northeast edge of Drahnov to his old home in the Roma settlement on the southeast corner. He walks through the village proper and past the mayor’s office. Farther along the main road, the well-tended grapevines and wrought-iron gates of the wealthier village houses disappear, as do the roof tiles and house paint. Here, houses crouch along only one side of the rough road. They resemble the houses in the rest of the village in the same way a rusted-out car body resembles the showroom original. These houses hide behind fences draped with rugs, and yards overgrown with nettles. So many plastic bottles clog a wetland across the road that it looks like a fish kill, with bloated, misshapen creatures floating on the surface. This is what is known around the village as the settlement. The Roma have their own word for it: tabor, the Romany word meaning camp. This word recalls a time when the Roma moved freely. But the settlement is a place of stagnation and restraints, not movement or freedom. Bodor continues down the road and turns in by a house that seems to be plastered with mud, the roof in its final stages of rust before it becomes transparent. He walks past the sheds and outbuildings that stretch behind the house, past children playing with an unclothed doll. Past a patchwork fence of plywood, chain-link, scrap metal sheets and translucent fiberglass panels. Trash seems to grow here, to bubble up from underground and seep out into heaps. W alking Between two Worlds 40 November/December 2008 | WORLD ARK www.heifer.org http://www.heifer.org

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of World Ark Magazine - November/December 2008

World Ark Magazine - November/December 2008 Contents Letters For the Record The Good Life Asked and Answered Finding Peace in Africa Sierra Leone on the Mend The Roma: A People Apart Mixed Media Heifer Bulletin Heifer Spirit Calendar First Person

World Ark Magazine - November/December 2008

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