Their culture was different from those of settled folks. They were entrepreneurs specializing in iron-smitheries, lace and candle-stick making, basket-weaving, dealing in the animal that was sacred to them, the horse. Nobody can handle a horse the way a Lovara horse-dealer can. But most of all they were artists, dancers, singers, musicians, poets, actors and circus performers. They added joy to the often drab lives of many.
Their strength centered on absolute honesty and loyalty within the tribe. Their leaders were chosen because of intelligence and selflessness. Strict cleanliness rules surrounded their daily lives, rich with children. They watched with horror of killer war after killer war of the settled folks. A silent minority, they withdrew and moved on.
But the laws of the settled folks were rigid and strictly enforced. They allowed for no freely moving parts that did not belong. So little by little, these peace-loving nomads found their treks barred. They were pushed into areas nobody else wanted, hidden from sight. Here they were offered no schooling, in order to be branded as ignorant. No sanitation in order to be called dirty. No opportunity to make a living, so that theft was often the only means of survival, so that would mark them as thieves, or lazy.
The time has come to right these century-old wrongs. The Gypsy people are like all other people. They have their good and their bad. They do have different value systems. To them rich is not what you own, but what you share. Life is there to enjoy within the circle of those you love. Try and look at our world through their eyes: - the wars, the dictators, the inequality, the deterioration of family life, the obsession with worldly goods.
We, the non-Gypsies, should celebrate not destroy what is left of their culture. Stop persecuting the Roma people. They for one do not deserve it.
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Forgive me if I sound harsh but you are speaking with noble words, and I being jut a simple realist cannot help but ask; isn't there any divide among them, Of course there are honest and go- ahead ones, but aren't there the other ones, too. And could you believe them don't have any bad feeling against each other? like envy between them, even between children and the parents, when a child or children want to climbs up on, so called social ladder?
ReplyDeleteI have studied them in my time, and I know, there are plenty that sort of feeling, which is poisoned and paralysed large part advancement of those people and doomed them been as yesterday people for decade and decade.
You wrote; they don't care be well off, well - sad to say -but they really worship money, just the money, anything else but money.It's their inborn heritage; they love gold and silver, and adornment and dandyism.
Apart from those poor ones from east- Europe, you hardly find - for example in Finland any mud-on the - boots gipsy, no, not at all that sort of any, they
Yes, I know, there are plenty of bad feeling of any sot rotting and fouling the air. simply because they strive to be not the poorest one among themselves.