Life /
Gypsies or Roma: European and Polish attitudes towards [87]
When I lived in Poland I had no preconceived ideas about what the Gypsies (or Roma) were like. In my town of 60 000 you could see them very often, so probably about a twentieth of the population could have been Gypsy. They would hang out in the park, sing, eat, talk (loudly!). When the Romanian Gypsies arrived in the mid-nineties, those would beg: young women with children sitting out on the pavements in freezing weather, that kind of thing. I never saw the native Polish Gypsies help them in any way, so there goes the notion of a general Roma solidarity. I think it's more like every tribe for itself. I have also never heard of Gypsies being prosecuted in any way, there were no fights in the streets with the Polish, nobody set their houses on fire or threw their children out of schools. Quite the contrary, school authorities would bend over backwards to keep Roma children learning for as long as possible. Even so, most kids are taken from education by their parents by the time they are about 13! And then they get married and have kids of their own. I have seen many a pregnant Roma teenager who looked as if she would rather climb trees and ride her bike. Now here in London I have gotten to know the culture much better, as a community interpreter I am in touch with the Roma almost every day. They came to the UK as "refugees" from terrible acts of Polish racism, they go around telling stories of how Poles raped their women, beat their children, burnt down their homes etc., etc. This quite shocked me, as some of these Roma actually hail from the town I used to live in, and I should have witnessed these horrors, and most of the center of town, where the Roma lived, should have been reduced to a pile of rubble I guess! I know they made up 99% of these stories to have a credible refugee profile, and as no loyalty is due outside the clan, suck it up Poles! Tough luck you're Gajo!
They also talk about not being allowed to send their children to school in Poland, but all the Roma families I'd worked with here sooner or later come into contact with the Social Services over... not sending their kids to school!
Their music might be beautiful and their culture is certainly very interesting, nevertheless, they do marry off their children as teenagers and then often masquerade the ensuing pregnancy as either rape or youthful folly to their GP (as if they would ever allow their daughters to stay away from home for even one night!), they do not send their children to schools, they usually try not to work longer than 16 hours a week (UK residents know why), and they still think Council housing and all sorts of social handouts are their God-given right, even though Poland is now in the EU and the rules of the game have changed.
Around 2005, I often had to interpret conversations along the lines of: Poland is in the EU! Go get a job! We have to withdraw your refugee status! - But but but I cannot speak the language, I am a refugee! Give give give! - I told you... Poland is in the EU... etc. etc.
And last but not least, speaking of tolerance: a Roma lady for whom I was interpreting at a medical centre told me, while we were chatting idly in the waiting area, that any Roma girl or boy who leaves the clan, marries a Gajo of any sort - is dead to their family. They cannot visit or even call! This of course is seen as great tragedy, and so avoided.
To sum up: I am quite friendly with a lot of these Roma that I work for, they are generally nice people, but do remember that they are very different - and that THEY want to keep it that way. They do not overmuch love work and generally have an attitude that life should be going their way "just because". I think it would have been a much better solution for both us and them if they had been allowed to keep roaming the world in their tabors.
BTW - a wonderful, beautiful film about Gypsies, acted I think by Gypsies, is "Dom za Vesanje" (Czas Cyganów in Polish, Time of the Gypsies in English) by Kusturica. It shows both the ugliness and the luminous beauty of this culture. Because like every culture it has both, and I disagree with the PC axiom that nothing bad can ever be said about any minority. We are all people.
