Paris
yesterday in one of my classes we listened to Barack Obama's Philadelphia speech on race that he gave in March of this year just before the Pennsylvania convention. While this speech will always be seen an extremely pivotal moment in his campaign, it is easy to forget the context of this moment. Obama was not courageously speaking the "truth" about race relations in the US, but was, like all politicians, making a shrewd political gamble to help win the election.
Obama was in trouble: his fiery pastor Jeremiah Wright was being played on repeat on all the major channels and polls suggested that he was loosing ground in Appalachia. Should he ignore the 24 new cycle in hopes that the story would disappear? Obama correctly realized that this was not an option, Obama was too closely linked to the Wright, (he was an important figure in Dreams of my father, Wrights sermon the Audacity of Hope was the title of Obama's second book, not to mention Wright had baptized his children and had presided over Obama's wedding). Barack had to separate himself, but how?
What was needed was a swift denouncement of Wrights speeches, a reaffirmation of Obama's centrist and balanced thinking and lastly an explanation of his relationship with the priest. To run away from Wright would have been roundly criticized as a political ploy and would have raised even more questions about his real opinions.
what Obama delivered was a masterstroke. To affirm his connection to all Americans he opened his speech about his white grandparents working and struggling with the great depression. "I was raised with the help of a white grandfather who survived a Depression to serve in Patton's Army during World War II," he said He then moved on to his appeal to all ethnic groups including whites: "we won commanding victories in states with some of the whitest populations in the country." Next he roundly criticized his pastors "divisiveness." Then came the decisive moment. He painted his pastor not as someone who recriminates whites for the spread of AIDS but as a man "who served his country as a U.S. Marine; who has studied and lectured at some of the finest universities and seminaries in the country, and who for over thirty years led a church that serves the community by doing God's work here on Earth." Throughout the speech he highlighted certain populist yet centrist positions: unequivocal support for Israel and a pledge fix schools. Lastly he reaffirmed his belief in solving problems together. "in this election, we can come together and say, "Not this time." This time we want to talk about the crumbling schools that are stealing the future of black children and white children and Asian children and Hispanic children and Native American children. This time we want to reject the cynicism that tells us that these kids can't learn; that those kids who don't look like us are somebody else's problem."
This was a defining moment because for the first time a Democratic candidate was able to escape from a potentially toxic political wedge issue and take the offensive. History will show that Obama was even after being back-stabbed by Wright a month later at the Press Club never really tested over his racial affiliations.
jeudi 27 novembre 2008
lundi 10 novembre 2008
Victory in Europe
Bologna, Italy. SAIS University
In the early morning hours before Barack Obama’s election victory Wednesday morning, my brother mused about the self correcting nature of the democratic system: Democracy doesn’t always produce the best leaders, he argued, but it gives the people an opportunity to get rid of the bad ones without unnecessary strife and violence that comes with war and revolution. As EH Carr wrote, Democracy substitutes the counting of heads for the breaking of heads.
I always thought that elections were a lot like wars. In an election, we don’t fight campaigns by searching for high ground, we fight over bellwether states. We commend those politicians who seem tough, and attack and are best able to brush off attacks from their adversaries. As in wars, certain attacks are universally condemned for their brutality: Barack Obama better not swift-boat McCain and McCain mustn’t play the race card against Obama. Most importantly as in war and revolutions, elections produce winners and losers. Over the last eight years, it was the liberal cosmopolitan coasts (where I’m from) who found themselves suddenly conquered by the alien bushies and their right wing Texas politics. During this period, we weren’t physical crushed as in war; it was our collective psyche that took a beating. We all felt a subconscious need to disassociate ourselves from the country we loved. When the TV monitor showed that Barack Obama had finally done it, a collective cheer of profound joy emanated from the lecture hall, some were crying, others were hugging random strangers. At that moment, it occurred to me that these American SAIS students who had helped propel Obama to victory with their vote had become, for at least a day, the Greatest Generation. This was our Victory in Europe day, minus all the broken heads of course.
In the early morning hours before Barack Obama’s election victory Wednesday morning, my brother mused about the self correcting nature of the democratic system: Democracy doesn’t always produce the best leaders, he argued, but it gives the people an opportunity to get rid of the bad ones without unnecessary strife and violence that comes with war and revolution. As EH Carr wrote, Democracy substitutes the counting of heads for the breaking of heads.
I always thought that elections were a lot like wars. In an election, we don’t fight campaigns by searching for high ground, we fight over bellwether states. We commend those politicians who seem tough, and attack and are best able to brush off attacks from their adversaries. As in wars, certain attacks are universally condemned for their brutality: Barack Obama better not swift-boat McCain and McCain mustn’t play the race card against Obama. Most importantly as in war and revolutions, elections produce winners and losers. Over the last eight years, it was the liberal cosmopolitan coasts (where I’m from) who found themselves suddenly conquered by the alien bushies and their right wing Texas politics. During this period, we weren’t physical crushed as in war; it was our collective psyche that took a beating. We all felt a subconscious need to disassociate ourselves from the country we loved. When the TV monitor showed that Barack Obama had finally done it, a collective cheer of profound joy emanated from the lecture hall, some were crying, others were hugging random strangers. At that moment, it occurred to me that these American SAIS students who had helped propel Obama to victory with their vote had become, for at least a day, the Greatest Generation. This was our Victory in Europe day, minus all the broken heads of course.
dimanche 19 octobre 2008
dimanche 12 octobre 2008
I was talking to Faouzi, one of my Tunisian housemates about my recent trip to the United States. Faouzi usually goes to work in the morning as a renovator but was taking the day off (like most people living in France, he does this quite often). I had just come back at my St Denis house that morning, after two weeks in the United States. As our conversation carried on, I noticed a coolness in his demeanor.
“Has anything happened?” I asked
“Well Claudine has left.”
“you mean she’s gone out?” I surmised, assuming that I had just misunderstood him.
“No she’s gone.”
Claudine was our token “crazy” housemate. She never said a word to any of us, and when she did it was usually to tell us that something was the wrong. She would come down screaming because someone had taken some of her milk without her permission (usually her accusations were directed at me). According to Faouzi two day earlier, she had left in the middle of the night without paying any of her rent to the landlord. I was surprised though by his quiet solemn demeanor. Shouldn’t he have been ecstatic? I certainly was.
“Did anyone know she was leaving?” I said, chomping ravenously into a piece of toast that I had just made for myself.
“No” said my unusually curt flat mate. I tried a more open ended a question.
“Have you done anything interesting in the last two weeks,” I asked as I sipped my tea.
“Nothing much,” he said. Finally, he told me that he needed to go. Alarmed by this terse conversation, I decided to take a look around the house. Everything seemed to be about the same. The right hand bathroom was still undergoing repairs to fix the leak. A leak, which ironically went right into Claudine’s former bedroom and onto her bed. I can still vividly remember her frantically knocking on the bathroom door to get me to turn the water off.
“No I haven’t taken your milk!” I said.
When I came to the door of my room, I saw nothing out of place save for a pair of slippers that were propped outside.
“Has someone moved into my room?” I thought, but when I entered, I saw that everything was where I left it. I started to flip my 2008 Bates Calendar from August to September. It was then that I saw it: I read September 2, Ramadan Begins at Sundown.
Today was September 4th.: the critical day. Anyone who has ever fasted for any period of time knows that the 3rd day is always the hardest. It is then that the body undergoes the metabolic changes that allow one to carry on without the excessive emptiness, pain and fatigue. What I had thought was coldness in my flat mate’s responses was the result of extreme deprivation of food and sleep. The sting must have been exacerbated by the fact that I had eaten my breakfast right under his nose. Of my three flat mates, two would be honoring the Muslim holy month. They would follow the same routine: wake up at 5:00 spend the next twenty minutes eating yogurt, toast and orange juice. Than they would spend the next hour and a half either sleeping or they would stay awake complete some chores before going to work. During the work day, they would do their best to avoid being in the presence of people eating. Akram, my other roommate, (whose slippers they were) admitted that during his lunch hour, he would take his velib and bike to the Eiffel Tower and back.
Over the next month dinner was, as you can imagine, a big deal. Usually it would start with a humus-like Libanese purée made from aubergines followed by salad, then either couscous with halal beef, or a hearty meatball soup with various types of beans, chickpeas, and tomatoes. Then desert, ultrasweet Tunesian sweets, or my favorite, dates with butter. I was in the best of both worlds. I could eat what I wanted during the day and they didn’t mind when I smooched off whatever they had prepared. Still, I felt ill at ease: If dinner was about coming together, my solidarity with them was fake because I had not suffered 15 hours without food or water. So one night, ironically the night after I was accepted into the Institute of European Studies and had polished off most of a bottle of wine to celebrate, I went to my two friends and I said, “Tomorrow I fast with you.”
To Be continued
“Has anything happened?” I asked
“Well Claudine has left.”
“you mean she’s gone out?” I surmised, assuming that I had just misunderstood him.
“No she’s gone.”
Claudine was our token “crazy” housemate. She never said a word to any of us, and when she did it was usually to tell us that something was the wrong. She would come down screaming because someone had taken some of her milk without her permission (usually her accusations were directed at me). According to Faouzi two day earlier, she had left in the middle of the night without paying any of her rent to the landlord. I was surprised though by his quiet solemn demeanor. Shouldn’t he have been ecstatic? I certainly was.
“Did anyone know she was leaving?” I said, chomping ravenously into a piece of toast that I had just made for myself.
“No” said my unusually curt flat mate. I tried a more open ended a question.
“Have you done anything interesting in the last two weeks,” I asked as I sipped my tea.
“Nothing much,” he said. Finally, he told me that he needed to go. Alarmed by this terse conversation, I decided to take a look around the house. Everything seemed to be about the same. The right hand bathroom was still undergoing repairs to fix the leak. A leak, which ironically went right into Claudine’s former bedroom and onto her bed. I can still vividly remember her frantically knocking on the bathroom door to get me to turn the water off.
“No I haven’t taken your milk!” I said.
When I came to the door of my room, I saw nothing out of place save for a pair of slippers that were propped outside.
“Has someone moved into my room?” I thought, but when I entered, I saw that everything was where I left it. I started to flip my 2008 Bates Calendar from August to September. It was then that I saw it: I read September 2, Ramadan Begins at Sundown.
Today was September 4th.: the critical day. Anyone who has ever fasted for any period of time knows that the 3rd day is always the hardest. It is then that the body undergoes the metabolic changes that allow one to carry on without the excessive emptiness, pain and fatigue. What I had thought was coldness in my flat mate’s responses was the result of extreme deprivation of food and sleep. The sting must have been exacerbated by the fact that I had eaten my breakfast right under his nose. Of my three flat mates, two would be honoring the Muslim holy month. They would follow the same routine: wake up at 5:00 spend the next twenty minutes eating yogurt, toast and orange juice. Than they would spend the next hour and a half either sleeping or they would stay awake complete some chores before going to work. During the work day, they would do their best to avoid being in the presence of people eating. Akram, my other roommate, (whose slippers they were) admitted that during his lunch hour, he would take his velib and bike to the Eiffel Tower and back.
Over the next month dinner was, as you can imagine, a big deal. Usually it would start with a humus-like Libanese purée made from aubergines followed by salad, then either couscous with halal beef, or a hearty meatball soup with various types of beans, chickpeas, and tomatoes. Then desert, ultrasweet Tunesian sweets, or my favorite, dates with butter. I was in the best of both worlds. I could eat what I wanted during the day and they didn’t mind when I smooched off whatever they had prepared. Still, I felt ill at ease: If dinner was about coming together, my solidarity with them was fake because I had not suffered 15 hours without food or water. So one night, ironically the night after I was accepted into the Institute of European Studies and had polished off most of a bottle of wine to celebrate, I went to my two friends and I said, “Tomorrow I fast with you.”
To Be continued
jeudi 11 septembre 2008
William Kenney
The Roma in Europe
When I told my friends that I would be living in St Denis, my news was met with a mixture of skepticism and alarm. Hadn’t I read the stories? they asked me. St Denis was filled with young hooligans waiting to attack innocent bystanders. Worst of all, I was told in a low almost embarrassed whisper, were the Roma or Gypsies who lived in shanty towns all across La Seine St Denis. This last piece was not new news to me.
I had been warned about ‘the problem of the gypsies’ long before I set foot in Paris for the first time in 2003. To me, coming from the United States, the gypsies, called “Gitans” “Roma” or “Tsiganes” were the brightly colored fortune tellers who lived in quaint caravans as illustrated in Tintin, or the “Pikeys” from the movie Snatch. Free from the mundane constraints that affect most people, the Roma seemed to reflect a certain degree of freedom that can only add to the mystique of an old European city. [1]
When confronted with Roma for the first time, I didn’t know how to react. Five minutes out of the Notre Dame metro station and my most romantic misconceptions were destroyed. It happens all across Paris every day and goes something like this:
A hapless tourist, stuck in an endless line that zigzags its way toward Notre Dame is suddenly stirred out of his daydream.
“Do you speak English?” An elderly Roma wearing a head scarf says in perfect English. (They might not be able to say much else but they nail that line every time.)
“Yes,” says the unsuspecting tourist. At which point, the Roma whips out a bluntly written sign asking for money.
Completely embarrassed, the tourist who is still stuck in line looks around, puts his hand over his pockets says, shakes his head, trying as best as he can to end this decidedly awkward stalemate. If the Gitan women notices any sign of weakness, she cowers a little lower, grimaces a little more, as if by sheer acting ability she might change his heart and get a couple of centimes. Should he extricate himself from this Gitan, the tourist soon realizes that there is no escape. The queue isn’t going anywhere and another Roma is slowly making her way towards him.
The Parisians, on the other hand, have been trained from years of metro solicitation, and petty pickpockets. When a Parisian sees the telltale signs: gold teeth, cheap lace skirts an unkempt beard… they know how to look way away, while nonchalantly securing all of their belongings to their bodies. If the Roma asks for money, the Parisian usually says in a commanding voice, “je ne suis pas touriste, laisse moi tranquille.”[2]
Fiona Meadowes is a petite French and English dual national with large circular glasses and hazel colored hair tied back in a two braids. She has the sort of boundless energy I find impressive if not a little exhausting, along with an enthusiasm for all types of community service associations. She and her French Cameroonian husband Lamyne, a member of the Peul tribe gave me my first inside view of Gypsy life. They don’t see the gypsies as the social miscreants who steal and beg, but rather, as a group of people who have been, for their entire history, relegated to the outskirts of society.
I met Lamyne and Fiona last November when I was searching for an apartment. They were looking for a renter and someone who might share their causes. Being young, naive, and with the native ‘sure-why-not’ attitude of most Americans right out of college, we soon struck a deal. I had no idea how quickly I was going to be brought into their whirlwind world of fighting injustice and trying to bring about change at a community level.
Alarmed by what they see as the growing animosity of the French state towards the “Roma problem”, Fiona’s very own Organization d’Architects Alternatifs had organized collaboration with a Roma organization Parada, to help the large Roma population in St Denis. The most immediate problem was looking after the children in the camp while the Roma parents were crossing the border in Belgium. Despite the fact that many of the children who are born in France have legal rights here, the parents have to make this trip four times a year to renew their papers. (M. Sarkozy is encouraging the Roma expulsions by giving 300 euros to every Roma who leaves France.)
I set out for the encampment at 10:00 in the morning in the stifling summer heat. I turned left off of Avenue President Wilson, the large avenue which connected Paris to St Denis. All around me were the large office buildings displaying France’s enormous financial vibrancy: Gaz de France, Usine, ArcelorMittal, of course the biggest structure around was Stade de France which dominated the landscape. The road that turned and immediately the terrain seemed wilder and less pristine. At the very end of the road, I could see the flower-laiden car of Fiona and Lamyne’s two hippie assistants who live in a cozy homemade chalet in our backyard. The feeling of relief at knowing that I was in the right place soon was replaced by a feeling of uneasiness as I saw a dirt road lined with caravans. There was not a friendly face in sight. Rusted decomposing metal was interspersed with broken windows. And though I can’t be entirely sure, I really do think that the elderly Gitan woman was staring at me suspiciously. I placed my hand over my pocket before I realized that I was once again behaving likes all the tourists that I had seen and pocked fun at whenever I was in Paris.
Like most under classes, the Gypsies represent often contradictory elements. On the one hand they are extremely visible in the community: interacting with the rest of society in numerous ways. Yet they are also hidden and isolated: Their customs, history and living condition being largely unknown.
Originally considered lower class Hindus in Northern India, the gypsies immigrated eastward like all immigrants searching for freedom and opportunity. They first arrived in Greece and the Balkans in the 14th century. Later in the 15th century the Gitans came to Spain through North Africa. By the end of the 15th century, the two strands met in France. Almost immediately after they arrived, the “foreigners” as they were called, were treated with hostility. In Wallachovia and Moldavia the Gypsies were enslaved for five centuries. In other parts of Eastern Europe and Spain, they were forced into a sedentary lifestyle. Much like the barbarians during the Roman Empire, the Gitan formed a natural foil on which to establish a national identity. “We are civilized and they are not” was the mantra of the local population. According to Italian Novelist Andrezej Stasiuk this concept is still very much alive today, “Tous les pays ont leur Tsiganes. Sans eux, ils n’arriveraient pas à délimiter les forntieres de leur identité .”[3]
The clearest forms of persecution occurred in the 20th century with the rise of extreme nationalism. The Holocaust claimed the lives of a half a million Roma. In Communist Eastern Europe, the Roma rights were often restricted. In Czechoslovakia and Bulgaria forced sterilization took place. To this day in Hungary Roma children go to segregated schools of poor quality. The volatile mixture of centuries of oppression and a poor economic outlook has caused many Gitans to turn to crime and begging. It is often repeated that the Roma have no moral objection to thefts committed on non Roma people. Naturally, this doesn’t help the Roma to become integrated into any community.
When I arrived at the camp, Fiona, Lamyne and several other organizers were already supervising children who were writing numbers on pieces of scrap wood. I was handed a power drill and told to drill holes in each piece of wood. Though I must have looked like someone who was well practiced in using a drill, this was hardly the case!
“What a fun craft project,” I said with forced cheerfulness, looking at the mountain of wooden scraps that needed holes drilled in them.
They looked at me strangely.
“They are address plates. We’re making addresses for all of the Caravans.” Lamyne told me.
“What we’re doing is also completely illegal!” Fiona confided.
Chastened, I got on with my chore with far more dedication albeit with a little James Bond flair.
“Est-ce que je peux essayer?”
It was a young boy. He was clearly more tempted by the power drill, than by the wood pieces or my pathetic drilling technique. Apprehensively I handed him the power tool. I could just imagine this ending with someone loosing a finger. In the USA, I would have been sued or ended in jail. To my surprise, the boy approached his task with enormous concentration and skill. In the same time that I had completed only a few, he had finished double that amount. He was clearly imbued with a decent level of artistic and technical ability. Not that I should be surprised.
Throughout their history, Tsiganes often worked as craftsmen, tinkers, or carpenters, traveling from town to town trying to find work. In fact, the scarcity of these types of jobs today is one of the reasons why the Roma populations are in such a dire shape. Sadly, despite this child’s hidden talents, there is little chance that he will ever fully reach his potential. Chances are that he will spend the rest of his life begging on the street. But who is to blame? Jealous or skeptical of their children’s educational skills, the Roma adults are just as guilty as holding their children back as any government. Roma children have some of the lowest academic achievement among any ethnic group. It is common to find Roma children during the week begging for money on the streets and in the metro, when they should be in school. As Thomas Friedman would say; what a waste of human capital!
When it came time to paint chaos promptly ensued. Children grabbed at paint brushes and started going to work on any piece of wood they could get their hands on. If mistakes were made and numbers were sloppily painted, two of the older boys carefully retraced the numbers. One of the older boys, an Irish Roma visiting his cousin for the summer, took the blocks of wood and started to hang them on each caravan. Suddenly and old man came out and started speaking loudly in a Romanic language while waving his arms about. “What’s he saying?” I asked alarmed, thinking that we were going to have a fight on our hands.
“He’s angry because no one’s put an address on his caravan yet!”
Fiona was right. Despite the all-consuming poverty, anti-Roma laws in so many countries, and a stagnant and regressive outlook among the Roma, it doesn’t take much to give people hope and pride. In just a day’s work we were able to give this man the belief that just like everyone else in France he deserves to have an address on his home where people can find him.
The irony is that we changed nothing of the conditions in the encampment. The Gitans are still living in the same impoverished situation as before with the same lack of basic amenities. More importantly, what is the point of having an address when your road doesn’t appear on any municipal map in the city? They can be found – the more important question is who out there is looking for them?
[1] To those who appreciate the Bohemian lifestyle, Bohemia is in fact a region of Eastern Czech Republic with a large Roma majority.
[2] I am not a tourist leave me alone !
[3] Every country has there gypsies, without them they would not be able to define their identity. Courrier International Aout 2008 Sans eux nous ne serons riens
The Roma in Europe
When I told my friends that I would be living in St Denis, my news was met with a mixture of skepticism and alarm. Hadn’t I read the stories? they asked me. St Denis was filled with young hooligans waiting to attack innocent bystanders. Worst of all, I was told in a low almost embarrassed whisper, were the Roma or Gypsies who lived in shanty towns all across La Seine St Denis. This last piece was not new news to me.
I had been warned about ‘the problem of the gypsies’ long before I set foot in Paris for the first time in 2003. To me, coming from the United States, the gypsies, called “Gitans” “Roma” or “Tsiganes” were the brightly colored fortune tellers who lived in quaint caravans as illustrated in Tintin, or the “Pikeys” from the movie Snatch. Free from the mundane constraints that affect most people, the Roma seemed to reflect a certain degree of freedom that can only add to the mystique of an old European city. [1]
When confronted with Roma for the first time, I didn’t know how to react. Five minutes out of the Notre Dame metro station and my most romantic misconceptions were destroyed. It happens all across Paris every day and goes something like this:
A hapless tourist, stuck in an endless line that zigzags its way toward Notre Dame is suddenly stirred out of his daydream.
“Do you speak English?” An elderly Roma wearing a head scarf says in perfect English. (They might not be able to say much else but they nail that line every time.)
“Yes,” says the unsuspecting tourist. At which point, the Roma whips out a bluntly written sign asking for money.
Completely embarrassed, the tourist who is still stuck in line looks around, puts his hand over his pockets says, shakes his head, trying as best as he can to end this decidedly awkward stalemate. If the Gitan women notices any sign of weakness, she cowers a little lower, grimaces a little more, as if by sheer acting ability she might change his heart and get a couple of centimes. Should he extricate himself from this Gitan, the tourist soon realizes that there is no escape. The queue isn’t going anywhere and another Roma is slowly making her way towards him.
The Parisians, on the other hand, have been trained from years of metro solicitation, and petty pickpockets. When a Parisian sees the telltale signs: gold teeth, cheap lace skirts an unkempt beard… they know how to look way away, while nonchalantly securing all of their belongings to their bodies. If the Roma asks for money, the Parisian usually says in a commanding voice, “je ne suis pas touriste, laisse moi tranquille.”[2]
Fiona Meadowes is a petite French and English dual national with large circular glasses and hazel colored hair tied back in a two braids. She has the sort of boundless energy I find impressive if not a little exhausting, along with an enthusiasm for all types of community service associations. She and her French Cameroonian husband Lamyne, a member of the Peul tribe gave me my first inside view of Gypsy life. They don’t see the gypsies as the social miscreants who steal and beg, but rather, as a group of people who have been, for their entire history, relegated to the outskirts of society.
I met Lamyne and Fiona last November when I was searching for an apartment. They were looking for a renter and someone who might share their causes. Being young, naive, and with the native ‘sure-why-not’ attitude of most Americans right out of college, we soon struck a deal. I had no idea how quickly I was going to be brought into their whirlwind world of fighting injustice and trying to bring about change at a community level.
Alarmed by what they see as the growing animosity of the French state towards the “Roma problem”, Fiona’s very own Organization d’Architects Alternatifs had organized collaboration with a Roma organization Parada, to help the large Roma population in St Denis. The most immediate problem was looking after the children in the camp while the Roma parents were crossing the border in Belgium. Despite the fact that many of the children who are born in France have legal rights here, the parents have to make this trip four times a year to renew their papers. (M. Sarkozy is encouraging the Roma expulsions by giving 300 euros to every Roma who leaves France.)
I set out for the encampment at 10:00 in the morning in the stifling summer heat. I turned left off of Avenue President Wilson, the large avenue which connected Paris to St Denis. All around me were the large office buildings displaying France’s enormous financial vibrancy: Gaz de France, Usine, ArcelorMittal, of course the biggest structure around was Stade de France which dominated the landscape. The road that turned and immediately the terrain seemed wilder and less pristine. At the very end of the road, I could see the flower-laiden car of Fiona and Lamyne’s two hippie assistants who live in a cozy homemade chalet in our backyard. The feeling of relief at knowing that I was in the right place soon was replaced by a feeling of uneasiness as I saw a dirt road lined with caravans. There was not a friendly face in sight. Rusted decomposing metal was interspersed with broken windows. And though I can’t be entirely sure, I really do think that the elderly Gitan woman was staring at me suspiciously. I placed my hand over my pocket before I realized that I was once again behaving likes all the tourists that I had seen and pocked fun at whenever I was in Paris.
Like most under classes, the Gypsies represent often contradictory elements. On the one hand they are extremely visible in the community: interacting with the rest of society in numerous ways. Yet they are also hidden and isolated: Their customs, history and living condition being largely unknown.
Originally considered lower class Hindus in Northern India, the gypsies immigrated eastward like all immigrants searching for freedom and opportunity. They first arrived in Greece and the Balkans in the 14th century. Later in the 15th century the Gitans came to Spain through North Africa. By the end of the 15th century, the two strands met in France. Almost immediately after they arrived, the “foreigners” as they were called, were treated with hostility. In Wallachovia and Moldavia the Gypsies were enslaved for five centuries. In other parts of Eastern Europe and Spain, they were forced into a sedentary lifestyle. Much like the barbarians during the Roman Empire, the Gitan formed a natural foil on which to establish a national identity. “We are civilized and they are not” was the mantra of the local population. According to Italian Novelist Andrezej Stasiuk this concept is still very much alive today, “Tous les pays ont leur Tsiganes. Sans eux, ils n’arriveraient pas à délimiter les forntieres de leur identité .”[3]
The clearest forms of persecution occurred in the 20th century with the rise of extreme nationalism. The Holocaust claimed the lives of a half a million Roma. In Communist Eastern Europe, the Roma rights were often restricted. In Czechoslovakia and Bulgaria forced sterilization took place. To this day in Hungary Roma children go to segregated schools of poor quality. The volatile mixture of centuries of oppression and a poor economic outlook has caused many Gitans to turn to crime and begging. It is often repeated that the Roma have no moral objection to thefts committed on non Roma people. Naturally, this doesn’t help the Roma to become integrated into any community.
When I arrived at the camp, Fiona, Lamyne and several other organizers were already supervising children who were writing numbers on pieces of scrap wood. I was handed a power drill and told to drill holes in each piece of wood. Though I must have looked like someone who was well practiced in using a drill, this was hardly the case!
“What a fun craft project,” I said with forced cheerfulness, looking at the mountain of wooden scraps that needed holes drilled in them.
They looked at me strangely.
“They are address plates. We’re making addresses for all of the Caravans.” Lamyne told me.
“What we’re doing is also completely illegal!” Fiona confided.
Chastened, I got on with my chore with far more dedication albeit with a little James Bond flair.
“Est-ce que je peux essayer?”
It was a young boy. He was clearly more tempted by the power drill, than by the wood pieces or my pathetic drilling technique. Apprehensively I handed him the power tool. I could just imagine this ending with someone loosing a finger. In the USA, I would have been sued or ended in jail. To my surprise, the boy approached his task with enormous concentration and skill. In the same time that I had completed only a few, he had finished double that amount. He was clearly imbued with a decent level of artistic and technical ability. Not that I should be surprised.
Throughout their history, Tsiganes often worked as craftsmen, tinkers, or carpenters, traveling from town to town trying to find work. In fact, the scarcity of these types of jobs today is one of the reasons why the Roma populations are in such a dire shape. Sadly, despite this child’s hidden talents, there is little chance that he will ever fully reach his potential. Chances are that he will spend the rest of his life begging on the street. But who is to blame? Jealous or skeptical of their children’s educational skills, the Roma adults are just as guilty as holding their children back as any government. Roma children have some of the lowest academic achievement among any ethnic group. It is common to find Roma children during the week begging for money on the streets and in the metro, when they should be in school. As Thomas Friedman would say; what a waste of human capital!
When it came time to paint chaos promptly ensued. Children grabbed at paint brushes and started going to work on any piece of wood they could get their hands on. If mistakes were made and numbers were sloppily painted, two of the older boys carefully retraced the numbers. One of the older boys, an Irish Roma visiting his cousin for the summer, took the blocks of wood and started to hang them on each caravan. Suddenly and old man came out and started speaking loudly in a Romanic language while waving his arms about. “What’s he saying?” I asked alarmed, thinking that we were going to have a fight on our hands.
“He’s angry because no one’s put an address on his caravan yet!”
Fiona was right. Despite the all-consuming poverty, anti-Roma laws in so many countries, and a stagnant and regressive outlook among the Roma, it doesn’t take much to give people hope and pride. In just a day’s work we were able to give this man the belief that just like everyone else in France he deserves to have an address on his home where people can find him.
The irony is that we changed nothing of the conditions in the encampment. The Gitans are still living in the same impoverished situation as before with the same lack of basic amenities. More importantly, what is the point of having an address when your road doesn’t appear on any municipal map in the city? They can be found – the more important question is who out there is looking for them?
[1] To those who appreciate the Bohemian lifestyle, Bohemia is in fact a region of Eastern Czech Republic with a large Roma majority.
[2] I am not a tourist leave me alone !
[3] Every country has there gypsies, without them they would not be able to define their identity. Courrier International Aout 2008 Sans eux nous ne serons riens
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