How is home visit in Rome

 Home Visit to Roma

We came back from Transylvania with many good memories, but this one is the one that impressed us the most. We were guests at the house of a Romani family in Valenii Village near Targu Mureş.

The two daughters of this family were able to learn English by themselves, as the television broadcast in Romania was in English. In this way, we were able to chat with them about Roman life, about which we knew little. The more we are different, the more we are alike.

We reached them through a non-profit organization working for the development of Roma. Families are opening the doors of their homes to visitors with the project they have done with pilot families in several parts of Romania. You can also be a guest at their house to chat for a few hours, learn about their culture or stay overnight.

For those who want to be guests, we have shared their information at the bottom of the article.

They were very hospitable and generous to us. They opened their houses, gave us clothes, forced us to eat and drink like a Turkish mother, released their albums and shared their lives.

We owe it to them to convey to you what they told us about their life, which has survived to the present day despite the pressures of the states for centuries, which was governed by strict social rules in a caste system.

The Roma make up 7-10% of the population, being the second largest minority in Romania. The reason the number was not clear was that many of them denied being Roma so as not to be excluded.

They are not normally a very open community.

This family is an exception in many ways. As we said above, they are open to home visits. You even have the opportunity to stay with them (home stay).

Their father, despite the society's labeling of gypsies as stealing, went and became a police officer.

I ask, “Do prejudices make your life difficult?” “We learned early on not to care,” says their 24-year-old daughter.

The family is very devoted to gypsy traditions, but is also open-minded. One of the children went to school for 5 years and the other for 8 years. Many Roma children go to school for a maximum of 2 years or not at all. Normally, the age of 13-15 is considered the age of marriage in Romans, while her father waited for her daughter to be 16. While families with 8 children are common, they have stopped at 3 children.

Dad wears black wide hats and grows a mustache, in keeping with my gypsy social code here. (We added his photo to the comments)

The same social code determines women's attire: hair plaited with ribbons indicates that the girl is single. Women who get married (even if they are divorced) cover their hair.

Young girls can wear pink and red, middle-aged people can wear green, and older people can wear burgundy and dark green.

By the way, the kitchen in the back is not the kitchen. There are tiles but neither sink nor plumbing. The real kitchen is elsewhere. It just stands in the hall because it's beautiful.