Summertime along the Olt River
It’s that yummy time of year when the fruit ripens naturally in the mountains of Oltenia. Unlike an entrepreneurial American child who might make a lemonade stand, these Roma children are forced into child labor by their parents (under penalty of a beating).
July 22nd, 2007 at 10:05 pm
Of course we have the same situation here with the Roma and it’s tragic. There is a campaign going on right now to stop people from giving them money and to put an end to the cycle. I don’t think it will work but I hope something changes.
July 22nd, 2007 at 10:30 pm
> Unlike an entrepreneurial American child who might make a lemonade stand
Are those stands for real ? I mean, do the kids get licences etc., and their clients buy the lemonade for the sake of the lemonade ?
I always wondered about that and about the kids selling cookies door to door :) … if that happens at all in RealLife
July 23rd, 2007 at 12:01 am
I sold lemonade as a kid. Surely for the older folks buying from me, it was a gesture of kindness. Of course there’s no police out there tracking down and busting illegal lemonade stands.. as far as I know…and it’s girlscouts that sell cookies door to door…we did often market giant chocolate bars as fundraisers for school projects..the man used us kids to sell all sorts of things…go capitolism…!
July 23rd, 2007 at 12:40 am
> these Roma children are forced into child labor by their parents (under penalty of a beating).
… seems everybody arriving from the West thinks Roma are monsters … did they actually tell you their parents are forcing them to pick up berries and sell them to tourists ? Are you certain those were Roma ?
Funny that when the Western child sells lemonade to benevolent adult strangers it’s called “free enterprise spirit”, when the Eastern child sells berries to the benevolent adult strangers it’s called either “forced child labor” or “begging”.
July 23rd, 2007 at 6:20 am
Emil, given your smoking situation so candidly stated on your blog, I can only assume that your ill-tempered comment arises from such a moment of pique. Romerican has it right.
Props on the picture, it is frightening yet intriguing!
July 23rd, 2007 at 8:24 am
well, the boy is not Roma. The girl has clean clothes and the hair was recently washed, so she does not belong to a nomad Roma group, if she is Roma at all. Settled Roma are as decent as anybody, so I don’t buy the “these Roma children are forced into child labor by their parents (under penalty of a beating)”.
So I say Romer!can rushed to conclusions, which he doesn’t do often, so it’s not a big deal.
Now I’ll go back to chewing my pencil.
July 23rd, 2007 at 8:55 am
ROMA IN ROME ? The young dad plays his accordion, a boring song, his eyes searching for the random policeman. Dling, dlong, dling, the tin cup of his daughter, a seven years old bitch from the Balkans, is begging for a coin. Her eyes are not looking at passengers, she dreams of an horse, a doll, or an ice-cream.
-He should be jailed.-
Where he will play and the wardens will dance.
-That little girl should go to school.-
I would’nt be her teacher.
The change at every metro-stop.
Rome does not care.
July 23rd, 2007 at 8:58 am
If I may… the difference between an American kid voluntarily choosing to spend his/her Saturday afternoon in a makeshift stand sellling lemonade in front of the house for a few hours and a Roma kid starting his/her day at 7am every day of the week standing alongside a busy highway selling miscellaneous crap of whatever is in season (according to the parents) is remarkably distinct.
Other than this little factoid, we’re all not so far apart.
July 23rd, 2007 at 4:05 pm
>well, the boy is not Roma. The girl has clean clothes and the hair was recently washed, so she does not belong to a nomad Roma group, if she is Roma at all.
Although I agree that alot of Roma do share some similarities in appearence, you cannot dismiss a person from a racial/social class grouping by whether they have washed recently or not, to do so would be both incorrect and bordering on offensive.
Similarly, I think it’s impossible to simply class everybody as either “Roma” or “Non-Roma” anyway, I understand that there are subtle divisions and sub-divisions in Roma culture that need better appreciation and understanding.
July 23rd, 2007 at 6:05 pm
Looking closely at the faces of these two children, clearly the girl already has a worn expression from a difficult life. The boy looks a bid “hardened and hungry”. And yet while they don’t look like brother & sister, they very likely have a lot in common. There’s no “happy-go-lucky, well-nurtured disposition” going on here.
July 23rd, 2007 at 7:37 pm
Go back in time for a few hundred years. Children help their parents in the family’s farm or the landlord’s farm from a young age.
Meanwhile, working in factories, in dehumanizing conditions made the child labor laws appear.
Now we have cultures like the Amish that are still putting their kids to work. Should we interfere?
Another poster pointed that they should be in school. They could very well be in school, only that in the northern hemisphere is summertime now, so it’s “berries picking time and selling them on the highway and trains time”.
July 23rd, 2007 at 10:00 pm
To my fellow romanians here: please stop “hiding behind the fingers” by relating to the world wide problems. Yes, the world has social problems and Romania has, too - and this fact does not nullify Romania’s own. This attitude is becoming a too old of a trend - “oh, you shouldn’t talk about my momma, your momma is even uglier”.
We all know that roma children are forced to beg and labor. The only thing that Romer!can got wrong here is that those children will get beaten anyway - they didn’t sell enough or whatever reason. And yes, am intalnit tigani fericiti but really those in the present picture are not a part of those. That girl needs a hug.
I don’t see where Romer!can said that we should interfere. He just stated a truth that we all know - even if some of us choose to deny.
July 24th, 2007 at 12:11 pm
Lola said:
> a truth that we all know
We might “all know” that, but it is not true. Roma, as a rule, do not beat their children. Want to find the real, persistent and truly despicable child-beaters ? Look at middle class parents with shitty jobs, great ambitions and a gymnastics/ballet/music/math teacher living nearby.
Costi wrote:
> Meanwhile, working in factories, in dehumanizing conditions made the child labor laws appear.
No, that’s not true either: child labor was pushed by adult unionized workers to protect their jobs, the very same guys that pushed for immigration restrictions, for denying employment for non-unionized workers and other very progressive measures for raising the entry barrier for employment. The result was the reign of teenage gangs in working class neighborhoods … and I am talking about Rumania during the ’20s and later during the ’90s, not US, though I suppose that’s what happened there, too.
Lola said:
> We all know that roma children are forced to beg and labor.
There are somewhere between 1 mil. and 2.5 mil. Roma in Rumania (depending on how you count … ). If their children were forced to beg, you would be swamped in beggars, and if they were forced to labor, the GDP increase would be way greater than 6% per year, but it seems that’s not so dire a situation. Generalizing “all Roma are evildoers” is just it: flawed generalization.
Alex said:
> you cannot dismiss a person from a racial/social class grouping by whether they have washed recently or not
I was talking about fashion: some of the nomads use oil to give their hair a shine; I wrongly believed this to be common knowledge, though now I realize very few people have ever seen nomad Roma … btw, this was common practice all over the civilized europe not such a long time ago.
There are lumpens who maim their children, or other peoples children, to make them fit for a successful career in begging, and there are elites who maim their children, or other peoples children, to make them fit for a successful career in strip-tease (after a short detour through gymnastics). There are lumpens who live by begging, or stealing, and train their children to do the same. There are “elites” that live off our taxes while giving nothing in exchange, and who expect their children to live off our taxes, too. Those we don’t like, we call them “tigani”.
August 3rd, 2007 at 12:01 am
Romericanule…Am intrat din greseala pe acest site si din pacate mi-am pierdut o jumatate de ora pe-aici…Ai dreptate sa te numesti romerican…din pacate pentru tine nu esti nici roman,nici american..Nu stiu de cat timp traiesti aici in America dar esti spalat bine pe creier…Aici ar fi trebuit cel mai bine sa-ti insusesti ideea de a-ti respecta obarsiile si neamul…Daca nu intelegi textul in limba romana voi reveni cu varianta in limba engleza…
October 2nd, 2007 at 12:35 am
monica nu stiu daca o sa mai intri vreodata pe acest blog.
incepand cu inceputul,
1. nu stiu ce fai tu la ora 12 noaptea pe calculator luand in considerare ca tu ai lasat acest mesaj la ora 12 vineri noapte, ar trebuii sa te gandesti prima data la viatza ta sociala (nu iti pierde noptile de vineri in fatza calculatorul ca o sa ajungi fata batrana)si nu cred ca esti in masura de a da sfaturi.
2. se vede ca ai pierdut doar o jumate de ora pe acest blog si nu ai intales nimic din ce scrie aici(ori poate nu intalegi ca e scris in engleza), te rog frumos propunei la romericanul “asta” sa faca si o versiune in limba romana.
3. eu nu cred ca e spalat pe creier, eu zic ca e cel mai dezghetat american la minte pe care l-am cunoscut, si cred ca in acelasi timp ca tu monica ai o conceptie invechita, te rog frumos trezestete, dechideti ochii, uitate in jurul tau si vezi cum este lumea reala.
4.nu stiu de unde esti originara din romania de folosesti cuvantul “obarsiile” se scrie obarsie si este la singular (daca ai folosit cuvatul in locul cuvatului obiceiuri, ai incurcat limba romana rau de tot)
obarsie inseamna origine si o persoana are doar o origine nu are mai multe origini.