Romania

Bucharest, Sektor 5 - photo gallery


Break free from a gypsy ghetto

Disgraceful face of Bucharest has been hidden in sector 5. Here, in gypsy slums a new life is being born but too slowly. So gypsies choose the West.


RFG means the same for Romanians as RFN for Polish people. Those three letters stand for the Federal Republic of Germany. For many inhabitants of Bucharest this acronym has a second meaning: Rahova-Ferentari-Giurgiului. Three gypsy ghettos, a vicious circle, to which strangers are not allowed. Why should they? To be beaten or stabbed with a knife? From houses, which far more resemble a waste heap, from courtyards that smell of decay and from complete despair one may sometimes manage to escape. And not only to countries like Italy or Spain, where Romani people mostly go, causing problems to governments in Rome, Madrid and Bucharest. Crina Morteanu, 25 years old, is a gypsy. She has spent all her life in Ferentari. We meet at the underground station called Eroi Revolutiei. Only a few minutes away by fast modern underground cars from the center of Bucharest. I come a bit earlier and I'm waiting near the exit. A crowd of people rushing home from work around me. After a few seconds a short, corpulent girl with chestnut hair comes up to me.
'Hi! I'm Crina' she says.
'How did you know it was me? We have never met before.' - I reply astonished.
'Look around, you stand out from the crowd.' answered my guide around gypsy ghettos in Bucharest.
She was right - blond hair and fair complexion are a rare view in this part of town.
'We will start from Zabrauti which is a part of Ferentari. After this visit it will be easier for us to talk.' suggests Crina. We take a short walk, on the bumpy sidewalk, to a small high-rise jungle. I see colorfully dressed gypsy women sitting in front of houses. One of them is selling corn and sunflower seeds, which is a traditional occupation of a Romani woman. The other women are bored to death. 'We never come hear alone because it is hard to tell how people will welcome us. Even though they know you well, sometimes something goes wrong and you can get into trouble' says Crina. She comes here often. She has been working in Impreuna for seven years. Impreuna (in Romanian it means together) is an organization providing aid to gypsies. They founded it on their own to help their neighbors. 'With my CV it is in vain to look for a job in a acknowledged Bucharest companies, even if one has graduated from the college just like I did. Names such as Ferentari, Rahova and Giurgiului leave a mark on your whole life. If an employee is to choose between two candidates with the same qualifications he won't employ the one from the ghetto with the dark complexion' explains Crina.

Run away from the mess

We walk between the blocks. Most RFG habitants don't have running water. Instead of refrigerators they attach plastic blue barrels filed with water to their balconies. Carpets are washed in puddles. Chimneys from illegally installed stoves stick out through the windows designed to heat the flat during the winter. If you have a satellite dish you keep it locked in a cage with a padlock. Rahova-Ferentari-Giurgiului is also the heart of drug business. On a Tunsu Petre street in Giurgiului ghetto people walk, literally, on blood-stained syringes. They are scattered everywhere including piles of rubbish. Digging in this colorful garbage is an attractive game for children like Anna Maria Macovei. This girl has a surname known in whole Romania. Famous Romanian Minister of Justice has the same surname. But there the similarities end. Mother of Anna Maria, a 32-year-old Dorina has five children and a disabled husband who can't walk. Her youngest son, Alexandru, was born during the winter in a flat without electricity. The only people to help were her neighbors. He weighted only two pounds but survived. The whole family lives in one room. Flats built in the 70s, small and cheap, quickly changed into slums. Most of inhabitants of RFG are crowded there. From 5 to 8 grown up people living on 20 square meters is an everyday reality. That's why you can see children bicycles and prams, and everything else that flats cannot hold just next to blue barrels hanging out of the balcony Macovei family survives thanks to the help of social security. Only four members of the family have the right to get free food rations three times a week. 'Food is given to children who are two years of age' says Dorina. Alexandru therefore has to wait just a bit longer. From this kind of poverty no one can break free on his own. People have to be literally torn out of it. One by one, says Crina. For some years now, legal provisions are passed in Romania to help this situation. There is also a governmental agency which takes care of gypsies. In every high school special places are reserved for gypsies. Some collages voluntarily participate in this program. Only gypsies are allowed to compete for these reserved places. Crina graduated from college due to this program. Nowadays she no longer lives in Ferentari. She doesn't think about moving to the West. 'Here I have my family and a job I like. We have a good life. My brother wasn't that lucky, he was a drug dealer and now is in jail.' she explains.

Non-existence

In Zabrauti at six o'clock in the evening everyone sits on the stairs leading to claustrophobic flats. We are being watched by them. Between houses without windows rubbish pile up, no one takes care of them, because inhabitants don't pay the rent. A stranger like me is the biggest attraction for children. Instantly they run to the newcomer, jump and surround him. In no time one of the kids is searching my camera bag but he doesn't find anything worthy of attention. Crina is angry: 'Kids are often even worse than adults.' Over our heads I can see a tangle of many cables. 'In some places there are so many of them that you can barely see the sky. It's an illegal electricity network. The legal one was cut off because of the debts. People steal electricity using this web' explains Crina. The power station estimates that only because of Ferentari, it looses more than half a million of dollars every month. Already from a distance my guide waves to a slim girl who is in her mid-twenties. Her name is Monika. She is an important person in Zabrauti. She is a sanitary assistant, but in reality she is the connection between gypsies and local authorities. She gives information, such as, what kind of medicaments inhabitants need the most. In everyone of the six districts, so called sectors of Bucharest, there are school assistants who look after children and make sure they go to school. There are also mediators who mediate between Romani people and the city authorities. 'Most people who live hear don't officially exist. They don't appear in statistics, they don't have any documents or registration. Without all this, even if they want to, they can't get a legal job. Even though, formally I take care of health and sanitary things I also help to arrange various formalities. I write official letters and tell people where to go to get help' explains Monika, who even though, still lives in a dull high-rise, today as an assistant has a normal and legal job. Due to this "non-existence" nobody knows how many gypsies live in Romania. According to the last census there are only 535 thousand of gypsies but independent organizations estimate that in reality there 1 to 2.5 million of them.

Italy and Spain - a paradise

Bumpy pavements give a better perspective to understand why after the accession the UE (1st of January 2007) Romanian gypsies started, on a large scale, to look for happiness in the West. They go, above all, to Italy and Spain. 66 small towns, where immigrants camp, mostly Romanian gypsies, sprang up only around Rome. After this invasion townspeople started to protest against gypsies. In Spain unknown perpetrators burned gypsy camp. Children were burnt alive in the fire. In Italy, gypsies are the biggest immigration group and amount to 10% of all 3.7 million refugees. Cup of bitterness has overflown when at the beginning of November, a 24-year-old Romani raped and beaten to death a 47-year-old woman in Rome. Immediately afterwards, the government issued a special decree in which it allowed to extradite those UE citizens, who can't earn their living legally or people who threaten public safety. At the same time gangs of hooligans started to attack gypsies. Situations became so grave that the Prime Ministers of both countries met to discuss the issue. Then, they appealed to the European Commission to undertake more effective measures aiming at the integration of immigrants. This was the end of the matter, but a group of socialist Eurodeputies, including the Romanian ones, started to requir from the European Commission to work out a European strategy for the Romani community. Bucharest has something to worry about. From a country that has 22 million of citizens about 10% has already left and Romania doesn't want to become the biggest gypsy ghetto in Europe. International conflict about Romani people is an issue eagerly used by some of Romanian politics. Now they can say: Look, it's because of the gypsies that we have so many troubles! Impreuna, along with other 5 gypsy organizations wrote even an open letter to the president of the country asking him to stop this xenophobic rhetoric. In order to facilitate the contact with Romani people, the Romanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced lately that in its consulates in Italy and Spain it will employ gypsies. We want to improve relations between authorities and communities, which live in those countries' said Adrian Cioroianu, the Foreign Minister. Our employees won't be sent from Romania, instead they will be chosen from gypsies who already live in both of this countries.

I'm going to school

Not everybody will however leave RFG or slums on the suburbs of Kluż, or plastic tent camps in Slovakia. Troubles of Italy, Spain and other EU countries with Romani people will end no sooner than education and legal work will become available to every gypsy. Vatal Cateluia, a 23-year-old girl, who has a 9 month-old-child, lives two kilometers from Macovei's one-room family flat, in houses for poor people on the Trompetului street. Until recently, she would sit in front of her house and stare at the sandy road before her. Since her baby boy was born, Vatal found it even harder to survive. Few months before, Crina showed up at her doorstep. She told her about the Karawana Program, which was initiated by people from Impreuna. The idea was simple: they persuaded a few specialists like hairdressers, make-up artists and cosmeticians to pass their abilities to young girls from ghettos. It worked. Courses had started and first graduates had already passed their professional qualifying exam. Vatal will be a hairdresser. 'I had really big problems, there was no one to take care of my son and I had to go to school. In the end my mother and my aunt helped me. There are more and more girls like Vatal. Those who are first to go on the courses start a chain reaction - they encourage their neighbors to work. Crina invites me to a house of her distant relative. Her oldest daughter is already a cosmetician. She received a legal job and now she is fighting for a pay rise. The other daughter also wants to obtain a profession, she wants to have her own money and maybe someday buy an apartment outside Ferentari. In this district it's the biggest dream. Moving out is a real symbol of success. 'Here one has to fight for every even the slightest success. People don't read newspapers, don't use Internet, don't even go to the work office, and many of them can't read. When we come to them and give them information then they show interest in our offer.' explains Crina. In fact, gypsies from RFG don't show much of any interest. On the other hand, not many people care about their fate either. Even an employee of the Work Office which cooperates with Romani organizations doesn't know how many unemployed people live in the district. Non-governmental organizations estimate that between Romani people in Romania unemployment reaches almost 30% (in the whole society about 7%). Thanks to founds for ethnic minorities, which are a common practice in EU, at least some gypsies can break away from poverty. It's a really big chance for Romania. Money has to be spent, not on reports but on people who regardless of the weather will walk the muddy streets of gypsy districts in Bucharest and many other housing estates not only in Romania. Thanks to them Vatal and her friends will be joined by others. Those who have a profession, a home and a job don't want to steal or beg on the street of Western cities anymore.

AGNIESZKA SKIETERSKA, Bucharest
Gazeta Wyborcza, 27th December 2007