Romanipen – Opening the door on the Roma

The things you find on YouTube…

And I’m not just talking about viral videos of people making asses of themselves.

A few weeks ago, a documentary called Romanipen: The Gypsy Identity (Directed by Ima Garmendia & Kike del Olmo, 2006) came up as a suggested video while I was looking for a Hungarian cartoon for Little Z. I tagged it for later and finally got around to watching it yesterday. It’s rather short, just under an hour. And it’s a good (albeit brief) introduction into Roma culture.

Just a quick note before I go on. The Roma can be a volatile subject, especially in Eastern Europe. I’m not going to get into any politics and I’m not going to address the “Gyspy Question”. The opinions I offer are my own. I’m doing my best to put on my “anthropologist hat”  as I try and explore all the information out there about Roma and Roma culture. Also, Gypsies prefer to be called Roma, so that’s how I’ll refer to them from now on. I’ll sometimes use the term Gadjo (m.) to refer to people who are non-Roma.

Roma – a quick history

There has been much debate over where the Roma people originated. No country ever wanted to claim them, and as such, they often ended up being confused with Arab peoples, Turks, Egyptians (the probably origins of the word “Gyspy”), or whoever else was out of favour at the time.

It is now accepted that the Roma people originated in India when a number of tribes formed a loose confederation. For some unknown reason, that group decided to leave India and began their journey across the Middle East, Turkey, and Europe.

Gypsy woman peeling potatoes in a camp on the Humber River [Photo – John Boyd / Bibliothèque et Archives Canada / PA-071166]

Today, Roma can be found all over the world and it is estimated that 80,000 Roma call Canada home. For the life of me, I cannot find any statistics for Roma living here in Toronto, although there are a ton of news articles addressing the arrival of “thousands” of Roma in this city over the past 10 years. But if you are looking for info on Roma in Toronto, contact the Roma Community Centre.

If you’d like to read more in depth on the origins of Roma, a great site I found was ROMBASE. There’s so much academically supported info on Roma, that I haven’t had a chance to go through it all in time for this brief article.

Romanipen – as a philosophy

According to Wikipedia, Romanipen is a complicated set of rules, laws, and customs. It’s a way of being that identifies you as Roma. You can be ethnic Roma and have lost your Romanipen mojo. You’re then considered a Gadjo. Rarer, you can be a born Gadjo and acquire Romanipen and be considered Roma (usually adopted children).

There are so many sub-groups of Roma, since as the main group split during migration and roughly settled in a geographic area, they tended to be influenced by those cultures around them. Sometimes this was a symbiotic relationship, mostly it was forced assimilation.

Trying to make sense of it all…

I only bring this up, because when I first started reading about Roma culture a few years ago, I started with the book Bury Me Standing by Isabel Fonseca, who spent years researching among Bulgarian, Romanian, and other Eastern European Roma. The concepts of Romanipen and ritual cleanliness she talks about in her book were completely foreign to some of the Hungarian Roma I’ve talked to today in Toronto. When I mentioned this video to a Roma friend of mine (lets call him the Guitar Man, because he loves his guitar), he had no idea what the word Romanipen meant, or what the concept entailed.

Marie, a Roma Woman in Peterboro, 1909 [Photo – Mossom Boyd / Library and Archives Canada / C-021159]

According to Guitar Man, this gap in cultural knowledge amongst Hungarian Roma, has to do with forced cultural assimilation of Roma in the Austro-Hungarian Empire under Maria Theresa (1717-1780), who closed the Hungarian borders during her reign and forcibly removed Roma children from homes to be raised by approved Hungarian families. From the sounds of it, this wasn’t much different than what happened to Canadian Native Peoples who were removed from their homes and sent to live with Canadian families and were forced to attend special schools.

As a result, a whole section of the Roma people have lost their culture, yet have been branded as Roma with all the full stigma that Europeans (and lets face it, the World) have attached to Gypsies. There is a movement in Hungary right now to try and bring the culture back, and it is heartening to see that there are many positive role models emerging, but the going is tough. Again, this is something that I still want to look into, as getting any information via internet has proved a little tricky.

Back to the documentary

I thought that Romanipen was an overall interesting documentary, a good place to start for people who are interested in learning more about the Roma but don’t know where to begin. I was especially drawn to the quick portrait they had of a Finish Roma family (I’d like to find out more about the origins of their dress!). And also, I was quite impressed by the message of Nedjet Mustapha, a member of Macedonian Parliament who is also a Roma.

So, if you have a quick hour to spare, take a look. Then head over to the resources I’ve mentioned above for more information. Perhaps we could take some time to understand others’ perspectives before jumping to age-old stereotypes.