Blog
A bride at 14 years old by Doina Sîrbu
Magdalena abandoned school in the 5th grade because of her home problems. Now she is 23 years old and 3 children whom she promises not to let them make the same mistake.
Magdalena is a Young woman of 23 years old with long and brown hair, a bit burnt by the sun on the edges. Her brown eyes and with black rings around them betray her tiredness of a child who grew up without a father from the age of 4, of a teenage mum who takes care of 3 children today. She doesn’t remember her father, but she knows she had troubles and she couldn’t surpass them. At 36 the man ...
Balancer for oblivion by Ana Maria Costache
A young girl remains afloat with the help of non-formal education.
From Monday to Friday, Alina wakes up at 2:30am in a room in the hotel where she has been working as a maid for the last 11 years. She starts working at 3am, she works for eight hours, and then she heads to Parade Day Centre. As soon as she gets there, just after 11:30, she goes to the gym, she changes and then starts warming up. With the help of Cristi, the entertainer, Alina starts the balancing exercise and it takes her just three moves to stand on his shoulders. Her head almost reaches the square ...
If I failed you what would you do further, have you ever wondered? by Corina Niţescu
He lived with the desire of hiding his wounds from prying eyes and ended up in discovering his own way in life.
At the age of 6 Dragoş Dumitru found out what a psychical disease meant. His mother had been hospitalized in the Psychiatry Hospital and for Safety Measures in Săpoca (Buzău), and after a short period of time he received the diagnosis: undifferentiated schizophrenia, 3rd grade. He retired on medical grounds, and Dragoş was taken to a centre of receiving emergencies and distributed to an orphanage.
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Dragoş comes from a gypsy Hungarian father from ...
A good start does not depend on skin colour by Anda Elena Pintilie
You see them and would swear they are Romanians. They introduce themselves with pride and joy as young ethnic Romani and they fight that, through culture and education, other Romani youths shall break the barriers of discrimination.
Denisa and Lavinia are two young girls out of three in the house of Lupu. Alongside Georgiana, they were born into a mixed family with a Romani father and a Romanian mother. Their parent’s love story, both from Iasi, seems as if in a movie.
Mariana, the mother, married Iulian when she was young. She was saddened that she was not ...
ECHO by Mihaela Balica
When eyes are shut, everything around is dark only the voice and the thought can be of guidance.
On an outlying street from the 1 May neighbourhood in the west of Targu Jiu, a town in Gorj County, a little boy who does not seem to be more than 12 years old is pulling a barrow filled with big water bottles. As the bottles are moving chaotic in the improvised two wheel barrow, the water splashes the boy’s trousers, leaving a wet patch on his leg. The sun has been scorching the ground ceaselessly for the last three days. When the heavy drops of water hit the sandy soil, ...
The Master of the bow by Andreea Bădoiu
A Young Romani violin player dreams about becoming an international musician and prove what he can do.
The small concert hall of the Romanian Athenaeum from Bucharest is almost full. Musicologists, parents, music teachers or simple spectators wait for the concert of the scholars of the Musicians & Singers Union from Romania (UNIMIR), at which 5 young people participate with special musical performances. Mircea Dumitrescu, a Romani boy of 16 years old, nicknamed „little Paganini”, talks to his mother for a few minutes and to Olivia Papa, the guiding teacher, then he ...
A family with a love for school by Cristina Babii
Doris and Larisa are a family without name. They are not united in marriage, but by the two children and their love of work. They have inherited a good work ethic from their parents, who in turn have inherited this from their parents, who in turn have inherited... This is despite the label under which they were born and which should have been stuck on their forehead like a palm thrown over their face.
As you face Uspenia Church in Botosani, where Mihai Eminescu was baptised, if you glance hard over your left shoulder so that your body is turning, you can see a tailor ...
Traditions and sheet music: two love in one gipsy heart by Anda Elena Pintilie
He is Romani and was born with the music in his veins. He played, as always, the accordion, the organ and the saxophone by the ear. He is a genius just like his people of musicians. He did not want to stop here. At 14, David is dreaming of the great stages of the world, with his clarinet and a bow tie.
When you mention Zece Prajini village, you think of music, Romani people, party and good mood. Situated on the border between Iasi and Neamt counties, the village next to Dagata village got his name from the allotment measured with ten poles given to the Romani liberated ...
People in a word by Cristina Gabriela Damian
At 22, Alexandru Cantea has found the equilibrium between education and tradition.
“Music starts from the heart and addresses the heart” (george Enescu) is written on the squared window from the last floor of the Music Conservatory in Bucharest. It is Friday afternoon, five o’clock, and out of the 14 study rooms on the fourth floor of the Conservatory classical music can be heard, with stops and repetitions. The students walk between the rooms, to change the scenery. They buy coffee from the coffee machines, they gather in the hall and discuss this and that, and ...
3 x first grade =? by Anca Bordeanu
Rodica is of Romani ethny, is 30 years old and she studied 3 times the 1st grade. She abandoned when she realized that her father was right: gipsies don’t take coronet.
From up the hill down
In Dancu, a village from the outskirts of Iași, the Romani people established starting with the end of 80’s „on the hill”. Their houses were the border between the village and the fields, and the villagers’ children weren’t allowed to pass there alone that „gipsies would take them”.
Furthermore, Romani people had enough children of theirs to want more, but the ...
