Roma Community Day!

This event actually happened a month ago, the Friday before I left for spring break, but I finally got the pictures and wanted to include it in my blog.

My Public Service class that I am involved in planned a day of games, crafts, and dancing in the Agia Sofia Roma (gypsies) community on April 8th. It was a way to celebrate the Roma community, which is often ignored in Thessaloniki and to bridge the gap that exists between them and other Greeks. As part of a larger project called "Street Kids 2 School Kids," we are working with the NGO Arsis to rebuild a community center in their area that has fallen into disrepair.

We didn't really know what to expect with the community day because it was about 12 Americans planning it and we weren't even sure if anyone would turn up. We were not at all disappointed by the overwhelming turnout. Mostly the younger children came, a few parents, and some of the older kids watched from a distance, along with some of the men and women. We started out with a man on stilts and some dancing, which all of the kids really liked. They all know how to dance and have a very unique style... mostly I felt like eight year olds that I know don't know how to dance like some of the little girls could.

In an effort to encourage pride in the Agia Sofia community we had a trash clean up, which they didn't quite catch on to. The area where they live is covered in trash, especially the open field where we were having our activities. They were more excited to get the plastic gloves we gave them to pick up with than to actually help. A lot of the little kids were eager to please and helped the most. Once we moved on to the next activity, however, all their gloves ended up on the ground. It was pretty obviously they didn't get the point of it. It was also hard to explain because we don't speak Greek and their variation of it is not really what we have been learning. Even the few Greek speakers who were with us would have trouble talking to them. But we managed to have fun with them, despite the language barrier. It really made you have to work to get your point across. The group of ten girls who attend the program every Tuesday run by some people from our school and with student volunteers performed a dance they had been working on and then there was bead making, a banner painting (that didn't go quite as planned--ended up being very messy), and a name tag station. Most of these kids don't know the alphabet or how to read, let alone how to spell their own names.

A little boy with his name tag

The day was really fun, but we ended up having to leave in a hurry because some of the older boys were getting a little rowdy. Their culture teaches them to be aggressive and that was one thing that put a little bit of a damper on the day. Most of the volunteers were girls and I think we all got several marriage proposals by the time we left, plus a lot of unnecessary attention from the older boys. Overall, though, I think the day was a success. The kids all seemed to have a lot of fun and they never have had the opportunity to have someone come to their community and put on an event specifically for them. I think that it meant a lot to all of them to see the positive attention they were getting and they will remember it for a while. These are kids that are normally treated as pests or ignored because they try to sell things like kleenex to people on the streets in order to make money. For once they were getting a different kind of attention. Hopefully the tradition we started will continue next year, even though most of us won't be in Greece.

The girls who go to the class every Tuesday