From the day I arrived in Italy, I was aware of them. Bands of people living in squalor in makeshift homes beneath or nearby the freeways. Dilapidated work vans, old RVs, even corrugated plastic and tarps serve as homes. Hastily dug trenches for bathrooms. No running water or electricity. Matted, dirty, half-naked kids with no shoes.
Gypsies, I was told-- "Zingari", in Italian. Beggars and thieves, the lot of them. And I would drive on.
My experience with the gypsies here in Italy has been pretty limited. Despite stories of muggings and pickpocketing, elaborately staged "accidents" after which only gypsies are witness and other such horrors-- I have been subject only to panhandling, and offers of a windshield wash for spare change.
Perhaps that is why I have had no interest in understanding these people or their lifestyle, motivation, or history.
My attitude changed last week when the largest of their camps, ensconced for months about 20 minutes away from my home beneath the freeway near a mall I rarely visit, was demolished. The subsequent search for a new home led this group to settle in the median of the freeway on the exit where I drop my child off to school every morning. The following day it had spread onto both sides of the freeway. The day after, it included a field behind the main street. Mothers with infants strapped to their chest walked down the middle of the main street. Teen boys, barefoot and half-clad, swung their legs while seated on the freeway median. Little kids burst onto the exit ramps and across into the fields beyond.
Suddenly I was interested. Isn't that the sad reflection that is reality.
Our local Facebook page, haunted by we Americans living abroad here in Naples, was full to bursting with commentary on the subject. Some of the comments were informative, some shockingly hateful, most (reasonably so) full of fear for family and home. I just had to do some research of my own.
Despite what I thought I knew about these people, here is what I learned. These people are not a loose band of impoverished Eastern European immigrants, bonded together only by their common language and condition. These are a "people" unto themselves-- a "clan" of sorts, that has existed for hundreds and hundreds of years. There are at least 160,000 Roma Gypsies living in Italy. (This includes, of course, only those that want to be counted. The actual numbers are far, far higher.) There have been Gypsies in Italy for hundreds of years, but in the recent past, large numbers of them have immigrated to Western Europe due to political change in their home countries (Romania, Albania, Croatia, and others)
In their home countries, they existed much as they do here-- living on the fringe. Some supported themselves with subsistence farming efforts, but generally the groups then and now support themselves via panhandling, dumpster diving, and small scale thievery. Some groups have more complex "operations" that include drug running and prostitution. They cobble together "homes" from whatever materials that they can beg, borrow or steal. Homes of plastic tarpaulin stand next to old RVs, work vans, and plywood forts. I haven't been inside, but from what I have read there is some pretty clever engineering going on inside-- I have certainly seen my share of DirecTV satellite dishes tacked on cardboard roofing. Inside the camps, there is a family and hierarchical structure that exists to keep the clan together. It includes sharing of motherhood duties, food, and money.
There have been integration efforts put forth by the Italian government. In some cities, barrack style housing has been provided by the government in an effort to improve the health of the camps (they have a ten-year lower life estimate because of living conditions), as well as to contain the camps away from residents enraged by the thefts, filth, and other problems associated with the camps. Classroom education has been offered to a limited degree to some children living in camps. More often than not, these efforts have been for naught. Camps are often dismantled or destroyed by the groups, perhaps because they are located away from what they perceive as their true support? The castoffs of others? Opportunities to ask for change?) Attendance to school programs never catches on either. (Could it be that education of their children is a threat to their lifestyle? What if their kids began to hope for something better? Or, less cheerfully, perhaps the children couldn't bear to attend a school where they don't speak the language, and are considered dirty, smelly, and beneath human....)
Here in Italy, usually known as one of the more tolerant Western European countries to immigration, nearly 70% of the populace wants the Roma Gypsies "gone". (By what exact method, who knows?) In the last several years, I think in great part due to the stresses of the painfully weak economy here in Southern Italy, Italians have directed perhaps a disproportionate amount of loathing towards the Romas. Article after article can be found in online news sources about camps being deliberately burned down by residents in an attempt to "remove" the problem.
Here in Naples, I remained anxious and concerned about our own personal gypsy "problem." The tone of of the families living in the area became less fearful and more mob. I began to wonder what kind of a response we would, as Americans stationed overseas, launch against this "European Immigration Problem."
But, the next morning, they were gone. No kids, no stray dogs, no RVs, just makeshift outhouses and trash remained. Word is that the military police drove them out-- with an offer of a camp North of here, away from our homes and schools. I may never know.
I have to say that I am glad. And sad.
For me personally, I feel less threatened by the potential for problems associated with having this camp nearby. I will also be relieved that the vicious and ugly dialogue that has been thrown around in the last week will die down in my immediate vicinity.
At the same time, the problem is not gone. It is just pressed back into the periphery, where it can exist side by side with my own happiness without interference.
And somehow I just don't feel very good about that.
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