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About My Parents



What is the first thing that comes into your mind when you think of your parents? What do they mean for you? What did you learn from them? For what can we be grateful to them in our adult life?

Disadvantages – I have heard it way too often, and often as an excuse for positive discrimination or feeling pity. In my childhood, want and hardship were a natural part of life. I often run after my mother – even when she was cooking – to ask for bread with sugar. I loved it, just as I loved 'bodag', the Gypsy bread. I did not mind that my mother usually baked it when there was nothing else to eat. My family had a little garden so we had some fresh vegetables and fruits. Also, my parents did day work to put bread on our table. My father worked as a bricklayer, my mother made money as an unskilled worker. But I always said in school that she was a housewife, her work was to look after us, her family. Many thought she was a sluggard because we were just a Gypsy family.

As a child, I had no idea what discrimination was. We did not know the word, but we experienced it each and every day. I hated PE classes, we were always the last ones to be picked for the team games. Nobody wanted to be with us and it hurt so much to be the last one to stay and see on the face of the others that they did not want to be in the same team with me. But they did not mind when I helped them out with the good answer during German class and they did not fail. At those occasions no one cared about skin color. Maybe that was the reason they did not hate us so badly: we were always ready to help, despite all the humiliation and the hurtful situations.

We were poor and we are still poor today. My parents worked day and night to provide for us, to help us reach higher. I am grateful to them for despite all the hardships, they raised us to be decent and open minded people and taught us that a man is best characterized by their deed, not their skin color. It is important to stand up and build a better and more inclusive society together.

The blog entry was written by a participant of Roma Heroes workshop.

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