National Geographic Slovenia March 2011 It is clear to me that when we journalists write about Roma we usually highlight their problems, and perhaps in this way we unwittingly spread the stereotypes that are already so firmly rooted among the majority population, even though our intention is quite different. But when I entered the first Roma camp in Dolenjska, all my doubts disappeared. It became clear to me that I had to do this. So much misery just a few kilometres from towns where the great majority of the majority population live neat and orderly lives is hard to swallow. |
Among the Roma
Living conditions - At home with the Roma in Dolenjska
Text Meta Krese
Photographs Arne Hodalič
The majority of Roma live in segregated settlements that fully deserve the label of ethnic and social ghettos.
"Am I supposed to wear these to school?" asks Andželina, all upset. The answer hangs in the air, even though everybody knows that a worn pair of stilettos with 10-centimetre heels – goodness knows where they came from – are not suitable footwear for a twelve-year-old schoolgirl. Her classmates would tease her mercilessly.
Jerneja Turin, a researcher at Amnesty International Slovenia, who often visits the Roma settlements in the Dolenjska region, asks the exact same question that I was about to ask: "So where are all the humanitarian organisations?"
"They don't allow Roma at the Red Cross in Novo Mesto," I was told by Liljana Grm, a Roma woman who, like Andželina, lives in the village of Dobruška Vas. I decided to accompany her and her friend to the Red Cross clothing depot during opening hours. We took our place in the queue like everyone else. But the moment they recognised us they sent us away, explaining that this was "not for Roma". The incident shocked me deeply and, to make matters worse, Liljana apologised to me for having exposed me to the kind of treatment that she experiences every day.
"If only we had proper slippers to wear at school," say Andželina's friends.
But the lack of appropriate footwear is not the only reason why the girls spend their days at home with their brothers and sisters, rather than with their peers at school. Indeed, there are many other reasons. Too many.
Nobody knows exactly how many Roma there are in Slovenia, but experts claim that the number is between 7,000 and 12,000. Their settlements, of which there are believed to be slightly over 100, for the most part still illegal, are mainly located in the Dolenjska, Posavje, Bela Krajina and Prekmurje regions. In his study entitled Roma settlements as a special element of the settlement system in Slovenia (2007), Dr Andrej Zupančič of the Department of Geography at the University of Ljubljana's Faculty of Arts shows that over half of Roma settlements are actually hamlets and small settlements with fewer than 50 inhabitants. Only seven have more than 200 inhabitants, while Pušča in Prekmurje has over 500 and some figures suggest a similar population for Brezje-Žabjek near Novo Mesto. There are twelve settlements with between 100 and 200 inhabitants. In most cases they are purely Roma settlements; the number of members of other groups is negligible. Dr Zupančič believes that many Roma settlements fully deserve to be characterised as ethnic and social ghettos, and that in terms of their physiognomy, structure and function they are clearly "slums".
"Even the simple fact that they live in segregated settlements with no real possibility of living elsewhere means that their human rights are violated," explains Jerneja Turin as we walk up the muddy path towards the top of the Roma settlement of Žabjek, just a few kilometres from Novo Mesto. We have, in fact, decided to focus on the Dolenjska region, where the living conditions of the Roma community are a particularly urgent problem. It is cold. A nasty wind is blowing and it is about to snow. The sky is heavy and clogged with clouds. The puddles are frozen, but this does not stop the children from running around the houses naked. Houses? No, these are mostly ramshackle wooden huts or tin shacks with walls leaning at crazy angles, rotted by rain and snow and bleached by the sun. "Monovolume" dwellings, to borrow a term from the car industry, crowded with families of eight, nine or more. At the top of the hill, I can see smoke curling from a crooked chimney that sticks out of a dilapidated red structure. When I reach it, I see that it is actually one of the famous Mächtig-designed plastic kiosks, used for selling newspapers and cigarettes, that appeared in towns all over Yugoslavia in the 1960s. I later learn that it is home to Nevenka Brajdić and her three children. Her family has no electricity and no water. Their toilet is behind the nearest bush.
I have entered a completely foreign land, one of misery and poverty, of stigmatised people. It is difficult to differentiate between the many ramshackle huts, as often there is practically nothing in them: dirty dishes on the bare ground, a wood-burning stove in one corner and a pile of rags in the other, and that is all.
"It is generally assumed that Roma in Slovenia ceased being nomadic in the 1970s, but it was actually much earlier than that. Roma living in the Črnomelj area built a permanent settlement in around the year 1890. It is however true that it was the state authorities that forced them to abandon their nomadic lifestyle, and it was often the municipalities that told them where to settle," explains Jerneja Turin. Owing to the opposition of the local population, and also economic self-interest, the Roma were made to settle in and out-of-the-way areas that for the most part were unsuitable for construction. In the former Yugoslavia the land they lived on belonged to the state, but the administration still failed to regulate the legal status of their dwellings, something for which the Roma are still penalised today.
Silva and Zvonimir Hudurovac live at Number 29, Mihelja Vas. The red house number plate on the temporary brick building hangs there as if to mock the occupiers. Silva and Zvonimir's home, in which they live with their teenage daughter, consists of one room with a door and windows, but no bathroom or toilet. Since their house was illegally built, they have neither water nor electricity. They seem to manage somehow, though. They get water from a cemetery five kilometres away. But in winter, when the frost arrives, the caretaker turns off the water supply to prevent the pipes from cracking. Luckily, cold usually comes with some snow, doesn't it? All you have to do is melt it. The family also have a generator for electricity. The only problem is that it is thirsty and gets through quite a lot of fuel in just a few hours. As they live on a little over 200 euros a month, they do not run it very often. So they do not need a washing machine, and there is no need to worry about food supplies, Without a fridge and freezer to store it in, food would only attract more rats and cockroaches, which the place is crawling with already.
Jean-Paul Sartre famously said that it is not enough to be born a bourgeois; one must live one's life as a bourgeois! To paraphrase this idea, we might say: it is not enough to be born a Roma, one must live one's life as a Roma. And in Slovenia this usually means that Roma children do not have a warm, home-like environment and that their children will probably not have one either.
"We want to tell our fellow-citizens in Slovenia that not all Roma wish to live in isolated settlements," says Jerneja Turin. "It may be true that many people would now refuse to move, as they have lived here for their entire lives. However, I can assure you that none of them would object to living in better conditions. Many of them do not want to live in state-funded non-profit housing, as that would limit their way of life. But that does not mean that many would not leave their settlements in an instant, if given the chance. Some of them are afraid of the violence of their neighbours, of other Roma."
We sit at the table in the house that Liljana shares with her husband Milan Novak. His surname used to be Brajdić, but he changed it to make it easier to find work, or at least to stand a chance of getting a job interview. Jerneja looks through the official letters from the highest state institutions that have arrived in response to Liljana's request for help in obtaining decent housing, a request she sent to the office of the President of the Republic. The Ministry of the Environment and Spatial Planning, the Ministry of Labour, Family and Social Affairs, the Ministry of Health… All expressed the wish – no doubt a sincere one – that the family's housing difficulties would be resolved as soon as possible, and referred her to the local authority, the municipality of Škocjan. The situation of the Roma in Dobruška Vas (formerly part of the municipality of Novo Mesto) is even more absurd, since it was the municipality itself that settled the first Roma family here. On land classified as unsuitable for construction, of course. It is therefore difficult to understand why the local officials have never tried to sort out the formalities. And since the Roma are constantly facing the threat of their houses being demolished, they do not improve them in any way…
"It always ends up back at the municipality offices," says Liljana bitterly. The local authority has no non-profit housing. The Novak family has known that for a long time.
"Do you think you could rent a flat somewhere in the Škocjan area?" asks Jerneja. "Then perhaps the municipality would subsidise your rent for a while."
Liljana wants to know if Jerneja will accompany her to the mayor's office. Jerneja nods. She is willing to help in any way she can.
In the middle of our conversation, Liljana suddenly gets up and starts dressing her five-year-old son Kristjan. She places a cap on his head, puts on his winter boots and wraps him in a thick coat. I look puzzled. It is a horrible damp and grey day, quite unsuitable for playing outside. Fog shrouds the landscape and the air is filled with moisture.
"I'm taking him out to the toilet," she explains. "It breaks my heart to think about having a bathroom."
A classic story. The Novak family lives in a neat and pleasant hut, but still a hut, in which the only way to maintain order is with a will of iron. International standards require that every person must have access to drinking water, regardless of whether they are living in an illegal settlement. Slovenian legislation is the obstacle that prevents people from having immediate access to water.
"In Slovenia landowners first need to obtain a construction permit, which they can only get when their settlement is legalised. Since Roma settlements are mainly located in agricultural areas, the Roma would first need to convince local administrators to change the purpose of use of the land, then buy up the land, request a construction permit, and only then start seeking access to water," explains Jerneja.
"It is particularly difficult for the women, who understandably complain that they cannot wash themselves in front of their husband and children. Even those fortunate enough to have electricity wash their clothes by hand, as the current is usually too weak to use a washing machine." Jerneja goes on with her list of the problems facing an average Roma family.
I think about Polonca from the Kanižarica settlement on the outskirts of Črnomelj. She and her husband added an extension to the shipping container in which they live – the extension was built according to all the required standards, explains Polonca – in which they set up a small kitchen. Unfortunately, there was no room left to build a bathroom as well. "How is my twelve-year-old daughter supposed to wash herself in front of all of us?" she asks rhetorically when we stop by her house one day.
Kristjan and his older brother David are lucky. Their parents would do whatever it takes – they already do everything they can – to ensure that they are able to go to school decently dressed. They have invested all their hopes in their children's education. Liljana is inventive, strong and stubborn, and determined to achieve the impossible: to give her children the opportunity to break free, some day, of the stigmatised environment in which they live.
In a hut about a hundred metres away from where the Novak family lives, a withered, tired-looking woman – who wouldn't be tired after giving birth to nine children? – nurses a snivelling child.
"I had the wrong pills, I didn't even know I was pregnant," she explains, although she does not have to. As I listen to her telling me her troubles, I see a man filling a baby's bottle in the nearby stream, which is also the sewage trench for the whole settlement. He puts the teat in it and offers it to a child of three or four.
"The neighbour's little girl wears disposable nappies; mine never has them," says the woman sadly. Yet even though the family have neither water nor electricity and the younger children look very dirty, the older ones are clean and tidy. "I will not let the others make fun of them at school," she says.
This is Slovenia, I had to keep telling myself when I accompanied Jerneja and her colleague on their visits to Roma families. Janez Pezelj, secretary-general of the Slovenian Red Cross, tells me that he has been asking himself for almost 50 years why the Roma live in such unworthy conditions.
"What is clear is that no political leadership, either in the previous or current system, has ever formulated a programme for the Roma population. I myself am in favour of making small advances. If they can be consistently implemented, things will certainly be different in 50 years," he says with conviction. He gives the example of the Safe Refuge Society of Kočevje, which together with Caritas, Novi Paradoks ("New Paradox"), an organisation that is planning to start working with young Roma, and the Red Cross, has set itself the task of helping one Roma family; they have so far succeeded in obtaining social housing for a mother and her school-age child.
He is quite familiar with cases like that of Liljana Grm, whom his co-workers refused to help. Unfortunately, as secretary-general he has no instruments at his disposal when he identifies discrimination: "All I can do is express moral criticism. Everything depends on the people," he adds.
A few years ago a poster produced by the Lowe Avanta agency appeared across Slovenia with the message: "Če ne boš priden, te bomo dali Slovencem", or "If you're naughty, we'll give you to the Slovenes", which paraphrases the folk saying: "If you're naughty, we'll give you to the Gypsies". The aim of the poster was to draw attention to prejudices against Roma, which have become such an everyday part of the mentality of Slovenia's majority population that people rarely even register that this is simply not acceptable. The poster did not achieve its goal. Many Slovenes felt hurt and offended, but it ended there. The Roma settlements largely remain miserable slums without nursery schools in which Romani-speaking children could be given the necessary preparation for primary school at which they will be taught in Slovene, without shops, without cafés... Even without churches, though in almost every Roma home there is at least one icon, at least one crucifix.
/Photo captions/
P. 1 - In Dobruška Vas near Škocjan, water and electricity are reserved for a select few.
P. 2 - There are around 105 so-called Roma settlements in Slovenia; the majority have appeared in recent decades.
P. 3 - Roma live under the constant threat of having their dwellings pulled down.
P. 4 - Even a hut measuring two metres by three can be a dwelling.
P. 5 - Mushroom picking (top). The stream in Dobruška Vas is also the source of drinking water for some (bottom).
P. 6 - A large family squeezes into a one-room dwelling in Žabjek near Novo Mesto.
P. 7 - Washing hair in ice-cold water in Dobruška Vas (top). The baby's bottle contains water from the stream (bottom).
P. 8 - Without the concerted commitment of the competent institutions, living conditions for the Roma will not change.
/quotes in the text/
/quote 1/
"The moment they recognised us they sent us away, explaining that this was 'not for Roma.'"
/quote 2/
"It was often the municipalities that told them where to settle."
/quote 3/
Some parents see education as the only hope of a better future for their children.
Living conditions - At home with the Roma in Dolenjska
Text Meta Krese
Photographs Arne Hodalič
The majority of Roma live in segregated settlements that fully deserve the label of ethnic and social ghettos.
"Am I supposed to wear these to school?" asks Andželina, all upset. The answer hangs in the air, even though everybody knows that a worn pair of stilettos with 10-centimetre heels – goodness knows where they came from – are not suitable footwear for a twelve-year-old schoolgirl. Her classmates would tease her mercilessly.
Jerneja Turin, a researcher at Amnesty International Slovenia, who often visits the Roma settlements in the Dolenjska region, asks the exact same question that I was about to ask: "So where are all the humanitarian organisations?"
"They don't allow Roma at the Red Cross in Novo Mesto," I was told by Liljana Grm, a Roma woman who, like Andželina, lives in the village of Dobruška Vas. I decided to accompany her and her friend to the Red Cross clothing depot during opening hours. We took our place in the queue like everyone else. But the moment they recognised us they sent us away, explaining that this was "not for Roma". The incident shocked me deeply and, to make matters worse, Liljana apologised to me for having exposed me to the kind of treatment that she experiences every day.
"If only we had proper slippers to wear at school," say Andželina's friends.
But the lack of appropriate footwear is not the only reason why the girls spend their days at home with their brothers and sisters, rather than with their peers at school. Indeed, there are many other reasons. Too many.
Nobody knows exactly how many Roma there are in Slovenia, but experts claim that the number is between 7,000 and 12,000. Their settlements, of which there are believed to be slightly over 100, for the most part still illegal, are mainly located in the Dolenjska, Posavje, Bela Krajina and Prekmurje regions. In his study entitled Roma settlements as a special element of the settlement system in Slovenia (2007), Dr Andrej Zupančič of the Department of Geography at the University of Ljubljana's Faculty of Arts shows that over half of Roma settlements are actually hamlets and small settlements with fewer than 50 inhabitants. Only seven have more than 200 inhabitants, while Pušča in Prekmurje has over 500 and some figures suggest a similar population for Brezje-Žabjek near Novo Mesto. There are twelve settlements with between 100 and 200 inhabitants. In most cases they are purely Roma settlements; the number of members of other groups is negligible. Dr Zupančič believes that many Roma settlements fully deserve to be characterised as ethnic and social ghettos, and that in terms of their physiognomy, structure and function they are clearly "slums".
"Even the simple fact that they live in segregated settlements with no real possibility of living elsewhere means that their human rights are violated," explains Jerneja Turin as we walk up the muddy path towards the top of the Roma settlement of Žabjek, just a few kilometres from Novo Mesto. We have, in fact, decided to focus on the Dolenjska region, where the living conditions of the Roma community are a particularly urgent problem. It is cold. A nasty wind is blowing and it is about to snow. The sky is heavy and clogged with clouds. The puddles are frozen, but this does not stop the children from running around the houses naked. Houses? No, these are mostly ramshackle wooden huts or tin shacks with walls leaning at crazy angles, rotted by rain and snow and bleached by the sun. "Monovolume" dwellings, to borrow a term from the car industry, crowded with families of eight, nine or more. At the top of the hill, I can see smoke curling from a crooked chimney that sticks out of a dilapidated red structure. When I reach it, I see that it is actually one of the famous Mächtig-designed plastic kiosks, used for selling newspapers and cigarettes, that appeared in towns all over Yugoslavia in the 1960s. I later learn that it is home to Nevenka Brajdić and her three children. Her family has no electricity and no water. Their toilet is behind the nearest bush.
I have entered a completely foreign land, one of misery and poverty, of stigmatised people. It is difficult to differentiate between the many ramshackle huts, as often there is practically nothing in them: dirty dishes on the bare ground, a wood-burning stove in one corner and a pile of rags in the other, and that is all.
"It is generally assumed that Roma in Slovenia ceased being nomadic in the 1970s, but it was actually much earlier than that. Roma living in the Črnomelj area built a permanent settlement in around the year 1890. It is however true that it was the state authorities that forced them to abandon their nomadic lifestyle, and it was often the municipalities that told them where to settle," explains Jerneja Turin. Owing to the opposition of the local population, and also economic self-interest, the Roma were made to settle in and out-of-the-way areas that for the most part were unsuitable for construction. In the former Yugoslavia the land they lived on belonged to the state, but the administration still failed to regulate the legal status of their dwellings, something for which the Roma are still penalised today.
Silva and Zvonimir Hudurovac live at Number 29, Mihelja Vas. The red house number plate on the temporary brick building hangs there as if to mock the occupiers. Silva and Zvonimir's home, in which they live with their teenage daughter, consists of one room with a door and windows, but no bathroom or toilet. Since their house was illegally built, they have neither water nor electricity. They seem to manage somehow, though. They get water from a cemetery five kilometres away. But in winter, when the frost arrives, the caretaker turns off the water supply to prevent the pipes from cracking. Luckily, cold usually comes with some snow, doesn't it? All you have to do is melt it. The family also have a generator for electricity. The only problem is that it is thirsty and gets through quite a lot of fuel in just a few hours. As they live on a little over 200 euros a month, they do not run it very often. So they do not need a washing machine, and there is no need to worry about food supplies, Without a fridge and freezer to store it in, food would only attract more rats and cockroaches, which the place is crawling with already.
Jean-Paul Sartre famously said that it is not enough to be born a bourgeois; one must live one's life as a bourgeois! To paraphrase this idea, we might say: it is not enough to be born a Roma, one must live one's life as a Roma. And in Slovenia this usually means that Roma children do not have a warm, home-like environment and that their children will probably not have one either.
"We want to tell our fellow-citizens in Slovenia that not all Roma wish to live in isolated settlements," says Jerneja Turin. "It may be true that many people would now refuse to move, as they have lived here for their entire lives. However, I can assure you that none of them would object to living in better conditions. Many of them do not want to live in state-funded non-profit housing, as that would limit their way of life. But that does not mean that many would not leave their settlements in an instant, if given the chance. Some of them are afraid of the violence of their neighbours, of other Roma."
We sit at the table in the house that Liljana shares with her husband Milan Novak. His surname used to be Brajdić, but he changed it to make it easier to find work, or at least to stand a chance of getting a job interview. Jerneja looks through the official letters from the highest state institutions that have arrived in response to Liljana's request for help in obtaining decent housing, a request she sent to the office of the President of the Republic. The Ministry of the Environment and Spatial Planning, the Ministry of Labour, Family and Social Affairs, the Ministry of Health… All expressed the wish – no doubt a sincere one – that the family's housing difficulties would be resolved as soon as possible, and referred her to the local authority, the municipality of Škocjan. The situation of the Roma in Dobruška Vas (formerly part of the municipality of Novo Mesto) is even more absurd, since it was the municipality itself that settled the first Roma family here. On land classified as unsuitable for construction, of course. It is therefore difficult to understand why the local officials have never tried to sort out the formalities. And since the Roma are constantly facing the threat of their houses being demolished, they do not improve them in any way…
"It always ends up back at the municipality offices," says Liljana bitterly. The local authority has no non-profit housing. The Novak family has known that for a long time.
"Do you think you could rent a flat somewhere in the Škocjan area?" asks Jerneja. "Then perhaps the municipality would subsidise your rent for a while."
Liljana wants to know if Jerneja will accompany her to the mayor's office. Jerneja nods. She is willing to help in any way she can.
In the middle of our conversation, Liljana suddenly gets up and starts dressing her five-year-old son Kristjan. She places a cap on his head, puts on his winter boots and wraps him in a thick coat. I look puzzled. It is a horrible damp and grey day, quite unsuitable for playing outside. Fog shrouds the landscape and the air is filled with moisture.
"I'm taking him out to the toilet," she explains. "It breaks my heart to think about having a bathroom."
A classic story. The Novak family lives in a neat and pleasant hut, but still a hut, in which the only way to maintain order is with a will of iron. International standards require that every person must have access to drinking water, regardless of whether they are living in an illegal settlement. Slovenian legislation is the obstacle that prevents people from having immediate access to water.
"In Slovenia landowners first need to obtain a construction permit, which they can only get when their settlement is legalised. Since Roma settlements are mainly located in agricultural areas, the Roma would first need to convince local administrators to change the purpose of use of the land, then buy up the land, request a construction permit, and only then start seeking access to water," explains Jerneja.
"It is particularly difficult for the women, who understandably complain that they cannot wash themselves in front of their husband and children. Even those fortunate enough to have electricity wash their clothes by hand, as the current is usually too weak to use a washing machine." Jerneja goes on with her list of the problems facing an average Roma family.
I think about Polonca from the Kanižarica settlement on the outskirts of Črnomelj. She and her husband added an extension to the shipping container in which they live – the extension was built according to all the required standards, explains Polonca – in which they set up a small kitchen. Unfortunately, there was no room left to build a bathroom as well. "How is my twelve-year-old daughter supposed to wash herself in front of all of us?" she asks rhetorically when we stop by her house one day.
Kristjan and his older brother David are lucky. Their parents would do whatever it takes – they already do everything they can – to ensure that they are able to go to school decently dressed. They have invested all their hopes in their children's education. Liljana is inventive, strong and stubborn, and determined to achieve the impossible: to give her children the opportunity to break free, some day, of the stigmatised environment in which they live.
In a hut about a hundred metres away from where the Novak family lives, a withered, tired-looking woman – who wouldn't be tired after giving birth to nine children? – nurses a snivelling child.
"I had the wrong pills, I didn't even know I was pregnant," she explains, although she does not have to. As I listen to her telling me her troubles, I see a man filling a baby's bottle in the nearby stream, which is also the sewage trench for the whole settlement. He puts the teat in it and offers it to a child of three or four.
"The neighbour's little girl wears disposable nappies; mine never has them," says the woman sadly. Yet even though the family have neither water nor electricity and the younger children look very dirty, the older ones are clean and tidy. "I will not let the others make fun of them at school," she says.
This is Slovenia, I had to keep telling myself when I accompanied Jerneja and her colleague on their visits to Roma families. Janez Pezelj, secretary-general of the Slovenian Red Cross, tells me that he has been asking himself for almost 50 years why the Roma live in such unworthy conditions.
"What is clear is that no political leadership, either in the previous or current system, has ever formulated a programme for the Roma population. I myself am in favour of making small advances. If they can be consistently implemented, things will certainly be different in 50 years," he says with conviction. He gives the example of the Safe Refuge Society of Kočevje, which together with Caritas, Novi Paradoks ("New Paradox"), an organisation that is planning to start working with young Roma, and the Red Cross, has set itself the task of helping one Roma family; they have so far succeeded in obtaining social housing for a mother and her school-age child.
He is quite familiar with cases like that of Liljana Grm, whom his co-workers refused to help. Unfortunately, as secretary-general he has no instruments at his disposal when he identifies discrimination: "All I can do is express moral criticism. Everything depends on the people," he adds.
A few years ago a poster produced by the Lowe Avanta agency appeared across Slovenia with the message: "Če ne boš priden, te bomo dali Slovencem", or "If you're naughty, we'll give you to the Slovenes", which paraphrases the folk saying: "If you're naughty, we'll give you to the Gypsies". The aim of the poster was to draw attention to prejudices against Roma, which have become such an everyday part of the mentality of Slovenia's majority population that people rarely even register that this is simply not acceptable. The poster did not achieve its goal. Many Slovenes felt hurt and offended, but it ended there. The Roma settlements largely remain miserable slums without nursery schools in which Romani-speaking children could be given the necessary preparation for primary school at which they will be taught in Slovene, without shops, without cafés... Even without churches, though in almost every Roma home there is at least one icon, at least one crucifix.
/Photo captions/
P. 1 - In Dobruška Vas near Škocjan, water and electricity are reserved for a select few.
P. 2 - There are around 105 so-called Roma settlements in Slovenia; the majority have appeared in recent decades.
P. 3 - Roma live under the constant threat of having their dwellings pulled down.
P. 4 - Even a hut measuring two metres by three can be a dwelling.
P. 5 - Mushroom picking (top). The stream in Dobruška Vas is also the source of drinking water for some (bottom).
P. 6 - A large family squeezes into a one-room dwelling in Žabjek near Novo Mesto.
P. 7 - Washing hair in ice-cold water in Dobruška Vas (top). The baby's bottle contains water from the stream (bottom).
P. 8 - Without the concerted commitment of the competent institutions, living conditions for the Roma will not change.
/quotes in the text/
/quote 1/
"The moment they recognised us they sent us away, explaining that this was 'not for Roma.'"
/quote 2/
"It was often the municipalities that told them where to settle."
/quote 3/
Some parents see education as the only hope of a better future for their children.
(c) text Meta Krese, photographs Arne Hodalič