ROMA Encounters

I have encountered people called Roma; Travelers; Gypsies all my life and never in any one of them have they ever done anything to me, physical or verbal. This blog is a short story of my encounters.
I am now seventy eight, so I will take you back some time when I was living in England, then on to Pakistan and on to France and on to this day.
England-------- One of my school pal's lived near a place named Hanbury in Worcestershire, near a Pub called 'The Gate Hangs Well'. John  is his name and I know him still. John lived in a large farmhouse as I remember and one day some one said 'The Gypsies are here', just down the lane.
Off I went with my pals to see and sure enough there was a couple of caravans ,with horses graising near by.some adults and children watching us and like all youngsters do at first, assess each other, they were ok.
I was told they picked apples as it was the cider making time. A summer at the end of the Fourties.
Did this group of Gypsies do anything Physical or Verbal to us------No. Just accepted us for who we were.
Oh dear I am a little ahead of my self. There was an earlier encounter in the mid fourties, when I lived in Lydney Gloucestershire and occasionally on a Saturday, with my Mum and dad, we went by train to Gloucester and just before entering the station we went over a kind of viaduct or bridge and down below was a Gypsie camp  which facinated me and my ,mother said they made wood clothes pegs we would buy, plus they also came for the Plum picking near Newnham.
Did this group of Gipsies do anything Physical or Verbal to us------I do not think so, or my Mother would definately have said.
Right at the end of the fourties we had moved to Worcestershiore  and there was a Horse Fair on ground now occupied by a technical college. Of course it was mainly a Gypsie event and I was now about fifteen. Lots of noise by auctioneers and horses plus their handlers. All went well, but I think the world moved on and that was really the last of these events'
Did this group of Gypsies do anything Physical or Verbal to us ----No.


Pakistan.-------- From the mid fifties lots of things happend. Thru Technical  Colleges and University on to joining The Austin Motor Company later to become The British Motor Corporation and Mason representing them around the World, what a life. One day in the mid sixties I happened to be in the Swat Valley and I was in the company of a distributors directors having tea, when there appeared a long line of people with horses; wagons walking through the town. Bells tinkled with  very colourful ladies all with their children and menfolk. Ah, said my hosts Gypsies or was it Travellers ?. They are coming down from high altitudes for the winter and will set up in the valley.
No one appeared to be disturbed by this event.
Did this group of Gypsies do anything Physical or Verbal to us. ------ Of course not.
Life went on of course and I arrive in France 2002.

France---------In the summer of 2002 or maybe it was the next visit a few years later the on a summer visit to the Dordonge area of south west France, we were driving down a side road not far from the town of Riberac and came up behind two horse drawn caravans. They approached a small stone bridge over a stream and then it happened.
With an explosion of children's happiness, boys and girls, appeared, ran to the bridge and stream and jumped in clothes and all. What a wonderful scene it was,to see them so happy.Just over the bridge the road divided and we passed the caravans with parents not the least disturbed at the scene of their children playing in the water fully clothed.
As we used this road quite lot that summer we encountered and waved as we passed. They had cut Willow sticks which lay soaking in the stream, they were basket makers and presumably grape pickers at the end of summer, Bordeaux being about 60 kilometres away.
Friday is the big market day in Riberac and so each week we visisted to buy Trout; vegetables and of course lunch at the main cafe, the name of which defies me. Hang on, was the Colonnes, something like that One friday we witnessed the market security ordering a group of people off the market. They were , our Gypsie families, it was disturbing when my French was not good enough to try to intervene. Apparantly they did not have the correct or any trading licience for that market.
We encountered their camp a few times after and as we visiters could not purchase a basket as they were very sturdy. And then they were gone.
Did this group of Gypsies do anything Physical or Verbal to us ------ No, simply took life as it came.
I have left Australia for last as it includes encounters from the early 1970's to now and it is where we live and how lucky we are.

Australia-------
 Our little family arrived in Australia on a Qantas flight September 1971 at a time when new arrived were welcomed by Government and people alike and I mean physically with a handshake and a G'Day..
Ah yes encounters. In 72 there was a goup of families Gypsy, camped near Banktown Airport in Sydney,s west and they were there some time as I recall with the usual horses ;caravans and vehicles of various kinds. Very nice I thought and suddenly they were gone, where I know not. Fast forward to the 1980,s and on a forest road near where we now live on the river Clyde, we encountered a horse drawn caravan with two dogs and a young couple , I,m not certain, if there were children. They too settled near here, although I have not seen the lady for some time. Whoop's I have a flash back to Lydney in the fourties and a picture of Gypsies coming to our front door selling flowers and furtune telling. My mum I think had both.
Did this group of Gypsies do anything Physical or Verbal to us -------No, not in the least.
We are in the NOW, 2013 and I have being asking friends and strangers alike Have you ever met a Gypsie? and any experiences with them. I can tell you the normal answer from young people, is no,at least I don't think so and they have all heard about what is going in Europe at the moment and in the main 'thats hard'.
Older people like me say Ah, yes I remember them coming through this or the town on the way to fruit picking and the like ,depending on the season of the year.
Not one person I have met had anything nasty to say about Gypsies; Travellers or Roma's.
The older ones of course knew about what happened in Europe before the second world war and during it, when Roma's ; Jews and Gays were pescecuted terribly. Now we are hearing about Neo Right groups are having another go at them. How sad. What have they done to deserve such treatment.
Roma's and the like have a very strong sense of family and that could well have been behind the compassion for the mother and child of that reported incident in Greece. Was there any other peoples in Greece that would have given a home and a life to that child and its desperate Mum, probably without paperwork and into a family that would treat her as their own. We should praise that family for its compassion.
As we all know, there are many societies and /or ethnic around the World that follow a tradition of rearing children of other members of that group, who cannot raise the child themselves. I have encountered two incidence,s one in Tunisia many years agoe and one here in Australia in the 1980,s, I am damned if I can remember there names. They simply implied that that was the way for the happiness of all concerned.

I wiil close here with a message of hope.
I Hope,that every one in the World can sit quietly for a moment and endeavour to understand the Ways,Apprehensions; Faiths;Cultures and Ideas of others. We can do this,hopefully not just this Armistice Day Eleventh November 2013, at the Eleventh Hour, but at all times.

There are two books which may interest you all.
1. From my wife Patricia's library-------The English Gypsy Caravan - Its  Origins; Builders; Technology and Construction. By C H Ward-Jackson and Denis E Harvey Drake Publishers Inc NY 1973.
2. Hopefully will be in my library at Christmas.-------No Place to Call Home: Inside the Real Lives of Gypsies and Travellers By Katharine Quarmby. Published by Oneworld Publications..
I have not read the book as yet, only the review in the Weekly Guardian, which of course is part of the Guardian group. "The Paper That Stops the World and makes it 'think'". I try,  it succeeds admirably.

All the best, until next time.

Malcolm E Mason     11/11/2013.


























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