A visit to the Roma Ghetto of Vladislavovo
11. November 2008The article was published in the Newsletter of the German Embassy in Bulgaria and in the Church newspaper of the German speaking Evangelical Lutheran Church Sofia.
On August the 11th and 12th I took part in a talk between the German minister for justice Mrs. Zypries and her Bulgarian colleague Mrs. Tacheva in Varna. I used that opportunity to meet Frank Abbas and his boys from the Roma ghetto the weekend before. We were even able to visit the ghetto and to meet some of his helpers.
In Vladislavovo there is one of the smaller ghettos. You can read more about it on the website www.light-in-the-darkness.de. Frank Abbas, a German merchant, has lived and looked after a group of 8 – 13 year old boys for 3 years now.
Many Romas in Bulgaria live in ghettos. The Roma district of Vladislavovo mainly consists out of closely together standing small and shabby houses full of people, among them many children. But in the neighbourhood there are also normal buildings made from prefabricated slabs. The majority of their occupiers are Turkish speaking Muslim Gipsies, called Millet, whereas the occupiers of the district in which Frank Abbas lives are mainly Christians. They still speak Romanes ( a language coming from Hindi which proofs the Roma’s descent from India) and are only able to speak Bulgarian very poorly. For Frank Abbas’ main aim, to make his boys literate, this is a great hindrance.
Frank Abbas himself lives in the most modest lifestyle in a small and shabby house as well, in which he shares everything with his boys. In fact he has taken over the education of ‘his’ boys in place of their dysfunctional parental homes after he had got in contact with the boys step by step. He teaches them the rules of life outside of the ghetto and shows them their chances and limits they have there and he does this on the basis of Christian worths but without doing missionary work. He cares for the hygiene of the boys and that they go to school with the necessary things they need for their school-day.
Not far away from Frank Abbas’ station there is a small room in which one of his assistants organizes courses to make the boys literate. Another assistant, a Millet boy called Nihat from Razgrad and an active member of the Baptist church parish in Varna, looks after the boys. He plays football with them and does other various things activities with them in their free time. The Baptist Church parish of Varna has taken Frank Abbas and his project under her wings. Nihat gives the boys care and shows sympathy to them which their families often don’t do. The boys seem to accept and admire him in the same way as they love and respect Frank Abbas.
On Sunday the 10th of August we took part in a service in a temporary accomodation of the Baptist Church in Varna and we also talked to the pastor Todorov. A week later the beautiful new church building was officially opened on Boulevard Slivnitsa. Frank Abbas and his boys took part in the opening ceremony. Pastor Todorov confirmed that Frank Abbas’ commitment caused an obvious change in the boys’ life which convinced Frank Abbas that he can be successful in his efforts. The boys today know how to behave themselves, they know their rights and duties and they accept moral standards. The century long exclusion and discrimination through the society and the collapse of the compulsive system established by the communist regime has led to a great material, moral and mental waywardness of the Romas who often quarrel with each other.
Frank Abbas shares the boys’ everyday life, their pleasures and grieves with them. This is why the Romas in Vlasilavovo accept him as of their people and they are grateful to him for giving their boys a chance to find a way out of their misery.
But there is also envines and partly open hostility with Millet criminals who make capital out of the inexperience and poverty of the children by organizing prostitution of children or using them as drug couriers. Violence often is the order of the day in the broken families, in which girls and women have no rights at all. Very often only alcohol or drugs help to forget their miserable every day situation.
Just half a kilometer away from a shiny shopping mall in Varna thousands of Roma in Maksuda literally live on a mountain of rubbish like in one of the worst slums in the third world, but this in the middle of Europe in one of the most popular holiday resorts, particularly for Germans in Bulgaria. Now the authorities are planning to build houses in this area which means the Romas will be expelled out of it and presumably and, as it has already happened before, they will have to seek refuge in another existing ghetto. As a result there will be new violence and fighting between the Roma groups.
Frank Abbas with his project is a ‘Light-in-the-darkness’ because ‘his’ Roma realize that he respects their human dignity in all their misery and shows them a way how to find a way out of it.
One can only hope that many of such lights will come into being.
Gudrun Steinacker, August the 31st 2008
Gudrun Steinacker is the Deputy ambassadress in the German embassy in Sofia .