Rromanies in the Community

Ederlezi Gurgovden
Around 70 guests celebrated Erdelezi Gurgovden 2009 at the Macedonian club, Illenden. Even though the attendance was down on previous years everyone still had an enjoyable evening dancing, watching the belly dancers and listening to Gello sing. Guests joined in together and sang traditional Romani songs. The belly dancers put on a colourful performance which even included swinging real swords around and balancing them on their heads while dancing.

At my kid's school it was announced that there was a book drive to help another school 20 mins from here because during the school holidays someone had set fire to it and burned the school library down. As all the books were destroyed in the fire they have to start again with asking for book donations. My kids donated two bags of books, including Romani books, to help.

AUSTRALIA.
Size of Gypsy population unknown; estimates range from 500 to 20,000. Many Gypsies were deported to Australia from England as petty criminals when this penalty was introduced in1787. The first was probably Lazarus Scamp, who arrived on the Scarborough in 1790. He had been sentenced in Hampshire in 1788 for stealing a sheep. The main clans to be found today are English Romanies (descendants of the earlier deportees and newer voluntary emigrants), Kalderash (who came from 1898 on), and Roma from Eastern Europe after 1945. Organizations include the Romani Association of Australia (founded 1990) and Romani International Australia. There is an annual gathering, now held at Byron Bay. Notables among the Romani community include university lecturer Kenneth Lee, writer Yvonne Slee, poet Henry Lawson, and musician and playwright Brian Hungerford.

AN INTRODUCTION TO ROMANI HISTORY AND CULTURE

A 15 minute PowerPoint slide presentation narrated by Yvonne Slee to introduce Romani history and culture to school age children

View the slideshow at SlideShare

Read the Brochure used in conjunction with the slideshow (167kb PDF)

School Presentation on Romani History and Culture

The kids really responded well. A girl from Africa asked questions about our history and the invasions when Mahmud and his army took our forefather's out and she said that she would have gone with his army too, rather than being killed by them. She said 'I can understand that many had to do that just to survive'. An Aboriginal girl was very interested too and asked how long we've been without a country and I told her that our culture has not had a country of its own since the invasions took place and that we have had to live in other countries. Another girl, an Australian, asked how we manage without our own country, without our own government and who do we turn to. I said we have advisors who help us with advice. I gave out little picture boards with our food on them, our books on Romani language, Torn Away Forever, Romani music CDs, our national anthem and the 1971 Romani world congress board when we got our flag. The kids were so interested in it all. I used the slideshow to do the talk and got it all across, even how our word Gypsy came about and that we were called that when we got into Europe and we were misnamed and it stuck with us and we are known as the Gypsy culture. I also explained that Romani or Roma is from our language and this is what we are correctly called.