My seven teammates and I were stuffed into a small white van and taken to the outskirts of Odessa, Ukraine. We hung on for dear life as the van jerked and weaved through traffic.
We reached an area outside Odessa known as Palermo, a name which is meant to reference the city in Sicily run by the mafia.
If one walks a short way to the left, there is a hill and a long field leading into an estuary.
We were told this is the second saltiest body of water in the world, after the Dead Sea.
We were immediately greeted by a pack of children wanting to shake our hands and greet us in English. They were excited to meet the Americans.
These children were quick to move from individual introductions to a corporate one.
“We are Roma,” they said.
Roma is the name the Gypsy group uses to refer to themselves.
The Gypsy, or Roma, people were originally part of a lower caste in India.
They were a group of artists and craftsman, who are also skilled in music, dance and horsemanship. Eventually, they emigrated from India to other parts of the world, spreading across Europe and Asia.
These people left discrimination in their own country only to find it in every other corner of Eurasia. They became a race without a country or land of their own, unwelcome in all cultures.
Our job at this small gypsy camp was to get to know these young children and teach them English and other skills.
The children were clever and sincere. They enjoyed our company and enjoyed teaching us about themselves and their language.
We learned some Russian songs and how to play soccer in a whole new way. It involved stuffed bears on the field and paddy-cake in the goal zone. We also learned a “secret gypsy handshake.”
When it came time to leave, the children walked us to the end of their street.
The sun was setting at this point, and it was time for the children to turn back. After a long round of handshakes, we headed off down the dusty road.
The children waved goodbye to us, silhouetted in the dusk, shouting “Goodbye America!”
By MICHELE HOP
Staff
mhop@ius.edu
Editor’s note: This is part two of a four-part series by Michele Hop. She traveled overseas this past summer and wrote about her experiences for The Horizon.