Socio-cultural background of the Roma communities in Bulgaria

Nowadays, in Bulgaria people around 600 000 gypsies live in towns and 200-300 000 live in villages.

They live in specific quarters, called "Machala" or "Maksuda" in marginal positions.

The social structure is strong and can be compared with the Italian model "Capo".
The family usually listen to the words of the patriarch.

Even if many families hold to the old structures, young people have their own opinions and conflicts develop inside the families.

If a person is thinking individually he or she has to leave the community. People who do not hold the rules of the community are isolated. This tradition is called "Meschere".

The administration is not interested in gypsies; thus, the gypsies are not interested in the administration.
The Roma choose their own leaders.
In some groups there is still existing the law of the blood.

Usually, they do not love education: education is no habit. When the parents are illiterate, their child will become the same.
The tendency to acquire education is developing slowly. Anyways, the Bulgarian gypsies are more educated than the gypsies in other European countries. There are Roma generals, doctors and professors, in Bulgaria as well as in Russia.

The gypsy does not live in the future. They are practical people, who try to find a solution day by day.

There are three groups of Roma. They differ not only in their origin but also in their religion. The Kalderaschi (or Kaderaschi or Karderaschi) come from Romania and they are Christians, but they also celebrate their own holidays, for example the "old" New Year of the gypsies called Vasilitza. The 50 % of the gypsies are Muslimes. Apart from their own holidays, the Muslimes (most of them coming from Turkey) also celebrate the Bulgarian-orthodoxe holidays.

They are nomads and they believe in one God above all religions.
God is an institution, which can solve problems; his name is not so important. Roma people believe in each person there is a church and nobody can talk in the name of God.

Between the gypsies and the Turkish, in the surface there is tolerance, but under the surface they have researves. There is almost no marriages between gypsies and Turkish people. A gypsy can take a Bulgarian but not a Turkish. The Turkish do not give their children to gypsies. The social distance is big.

With the Jewish people they have no connections, even if during the second world war they were put into the same camps.

During communism, they were working in the agriculture, but handicraft (basketmaker, mechanics) and trade are their "business". They also work as artists (singer, painter, writer) and they work with horses (the kalajdschii).
The Roma did never and do not own land.
Often the work of children is one important economical factor for the family.

There is one gypsy-group (the Karderaschi one), in which theft is a part of the culture and highly developped. It is only the women who steal. People of the own minority are not victims of theft.

There are some programmes for gypsies without work, but usually gypsies do not take any money from the state, even if they are unemployed.