Gypsy Kids -

"Daj Mi Pari"

In case I haven't mentioned it already there are a lot of gypsies in Macedonia. I have been explained there are gypsies all around the world. Generally they travel from place to place, sometimes they stay longer at one place than others. Daily you see them going through the trash looking for "treasures", even eating out of trash cans, or just begging for money. It's not that they can't work but it is just how they are raised. They choose this way of life. Yes, they can be very pitiful and pull at your heart strings at times. I think this was the hardest thing for Truman to understand when coming here.

After one month here I can only summarize that when they get up in the morning their "job" is to take off on foot, donkey, horse, cart, whatever and forage throughout the city trying to see what they can find. Maybe an old washing machine, maybe food or plastic bottles they can turn in for recycling.

As for the kids, I have visions of the mothers saying, "Hey, what have you been doing all morning? Playing? Get your butt out there and make some money!" You see these children in the middle of highway traffic, begging as cars slow at the intersections or sometimes sitting alongside the road playing. I have to ask, "Where are their parents??!!" I asked my brother-in-law what if someone tried to hurt them? He said, "Why would anyone want to hurt them? They have nothing?"

One night we were walking around the shopping center and this little gypsy child, I swear he must have been around 1 as he looked like he had just learned to walk. He was dirty with soiled shorts and was calmly walking up to people asking, "Daj Mi Pari" - "Give me money". I am freaking out. Where is this baby's parents? Is he lost? Shouldn't someone be helping him? I walk on a hundred yards down the street and there sits his mother in the grass next to his probably 3 year brother. He runs over and hands his Mom the latest money he has acquired.

While not the most PC of jokes, but awful darn funny, Riley has gotten to where when she wants money from her grandparents, me and generally anyone who will listen; she puts on her most sad, "gypsy" face and holding out her hands out cries "Daj Mi Pari". (LOL)