I started volunteering at the Roma camp this year without any prior experience. The settlement sits in Spinaceto and consists of prefabricated buildings, campers, trailers, and makeshift structures—though last month residents of illegal housing were forced to leave.
I tutor a 12-year-old girl named Monica in English and math. She's repeating seventh grade for the second time. Sharp for her age, but she sees no point in learning English or math. I've tried explaining how important education is, how crucial it is to finish at least through ninth grade. She already knows her future will look like her sisters': married at fourteen or fifteen. She told me her older sisters weren't forced into marriage—it was their choice, but a deliberate one. The oldest daughter in a Roma household helps raise younger siblings, so when marriage proposals came, they decided to take them. Why not?
For their culture, marriage is the most important event in the whole community. They plan for months. They buy fabric and sew traditional dresses. Women of every age get carefully dressed and made up. Musicians are called directly from Macedonia—their homeland. There's dancing. There's food.
Monica tells me she doesn't like boys, that they disgust her—but soon she'll marry anyway, like all the others. She brings this up to avoid grammar exercises and geometry theorems. I enjoy listening, and I think it matters to build a relationship that isn't too formal—which would be impossible anyway with only five years between us.
Despite all the chat, her schoolwork has improved this year. She says her teacher told her she won't be held back. I was curious to see her midyear report card, but her parents still haven't picked it up from school. That was two months ago.
The first time you visit a Roma camp, what strikes you most is the sheer number of children everywhere—and, sadly, the smell. It feels like a small city that belongs entirely to children of all ages. Those who don't attend school roam the settlement all day while their fathers scrape together a living and their mothers keep house.
One reason I chose this work was to shed every prejudice and preconceived idea fed by the media and society. I wanted to know a people different from my own—interesting precisely because of that difference. From what I've seen, stealing isn't a cultural trait but a last resort, one survival tactic among many. The traditional Roma work is selling scrap metal. As you'd expect, that barely pays. Money runs short, especially for large families. And here's what people get wrong: the idea that Roma represent a problem for Italy is absurd—even numerically. They make up only 0.3 percent of the population.
Strip away the racial stereotypes and children are all much the same. As they grow, they'll become good or bad people. My job is simply to open one girl's eyes to a better life—to convince her that school, however boring and exhausting, offers her a future her sisters and friends will never have.
Flaminia Cabras, 2011
