This morning our host Maxim sat us down to explain what he had planned for us to do for part of our stay here. With Anya translating he described his outreach to the local gypsy people.
The gypsy people are a people group without a country, or a government. There are no numbers of how many gypsy people are spread across Europe and Asia, but Maxim told us that there are about 400.000 in Ukraine. The original Gypsy people came from India, they were artists, dancers and craftsman come from a lower caste who left the country and moved elsewhere. They have roamed all over Asia and Europe and faced a lot of persecution.
Hitler considered them a worthless people and had them on the list of people groups he planned to systematically wipe out. While Hitler’s plans were thwarted, the gypsies are still viewed as outcasts in modern society. They also keep themselves separated from others, believing that there are two types of people: gypsy and non-gypsy.
Their cultural skills, such as craftsmanship and horsemanship, are quickly becoming obsolete. That, combined with the stereotypes that gypsies are involved in bad magic and are thieves and lairs, has made it hard for the gypsy people to take a healthy role in society.
Maxim and others work to help the gypsy people get documents, gain literacy, and break down the racial barriers that keep them separate. Maxim and his fellow missionaries work to share the gospel with these people, confident that God’s word of hope and peace can break down some of the walls. One of the main focuses of missionaries to the gypsies are the gypsy children.
This is where we come in: it’s our job to socialize with these kids, teach them games and practice English with them. I’m down with playing with kids all day as a job.
When we first drove up, they all ran up to shake our hands and introduce themselves. We clearly looked American, so they began practicing what little English they knew on us and they’ve even been trying to teach us Russian.
We’ve played many different kinds of games: soccer, baseball, run-through-the-bushes-yelling, clinb-a-tree, etc. etc. etc. They are eager to spend time with us, and don’t even seem to mind that we don’t understand any of the Russian words they are saying. They just want to be listened to.
After they found out that I know how to ride horses, many of them asked me to teach them how. Which is hard without a horse around. They have been scrawling out notes to us on the back of postcards donated from Clanton, Alabama. Home to the largest peach.
When I arrived at camp this evening, after a short break to go to the market for fruit, they ran up to me with pictures of unicorns and notes about how awesome I am. My ego grew. I was the girl who rides unicorns to them. How awesome is that? Michele…tamer of wild unicorns and all around nice girl. My team was a little jealous of my new mystical status, but they recovered quickly.
We will be hanging out with these kids for a few more days and then we’ll spend some time touring Odessa and the Black Sea before we head to another kids camp in the city. It seems like a pleasant three weeks to spend with some adorable kids.
