Mud huts that aren’t in Africa.

 

The
families in the huts are known by the villagers as the mud people.
They’ve been outside Viile Tecii for about a year, and have been run
out of every village they’ve lived in prior. I’ll try to give you an
idea of how welcome they are in gypsy society. Romanians despise the
gypsies and kick them out of the cities, so they are forced to form
their own communities. Now replace Romanians in that last sentence
with gypsies, and gypsies with the mud people, and you’ll have the
general idea of how welcome they are in Viile Tecii. It kind of
amazes me that a people who have been oppressed for generations and
knows the feeling of ostracization is so quick to turn around and
oppress and ostracize with reckless abandon.

 

We
played games with the children of the micro-community, and I don’t
say this to brag, but they seemed to form an attachment to me. I
don’t know why they picked me. It seemed completely arbitrary. It
might have been because I tried to share my nalgene with them by
pouring it into their mouths from above, and it seemed like a fun
game for a while. At any rate, at one point, about seven of them
reached down, grabbed me by the legs and lower back, lifted me off
the ground, and carried me around the field where we were all
playing. This happened more than once. I wish someone had had a
camera for that particular moment, because I don’t know that I
believe myself that it happened.

 

The
kids crave affection. They will crawl into your lap and wrap your
arms around themselves. They will smother you with hugs and kisses.
They love playing with anything you give them, whether it’s a
football, a frisbee, or a flower. I saw several eight- and
nine-year-olds carrying their infant siblings. These children are in
charge of watching all of their younger brothers and sisters. My
biggest concern when I was eight was figuring out which Disney
princess I was going to be for Halloween that year.

 

 

One
of the eight-year-old girls was named Bianca. While playing with the
kids, we realized that she (among other children) didn’t own any
underwear. Her baby brother she was carrying was diaperless. None
of the kids were wearing shoes. The combination of ostracization and
poverty is heartbreaking in its hopelessness.