Romani mothers in small Czech town describe constant daily alienation
The Czech town of Kostelec nad Orlicí has a population of 6 000 and a diverse composition in terms of nationalities. A refugee camp is located there and a large Romani community lives there as well.
Relations between immigrants, the majority society, and Romani people in Kostelec were the subject of a play called "Vadí – Nevadí" (Truth or Dare) which the local theater ensemble from Kostelec recently toured with, including a performance at the Archa theater in Prague. After seeing the play, news server Romea.cz decided to map the situation of Romani people in Kostelec.
The theater troupe includes Czechs, immigrants, and Romani children who attend a Romani after-school club led by Ms Pavlína Halušková, a Romani woman who worked hard her whole life and is not taking break even in retirement, which is when she decided to establish the club to help the Romani community in Kostelec. We met with a group of local Romani mothers there and asked their opinions about the education of their children and the kinds of problems they themselves experience.
Why the "practical school"?
The Romani mothers said their children have the opportunity to enroll into the first grade of primary school in Kostelec if they make it through the registration process. However, they have only a year in which to demonstrate that they can handle the curriculum.
At the end of that year, the mothers say, the school proposes to the parents that they take their children to the educational psychological counseling center and then re-enroll the child, after evaluation, into the local "practical school". Very often, however, what happens is that Romani parents will just enroll their child directly into the "practical school" for first grade.
The reasons for this direct enrollment vary, from a child’s medical problems to their older siblings’ previous experiences with bullying at the primary school: "My oldest daughter was beaten up at school by her classmates. Once they even knocked the wind out of her. She has been affected by that to do this day, so we enrolled her into the special school and I enrolled Tomášek directly into the special school. I just now enrolled my youngest daughter in the primary school because they would not let me enroll her in the special school. It’s better at the primary school now – they still abuse her as a ‘gypsy’, but they haven’t beat her up," Ms Nataša, a local mother, shared with us.
The mothers with whom we spoke see no difference between the classical primary school and the "practical" one in terms of each school’s influence on their children’s future. "My older daughter went to primary school and works as a baker and my son went to special school and works as an auto mechanic. I’m not into these differences – I believe that when children are interested, they will get to the instruction they need one way or another. I’d even say that my boy went into a better apprenticeship from the special school than my daughter did from the mainstream school," Ms Božena said.
Almost all of the mothers with whom we spoke had sent their children to preschool. They said they believed it was very necessary for learning basic knowledge and skills and that it aided the children during their registration into first grade.
However, they also said that in the past there had been a problem with one of the two nursery schools in Kostelec, which did not want to enroll Romani children. The mothers said they were not familiar with the concept of inclusive education, just that they had heard about closing the "practical schools", which seemed like a bad solution to them.
They had also not yet heard of the idea of providing teaching assistants in the classical schools or of evaluating pupils orally, for example. In the "practical school" at Kostelec there were said to be four classes of roughly 15 children each and one teacher.
Each class reportedly has children of various ages in it. It is an open question whether children in such a "practical school" might actually be receiving better care than they would in a primary school with a teaching assistant, and those opposed to inclusive education frequently argue that the care in the "practical schools" is actually better.
Finding housing is a problem
The Romani women with whom we spoke see housing as a pressing problem. "If I call about a sublet and tell them I’m a Romani woman with three children, no one will take me. I am currently living with the children at a residential hotel in Rychnov and they have to commute daily into Kostelec for school. Commuting costs money too, but the children must go to school," one mother explained.
Ms Božena agrees it is problematic for Romani people to find apartments: "I was looking for an apartment for an older gentleman. When it came time to make the down payment, I asked whether it was a problem that he is Romani. Ultimately I got the news that they had promised the apartment to someone else. He was elderly, but for a Romani person with children I wouldn’t even have been able to ask."
Roma can’t find work, some go to England
The women told us that Romani people have a similar problem with finding work, but that racial reasons are not so easily discernible in that area: "Now it’s done through tenders, so you aren’t really able to say they didn’t take you because you’re a Romani woman," Ms. Iva said. Romani people’s self-confidence is not enhanced by situations in which they believe they have only been hired because the business concerned is receiving a subsidy from the local council to employ Roma [in reality these subsidies promote the hiring of anyone who long-term unemployed – Editors].
Ms Božena described such a situation: "I discovered that the people running the shelter that was employing me were receiving money to do it. I believe that’s the reason they hired me. When I told them I was ill and could not begin for another two weeks, they told me that it didn’t matter and that I could start after two months as far as they were concerned."
Of the five mothers we spoke with, two work, two have been unsuccessfully looking for work, and one is on maternity leave. They said that better housing and job opportunities are the reason Romani people are leaving the Czech Republic for England.
Such a move is not easy, though. "Housing there is expensive, the families must have money to begin with and they must have a job to get an apartment," Ms Božena said.
"We are doing our best to integrate, but some families make us all look bad"
members of the majority population better, even though they would welcome that.
The women said they meet majority society people only through their children, whether at the children’s center or at school meetings. There are no closer personal relationships between the majority society and Romani people in Kostelec.
However, there are also Romani families in the town, according to our interlocutors, who are not interested in any kind of integration at all and who cause problems. According to the mothers, Romani people who do not want to integrate never will.
"I believe the Roma who do not integrate should also get involved so they won’t make the rest of us look bad. I can try all I want, but they think we’re all the same – they believe that when they don’t integrate, they are superior to those of us who do. They pass this on to their children," said Pavlína Halušková, who established the Romani club.
Only a few businesses serve Roma
Romani people in Kostelec have a big problem when it comes to visiting hospitality businesses, where staff very often refuse to serve them. "I asked a waiter how he could know enough about us to judge us right from the beginning, and he said they had once had Romani people there who did not behave decently. That’s nothing to do with me, though," Ms Iva said.
Business owners reportedly invent various tricks to avoid serving Roma. Ms Božena, who is more than 40 years old, has been asked to show her identification when buying alcohol in a business near her residence.
This reportedly is not just about alcohol sales, but very often businesses do not want to sell Roma food either. As Ms Iva said: "There are only a couple of businesses we can go to here. They’ll tell us it’s a private business, that we have to leave because their customers don’t want to sit among Gypsies. Do you know how embarrassing that is? Sometimes you feel like you’re from another planet here."
This practice was confirmed by an employee of the Bowling Split bar, one of the businesses mentioned by the Romani women as not serving them. "We only let Roma use the slot machines, we don’t serve them alcohol," the staffer said on the phone.
"We’ve had bad experiences with them," she said. She was not able, however, to describe a specific case of a problem the business had ever had with Romani patrons.
