The Feast of the Assumption on 15 August is a huge holiday in Greece and Italy, but I had no idea that it was a huge Roma ( Gypsy*) holiday as well.
The Roma people from 3 surrounding countries turned up on the island of Tinos to celebrate the holiday. A friend I met on my last trip to Tinos offered me her house to chill out in while she was away for the month in Switzerland, so I was lucky enough to be in Tinos at the same time as the Roma.
Lucky, I say. The Roma added life, color, and a throbbing heartbeat to this staidly theological island.
I’ve never had as much fun, or an easier time, photographing people in Greece.
The Roma love to pose and have their photo taken. They kept stopping me and wouldn’t let me go until I had just the right shot — or what they considered to be just the right shot. If their faces ever look stern in the photos, its because they posed to look that way, normally they were smiling and laughing.
Every summer the Roma would pass through the town I grew up in in Wisconsin. Their king became ill one summer, so they stayed longer than usual and kept a vigil for him in St. Luke’s Hospital. My mother was working in the hospital at the time, and she said they packed his room during visiting hours and lined the halls every day.
One of the Roma girls my age, Rachel, became my best friend and had to enroll in school while they waited for their king to recover. One day as classes were lining up in the hallway to go to the auditorium, she saw me from across the hall and shouted out Hi! to me.
“Hi Rachel,” I whispered back.
The teacher heard and yelled at me for talking in the hall.
Rachel walked up to her defiantly and spit on her.
I felt thoroughly avenged.
Rachel was suspended for three days and never came back to school.
* I’m using both Gypsy and Roma in this post because they refer to themselves by both terms.
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