A son of copper-smiths gives up the tradition in order to study more.
Cătălin Stănescu comes from a family of copper – smiths gypsies from Târgu Neamț. For the majority of those from this ethny it is normal that after 4 classes would give up school and learn the crafts of the fathers. At the age at which others were getting married, Cătălin chose school, a rarely met thing in the ethny which he comes from. The young man is now a master’s degree student within the University of „Al.I. Cuza” from Iași specialization Public Policies and Institutional Management.
The copper-smiths gypsies live through manufacturing & selling copper objects. „The people from my family keep traditions, the girls get married, have children, this means to be fulfilled as a person. They don’t realize the importance of school. For us, family is the most important, and parents feel that they did something for their children only after they see them with their own families. We have traditions which are respected, no matter how much we will evolve”, says Cătălin.
These traditions put their mark in the soul of the young man because he had twice to run away from home, in order to avoid an arranged marriage.
In the spring of the year 2013 Cătălin was called home by his parents, in order to participate at an engagement, but what he didn’t know was the fact that, it was he that he was going to get engaged and more than that to get to know his future wife.
Rita a Young woman of Romani ethny of 17 years old, with a floral dress, and plaits and her glance on the ground, accompanied by her parents and her elder brother were waiting for the young man to arrive.
Once entered the house, Cătălin had to accept what happened there, otherwise, he would have dishonoured his family, more than that he would have been prohibited to leave the residence of the parents by eventually going to materialize the arranged marriage as well.
After the young people’s families have established the details of marriage, the parents of the young woman have left Catalin’s house, in the next 2 hours the young man has searched for an excuse in order to leave home making the excuse that he has to complete a project for the faculty. Arrived in Iași, he stayed for days on end and thought about how he could escape from the situation with the arranged marriage, marriage that would prevent him from continuing his studies, school being a priority for the boy.
For this thing, he had to cut the connection with his family for 7 months, period of time that brought the young man regrets from the perspective that he dishonoured his family and he risks elimination from the community. Fortunately, after those 7 months was forgiven by his parents, and he could see along his course.
But the miracle did not last too much because in the summer of the year 2014 Cătălin was again put in the situation in which he should get married to another girl Rebeca, this time being at home, during the holiday before starting the first year of master’s degree. His parents applied again to this gesture because they thought that the education was enough for their son, and the best thing that he could have done was to make up a family and come back in the community.
At finding out this rumour, the young man got scared, took his ID card and ran away from home, he didn’t know which way to go, but in the end he sheltered in a friend’s house, fact that saved him the 2nd time from getting married.
„ It was a terrible period because I had to manage on my own, but the most painful for me was the fact that I had to hide my identity, that of being a copper-smith gypsy, with regard to myself “.Cătălin says this because it was very difficult for him to run away from his own traditions, and be apart from his family, but also for the fact that he had to support himself.
The boys’ memories about his childhood oscillate between the traditions which the family tried to keep and the new vision which glimpsed along with schooling. When he was little, the boy was taken by his relatives in pilgrimage throughout the country. Cătălin remembers from his grandparents’ stories how these arranged their location near water, they stretched out their tents and started to process the metal. While the men were making buckets, Billies and coffee pots, women were dealing with their selling, with palmistry, with bewitching, in exchange for groceries or little money. Also, by wandering through the country, the gypsies promised their children in order to establish families when they grow up, with other gypsies with whom they met while wandering through the country, making in this way a promise that they will also meet over the years, tradition that was kept since then until nowadays. Cătălin had to sacrifice these traditions because a gypsy child is obliged by the school to give up some things. Thus, the young man confesses that until the 4th grade he was an ordinary pupil, but praised by his school teacher for his obedience, being in his “little church” together with the other gypsy children.
At the beginning of the 5th grade, things changed. “I was the only one in the class among the gypsy pupils who continued school, this thing made me to want to integrate myself among the classmates who weren’t gypsies. After classes, when I was playing on the street with the childhood friends, I realized how much I advanced at school, because I already didn’t have common subjects with them. Also, my grandfather, who supported me all the time to study used to forbid me to play with them, wanting for me to have the possibility to have an important job in life”. The love for books of the boy was inherited from his grandfather, who realized the importance of learning. “The grandfather wanted that his grandsons should learn, from his side having a special education. He told me that, If I go further with school, I can be somebody”, remembers Cătălin. He studied high school in Tîrgu Neamț, choosing, instead of marriage, to study. “There are gypsy people who study 4 classes, then they return to families, they get married, they have children, and this life for them seems something normal. They don’t want more, because they know it should be like this”, says the boy. “The great grandfather was one of the fewest copper-smiths from Romania who knew how to read. He learnt from soldiers in World War II. This thing was perpetuated to the grandfather as well, who wanted all the time more for his grandsons”, says Cătălin. Although it’s a different road for a gypsy person, from his family he had the surprise to be supported. “My mother and father didn’t know well what the faculty involved. They only knew that their son is a student, without exactly knowing what this thing implied. They told me from the very beginning that I had to manage on my own if this is what I chose, but after a week they called me and told me to go to the coach, because they sent me a parcel”, remembers Cătălin. Anyway, for a gypsy person who breaks away from the community, some things are not retrievable.
This choice, was one sprinkled with many obstacles, hardships, uncertainty but also by fulfilments, professional and moral fulfilments. Today, by returning to the small street on which he spent his childhood, Cătălin looks behind him with nostalgia and hope, the hope that others also will follow his way and he will be an example for the following generations.
Spotted by the previous neighbours, he is asked if somehow he got crazy from so much learning and if he is thinking about learning more.
He answers clearly: “I prefer to stay with my madness”!
This article can also be read here: http://romanoylo.blogspot.ro/2014/12/ruperea-de-traditie-pentru-educatie.html
