Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
and regular customers. These are more personal and longer-lasting relationships,
resources which are not only financial but also social, political, and cultural.16
because of special relationships of this type, trastevere is a familiar place for
women who beg, where they are known not only as one of the numerous gypsy
beggars but also as maria, brenda's mother, or as Vesna, who lives at the Caritas
hostel.
a group of Vlasenicakuri, some of them closely related to each other, have
found that the railway station is a good place to spend time. it is the nerve center
for the men's business affairs and meetings and the starting point for the wom-
en's “collecting” expeditions when heading to the city center; for some women
and youngsters, it is sometimes a place to beg: at the traffic lights, on the pave-
ment, and by the bus stop. at trastevere station, as well as being well-known (if
not always welcome) in the bars, newsstands, market stalls, and snack bars, the
Roma have a sort of post office in a bar. since the Roma have no fixed address (or
none that is officially recognized), the bar is their fixed point for receiving letters,
which the landlord hands over to the addressee.
trastevere continues to be visited often by those who have not lived in
magliana for years: because they know which streets are frequented by hordes of
tourists; because they have acquaintances and know where to obtain a cappuc-
cino and a
cornetto
for their children, or where they can ask the stationer for a
pen and a notebook, or some small change and clothes from the “nice lady” who
always comes along Vicolo del Cinque before her lunch; because they also know
the policemen, among whom (despite rumors that they are “really nasty”) there
are some who are less intransigent and who may admit, even when the woman is
begging with a baby in her arms, that “a woman who asks for alms is not, after all,
italy's biggest problem; but if she just left the baby at home it would be better. . . .”
it is by focusing on these relationships that one can better understand why
activities like scrap metal collecting or begging are carried out well away from
the Roma's place of residence. italians are not always happy to have under their
windows a gypsy dealer who collects scrap iron and uses a megaphone, or a gypsy
beggar-woman surrounded by “a clutch of dirty and ragged children.” so to avoid
the risk of damaging their relationships with the other residents in the quarter
where they live, the Roma tend to keep their residential and work networks sepa-
rate from each other.
it would seem that the Roma tend to be more “multifaceted” in their work
territories than in the place where they live. in the latter, they seek a more person-
al rapport with the neighborhood, whereas elsewhere things are done in a more
ambivalent way. indeed, outside the residential territory, the Roma mingle with
the “background noise” of the city, a terrain of anonymity and thus of stereotypes
(among which the gypsies figure prominently); yet they reclaim the “localness”
of places, even those that are commonly defined as nonplaces (augé [1992] 1993),
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