Viaţa.

We’re back! We’ve spent the last week on top of Straja Mountain, working at a camp (Tabŭra Aventura Viaţa) run by New Horizons Foundation. And it has been awesome. Most of the week was spent bundled up in wool socks, hiking boots, pants (sometimes two pairs), at least four shirts, a raincoat, and a bandana, because it was freezing. The Jiu Valley has been covered by clouds for the last week, which means that in the mountains surrounding the valley, we’ve been living in clouds for a week. I loved it. I loved the high ropes course, rock-climbing the side of a mountain, playing all sorts of teambuilding games without being able to speak the language, and loving on thirteen-year-olds who could only understand a few of the words that I longed to say to them. But love is the same in any language.

Man. Viaţa. Awesome.

While I was there, I had this interesting thought. One day, we played a game where the girls had to choose three companions for a long train ride from a list of rather “undesirable” company. Among that list was a gypsy (Roma). When I asked the girls in my group why none of them chose to ride with a Roma person, their reactions were really striking—with pantomimes and Romanian and a little bit of broken English, they communicated thievery and violence, demonstrating their intense dislike of Roma really clearly. I was a bit taken aback, even though I’ve heard over and over again—both in Bosnia and Romania—about the Roma “problem.” As the game progressed and girls told their stories of encounters with these groups of oft-stereotyped people, I began to understand a little more. Many of them had had really frightening or troubling experiences. But I couldn’t help but wonder how many Roma they had met on the street who hadn’t tried to rob them, or if they realized that the way they treated the boy in their school with distrust is probably what made him live up (or down) to their expectations. The issue with how Roma are treated in Eastern Europe is really complicated. It would be easy to blame it on racism, or poverty, or lack of education, or some sort of moral character flaw. But those would all be incomplete (and sometimes really incorrect). The problem is multi-faceted—the Roma population in Eastern Europe often does live in illegal housing settlements; the children are often uneducated; the standard of living is sometimes well below the poverty level; and the group is notorious for criminality (much of it petty crime like pickpocketing, but sometimes it’s basically gang violence).

But here’s what I’ve been thinking about. Jesus calls us to love the least of these. And the models I’ve been seeing and experiencing at Viaţa and in Cambodia and Vietnam and Bosnia have all convinced me that if you’re going to change a society, it has to happen from the inside. And that change is not going to be quick. It’s generational. But oh, what better way to change a society than by reaching its youth? What if Roma youth were invited to camps like Viaţa and clubs like Impact? What if someone made a really intentional effort to create opportunities for education and vocational training for them, while also teaching and building character and showing them the love of Christ? What sort of youth would that create? And from those youth, what changes might be made in the culture of the Roma, and in the attitudes of the rest of Europe? I’m writing this too late at night to be really coherent, but the ideas that keep bubbling out of this experience make me really excited. I wonder. I wonder.