And now to something completely different

It's weekend in Jerusalem and I wish I could say that I didn't do anything on my research except from sending a few mails because of my respect for jewish customs and the importance of getting into the dynamic of the place you live at - but the real reason is that I had the feeling that it was important for me not to think about the way my study was going in order to get some distance to it and see it in a brighter light tomorrow. So I just went to the islamic art museum and met some friends of my host and flatmate.
Thats it. Have a good night and enjoy my favourite place amont the Dom area: -->

Goodbye simple truth!

Even though there is very little literature about the Dom the different sources contradict each other. Once it's said that there are no marriages between Dom and other Arabs, then an article points out the economical and social gain in several of these relationships. A third study counts 7 intercultural marriages and notes that they all got divorced some years later.
In some texts the Dom are presented of a sister-group of the Roma, in other they distance themself from this image.
And the number of Dom in the Old City of Jerusalem differ from 300 to 2000 Persons.
Sometimes the Dom are presented as regular Arabs who just get discriminated because of the ignorance of the people around them and other authors talk about the cultural uniqueness even in the present Dom population.
That wouldn't be suprising if there were different approaches at different times. But either the writings were publishes by the Dom Society Center itself or it is quoted within the text. Unfortunately the quotes and sources are almost never marked. That makes the research a bit frustrating because soon after the exitement of finding a new article by a new expert I have to read the same phrases and sentences as I read before at another scientists paper.

Now I get the proof of what I asumed earlier: There is no way around Amoun Sleem if one wants to know about the Dom. Which isn't bad at all. She does great work, without her probably noone who ever gets to read this blog would have heard about this interesting community and it's only natural, understandable and reasonable for her to protect her family, neighbours, friends and political interests.
Depending on the situation, the recipient and the aim of a certain research there are different results. When strengthening the communitys pride in the own heritage you don't want to write about illiteracy and unemployment. And when you hope to get funding for an educational program you for sure don't mention the great craftsmen skills and the long tradition of astronomics, healing and dancing.
But still, since I don't see a good opportunity to verify the given information I have to tread them more carefully than I could if I could see the tendencies for myself.

At the moment I'd like to do my final report rather on how I eperienced this whole field study than on the Dom and their economical startegies as planned. Because I don't feel able not to doubt the things I am supposed to present as "knowledge". On the other hand: Even if I'd do some dozen interviews with different persons I still couldn't be sure to have heard the truth and the whole truth. Probably I just have to be greatful for the insights I got from Amoun and the Dom Society Center, use them carefully and make sure that I neither harm the political ambitions with my uncertainty nor become an instrument that just repeats the "official" view on Dom live and work.

Well, that's my thoughts on this quiet day after a day at the desk, organizing my sources, reading new papers and trying to contact some of the authors.
Shabat Shalom & mazal tov!

Oh, Dom where art though?

I should have known!

I read a lot about the Dom and summed up most of the information in this blog so it's kind of strange that todays events suprised me at all.
I went for a walk in the muslim quater with the plan to see a little bit of daily Dom culture and to try to speak to some of the Dom, perhaps even find an informant who will allow me to follow him or her for one whole day. I asked the baker of my breakfast-pita if he knew the Dom, I asked the one who pressed my orange juice. I asked at the store where the sell plkastic rifles and pink dolls and I asked everyone on the street who asked me what I was looking for. Everyone pointed in the same direction, where I had met Amouns Sister and niece some days earlier. Another woman had invited me into her house back then so I got a bit of an understanding where to look already. But suddenly, as soon as I reached the area noone seemed to have ever heard about the Dom at all.
Even when I showed the two sentences of introduction, written in arabic by Amoun for me to make myself understandable more easy all I got were confused looks and headshaking. "No. Never heard abeout the Dom. Don't know what you want. Dome of the rock, perhaps?"
Well, what did I expect? When you are discriminated because of your heritage, when your ancestors adopted the religion and the language of the people arond them to be accepted and not to stand out anymore, when you live from state support, don't have an education and can't get a long term job because of your families culture and the prejustices of other people - then you probably don't want some unknown woman to ask you questions about your income, your lack of work and all the other things that cause all your problems.

So, this approach failed.

Still, my aim for today was to find out where the Dom live exactly. There is more than one area, as it seems. At least that's what one of the shopkeepers in the muslim quater told me. From my first observations, the pictures I say in the book and in the center I feel like getting a bit of a feeling for "Dom faces". This sounds racist, of course, but since there is a strong tendency to endogamy, even nowadays and the Dom I may have met on the streets don't want to present themselfs by this name, I had no other chance than to walk through the streets with this idea of similarity.
Well, one of my impressions was: As soon as there are more than two fat kids in a street it's not a Dom area anymore. How scientific!

I remembered the study I read and wrote about yesterday. It said, that some of the Dom had TV, nearly the half had solar powered hot water and a few also have airconditioning. The conclusion for me was to take a look from above. I felt I had to see the roofs to get a feeling for the rich and the poor. It indeed was impressive: At the christian quater every house has more than one Sattelite dish and Hot water system. In the muslim quater it's a lot less. Here you see chicken on the roof more often. And more laundry which seemed to get more functional at less "trendy" the further I went. In some demolished buildings ruins there was the attempt of farming/gardening to be seen and also the quality and quantity of childrens toys decreased on my walk on the Old Citys wall from Jaffa Gate to Al-Aqusa-Mosque while the piles of thrown away goods and garbage increased. At the area close to the northern end of the walk finally some of the houses even had corrugated iron roofs which must be very uncomfortable in the hot J-lem summers.

I will try to contact an real estate agent in Jerusalem to find out more about the welth and the living-quality of this area.

The picture above describes my day best: even though I had no real contact with the Dom and I felt like they were closing their doors in front of me (How selfcentered can I be? Until now I didn't give anyone a good reason to open up, except for metaphorically knocking impatiently...) I still got a better feeling for the live conditions. Those 8 pair of shoes in front of one small flat paint the same picture as the survey from 2004 does.

Tomorrow I'll try another thing I already started today. I will look for jobs in the muslim quater of the old city. I want know what needs to be done and doesn't afford a lot of investment like an grocery store or a bakery does. Hopefully I will get a feeling for the possibilities that a Dom person searching for work has and what aspects might ban them rom jobs.

"A population at risk"

In October 2004 the Dom Society Center and the Jerusalem Business Developement Center published a report on a survey among the Dom population of Jerusalem.
This report has been send with the proposals for funding womens business courses like sewing classes, cooking workshops and cosmetical education. Those lectures were no short-term evening classes but real educations that took up to one year and many women took part in them. It is impressive to see in the report that there was a percentage of 85% in the women and 90% in the men who wanted to learn a new profession but couldn't afford it or didn't know how.
Thanks to Amoun Sleems commitment to the community and to the center there are some women present who earn money with the skills they learned in the courses. But until today no woman and no man has founded an own business, shop, restaurant or salon because of the lack of financial opportunities.
Furtheron the report gives answers to my questions concerning the size of an household, the monthly income, the equipment in the flats and some of the formal economy strategies. Only 5% of the Dom owned a car, a TV is the most common "luxury item" and even a airconditioning system is not common among the Dom in 2004. The report devides between families with more than 6 members and those with less and points out that those expensive goods are more often to be found in lager families. This indicates that more people in one "economical team" lead to better conditions for everyone. But later it is said that in those families were adult children stay at their parents place those nearly never have jobs or a good enough education that they could bring an own income. As soon as children over 18 still live at the parents place they seem to be more of a burden than help. Nevertheless those families have access to TV, washing machines, oven and hot water most often. This indicates some intersting issues about informal economie and a selfregulating spread of money within the community. After all: The vast majority of the Dom families live from less than 3000 NIS a month wich is less than 1000 Dollars. With 5,6 children per family and the expensive rent in the Old City this is close to nothing.
So this report with its quantitative approach helps me a lot if I can rely on it - and it shows me the issues were a simple survey isn't useful anymore. I will have to get closer to the Dom to find out how they make this miracle of surviving under those conditions possible - but I wouldn't be suprised if that would be kept a secret.

A day at the Dom Research Center

After going to a really nice concert of a hebrew chanson singer yesterday I nearly overslept today. But with a little hurry I was right on time to meet N. who works as a volunteer at the center.
I didn't dare to ask Amoun about the old legends because I got the impression that she was leery about the intentions of some of my questions anyway. For example when I asked her what the other israeli groups could learn from the Dom I expected her to tell me something about cultural pride, keeping ones own roots alive, creativity and the ability to survive in a hostile enviorement. Well, she said: "What do you mean? Learn to be poor?" So, after this I really didn't feel like asking something like "Do the old legends reflect the Doms attitude to work and do you think this can be a problem?"
I just realized today that even though I've been reading and talking about the Dom for quite a while now they know nothing about me. Usually when you meet people you interact on the same level of trust, distance and interest. Doing a field study is very different. I hoped for quick answers but underestimated the trust that is needed to get even close to this kind of information.
Later the other volunteers were organizing and open house day at the center where some important and influential people from Jerusalem shall experience Dom live and art firsthand and they were working on proposals to get funding from international foundations. With me included there are currently three anthropology students and a couple who study ancient geology (? or something similar...) volunteering. Since I didn't bring my Laptop and the two computers of the center were used otherwise it was my job to tidy up and clean out the bookshelfes for the children. It was interesiting that there was just a very little amount of arabic books, even less books in hebrew (almost as many as in finnish) and the vast majority in english. From Books that explained the alphabet to small printet long tales, from neary untouched ones to books with more than just a few pages missing everything was there. There were picturebooks, too, but they were handmade scrachbooks with pictures cut out from magezines and put into a folder. And there were - for my taste - too many explicit christian books telling about gods love for children who belive in Jesus. The "worst" one showed cute blonde children wainting for christmas and getting a lot of presents. It made me wonder what kind of people donated these.
For lunch Amoun cooked a tasty soup with a lot of peas for us all. While still eating the first girl came from school, did her homework at the center with a bit of tutoring and left before the arabic-class arrived. Unfortunatly I didn't see how many kids joined from the beginning this offer because I was in the next room sorting childrens books in order of age but four kids arrived a little bit later and in the classroom is maybe eanough space for 15, maximum.
While writing the proposals the question occured how many children used the tutoring program and succeeded in their education because of this. After a short discussion "more than 50" seemed the most realistic answer. Regarding that the center was founded only ten years abo in Amoun Sleems own house, also works in the women empowerment and is constantly in the need for donation and money (the rent alone costs about 10000 $ per year!!!) that is an impressive number, I think.

So, even though my blog and my study will not be about the Center alone, let me just mention here that this for sure is a good and trustworthy project if someone wants to contribute:
https://www.paypal.com/il/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_flow&SESSION=-l-C3Ap76RlqDiXI2qtai_o6L3YwcHPsXPtMMBxtd4nXZAZ3d1IUajOcMIy&dispatch=5885d80a13c0db1fc53a056acd1538874a43d73a07f26b2cc3a8a5dff46470e3

The Gypsy Community Chronicle

The Dom Society Center and the organisation "Dom Research Project" produced a book together which I bought yesterday at the Center. It consists of brief impressions of the history of the Dom, a lot of interesting pictures which show the Community in the change of times. Showing the traditional floral dresses on old black and white pictures of danceartists to the well known streetwear of the present youth it also describes the social and economical developement of the Community.
Some of the older pictures portrait men who lived in tents within the walls of the old city, and even though they decesed there are still many of the Dom who can remember them clearly. There were horsetrainers and boxers, dancers, singers, tatoo-artists and healers, rightrope walkers and all kind of craftsmen among the Dom. The women usually worked within the walls of the houses, the men outside. Typical female professions included helping in the field, telling fortune, shearing the sheep and spinning the wool and tailoring the families clothes.
Once the community setteled in stonebuild houses and didn't continue the nomadic live the children were able and had to attend school. This had a big impact on the economical situation of the families, since before the kids - even more the girls - brought in money or helped in the household from a quite young age on. To leave them in school for some more years meant not only having to spend money for books, pencils and paper but also the loss of the childrens hypothetical income. On the other hand the Dom who were now residents of Israel and had to fill out form or read documents. So the older generation had to depend on their offspring who could read and write. The book "The Dom of Jerusalem - A Gypsy community chronicle" introduces some of those children and tells about their dream to become teachers, policemen, doctors or bookkeepers. Their fathers usually seem to work at the municipality, as plumbers or on short term jobs while the mothers clean at hotels or jewish families houses, cut hair or work as nurses if they have the chance.
The present young generation, the future of the Dom society has more opportunities to chose which way in live they want to take but on the other hand has to face the older people telling them "You are trying to change your skin!" (p. 66)
In another context (convenience of not having to cook in the old fashioned way) there is written in the Cronicle "economic constraints are a major factor keeping more traditional methods in place" (p. 54)
I got the impression that this dichotomy of keeping the own culture alive and adapting new important skills is very strong in Dom culture. There seems to be no possibility to reach one through the other - exept from the Dom Society Center which uses donations, subsidies and modern media to present the Dom as a group and enhance the individuals power at the same time. But in every day live the mentality to live from day to day (as the Book puts it) and not to put money aside for younger generations or investing time and effort in the own future likely contradict these efforts.
In this context I found the old legends of the Dom very interesting: There are two legends about the origin of the Dom people, which I will discuss later in detail. For now I just want to have a closer look at one sentence of each legend.
But first let me point out that the judgement and interpretation coming are clearly coloured by my own upbringing and value system in a protestant, 1980s, small town household with financial security and a tradition of higher education for at least three generations. I don't want to offend anyone with my observation but just want to make sure that everyone knows that they are subjective.
In the first legend a woman is allowed to make a wish because her sheep got killed and puts three options on display. The answer is the following: "I cannot revive your sheep. Only God can revive her for you. And to fill your lap with stars," he said "that would be terribly difficult for me. But if you want Kleb's head, you are welcome to it!" (p. 10)
I really had to laugh at the "that would be terribly difficult for me". I had the impression that the king uses the appearance of not wanting to occure blasphemic when he neglects to undo the crime of killing the sheep. And he still wants to seem powerful so he doesn't admit that it is impossible to fill tha lap with stars and just says that it "would be terribly difficult for me". So he chooses to do the only thing possible for men - killing his own cousin. Because of this crime the Dom were doomed. But even more interesting: The woman who made the wish accepted the explanation that it's "terribly difficult" immediatly. It seems as if in this legend something that is difficult has no difference to something that is impossible.
And the second legend creates a similar image: Here the Gypsies get land and seed to become farmers. They boil the seeds and put them in the ground. Later they discover that nothing grew and the king who gave the land to them explaines how to farm correctly, and that "they must begin again. By this time the Gypsies were thoroughly disappointed with the live of a farmer and replied to the king "We will dance or do nothing."" (p. 13) I just can't help to think by myself: "Well, if you didn't succeed in the first time, just try another time. It will take a lot of experience to become good at it. So what's the problem anyway?" But as I said before - this shows the different ways of upbringing and cultural background. I guess, if these parts of the legends really reflect the attitude of nowaday Dom people it is quite difficult for them to provide what the labour market demands.
I will have to aks Amoun about this tomorrow!
Good night for now. Tonight I myself will only dance or do nothing. period.

From Lions Gate to the Dom Society Center