Monday was my first trip to Campo Rom with MEDU. It was the experience I had hoped for. To start Christime and I met the doctor, who coordinates the Monday night visits, named Andrea at the bar where we went last week for the information session. From here he grabbed two bags of medical supplies from the headquarters in the basement and we met two more volunteers before the five of us piled into Andrea's car and began our journey to Campo Rom. The ride was the beginning of the experience. It was late, raining and I was sitting in a car listening to Italians discuss life and politics in Italian. When we arrived at Campo Rom we parked across the street in a gas station and from there entered the camp through what seemed to be an old doorway.
The camp is an old broken down building on one side, and a muddy field with huts on the other. When we crossed through the doorway and into the camp everything was quieter. There was a wall blocking the camp from the busy street on the other-side and the noises I was now cognizant of were those of the rats scurrying across the ground in front of me and the crackle of a fire from the building ahead. As we rounded the corner of one of the dismantled buildings we could see the huts to our right and a pile of discarded clothes, bags, and trash taller then me and covering the ground to our left. As we maneuvered our way around the puddles with only the light of two small flashlights for the five us I could make out hundreds of rats crawling through the trash, and a group of figures illuminated in the light of a garbage can bonfire ahead. However, before we reached the figures we stopped, and were beaconed into a room of the old building by a young man and his family.
The room was part of the crumbling building but the family that lived there had put up dry wall, painted and built a wood-stove for heat. There was no electricity or running water and the room was lit by a single candle. When we entered the room Andrea began his work. His first task to to do a check up on Francesco, a plump and happy five month old baby. According to a woman who I met that works with the Rom, Rom babies never cry, and Francesco's mother explained that she was worried he might be sick because he never cries but he had cried that evening for ten minutes. However as Andrea shined his flashlight on him and listened to his breath with a cold stethoscope Francesco didn't cry. In fact the whole time we were there he didn't cry. As Christine and I gathered around him, when Christine held him, or when his mother left the room, Francesco remained content. Everyone we meant seemed content and happy despite their less then ideal surroundings. As Christine and I sat and talked with Francesco's mother and her mother other members of the Gypsy community wandered in and out of the room: Francesco's father, two neighbors, and the grandfather. Each person saluting Andrea and checking in with him about their current state of health. They all seemed to really trust and like Andrea.
However the Roms we visited also consistently asked Andrea for medicine even when it was unnecessary. Andrea explained this in the car that the Roms he visits often ask for medicine because in Romania, where a lot of these Roms have family (although Rom does not come from Romanian it is actually a constructions that Italians have created for something they dislike and is unfamiliar to them thus they need to catagorize it and name it) they are denied access to medicine and thus here they want it because it is a privilege they would like to have.
On Monday we were only able to visit the one room because the rain left the field to the other huts impassible. Thus my first experience was a limited, but powerful one.
The tomb of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, in the middle is a broken slave shackle symbolic of her works against slavery
