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Travelling Families - A story of modern nomads
When we use the word nomad, we could be forgiven for thinking immediately of tents in the desert, biblical style clothing and grazing flocks. But for the Wilts and Dorset Gypsy and Traveller group, the nomadic lifestyle of the Roma people and of their fellow nomads, the New Travellers, is the issue at the top of agenda. The travelling mode of existence is accepted, we are told in the European Union, as a 'valid' way of life, and yet, as we have found, to be a Gypsy in Britain today is to fall foul of racism, hostility and media aggression. The settled community are those who control the use of land via the planning legislation. For a Gypsy to pull in off the road to stop for a few nights, is a simple enough procedure but because there are so few places where he can do so legally, he literally becomes criminalised as he does so. There is a perception amongst the settled community that to have a Gypsy encampment near the house, is to devalue its market value. A Gypsy may buy a piece of land. Indeed the Government is encouraging this. However to secure planning permission so that he can legally live on it, is a huge problem. For 90% of planning applications from the Gypsy and Traveller community, permission is refused.
All nomads and Travellers need to stop sometimes, either to access education or healthcare, or simply to rest. In times past, there were known lanes and familiar pieces of common land where generations of Gypsies would have parked up. However, most of these have now been blocked up, or ditched, to prevent access.
Gypsy and Travellers have needs. They are human beings with aspirations, dreams, gifts and their own rich culture, which is based on oral tradition. They have been in the UK for generations. They are a recognised ethnic minority under the Race Relations Act, entitled to fair treatment under the law and to protection from those who would attack them. They have nevertheless been subject to prejudice for centuries and the stories are told to the children. How then can a Christian community stand with them in their fight for justice? If the nomadic lifestyle is a 'valid' lifestyle under European Law, why then is there no land earmarked for their use in the Structure or Local Plan? Why is the fact that 90% of Gypsy planning applications are turned down, not seen as a public scandal?
What is the answer of faith?
In the Salisbury Diocese, a Chaplain for Travelling People has been appointed. He exercises pastoral care and acts as an advocate, for example, challenging the council over the living conditions on the authorised sites. The Social Responsibility Officer for Wiltshire, again appointed by the churches, challenges the Local Authority to address the injustices of the planning system, asks questions about the bullying of Roma children who go to school, the Primary Health Care Trusts for their failure to take account of the Roma culture when delivering health care, the Police for their bullying tactics when carrying out an eviction, the local College Outreach worker who for some reason has not even thought of their needs for education. The list goes on and on and yet, we are making a difference. We are slowly addressing the institutional racism that seeps into relationships between these modern nomads and those who live in houses. One local church, for example, is now to fund a development worker for a Gypsy site. Others are reviewing glebe land use and are in conversation with a Housing Association about setting up a drug-free site for Gypsies and Travellers who have come out of rehab. The Chaplain visits those who are in prison. Someone else is teaching literacy skills.
Gypsies are proud of their heritage. They are strong, resourceful, optimistic people with a rich culture and language. They too were in the Holocaust. We celebrate the witness of all Christians of goodwill who are working with them to bring in the Kingdom of justice and peace for these modern nomads. We celebrate all those who are fighting racism, as God's workers in the field. Gypsies do not want integration, but they do want recognition and respect. We are honoured by their presence among us and pray God's blessing upon them.
Nomads of the Sinai
The nomadic desert Bedu in the Sinai have had an unprecedented decade. The world around them has been catapulted from 2000BC to 2000AD in less than ten years. During the same period a six-year drought has added to the changes they have had to make in the pattern of their semi-nomadic lifestyle. The generation growing up has seen a transition never encountered before in this desert and has an interaction with an information society which is shifting their outlook, their tribal values and their needs.
The Bedu are learning to adapt fast, but the 11th September 2001 and the recent gulf war, with the knock-on loss of trade, especially in desert safari which works in partnership with the desert skills of the Bedu families, has caused another shift.
Many families have once again returned to a nomadic lifestyle which is more sustainable in the present international climate. Water, however, is always the issue. So I tell here a story which tries to show how it is possible for east and west to come together to create a more survivable climate environment for a people who are both looking back to their tribal roots as well as forward to the necessary interaction with the wider 'global' tribe.
I want to take you with me briefly on a journey into the desert. There is much to learn on all sides. A hot summer day and the Bedu and my team from Wind, Sand & Stars were building a series of dams to trap the rare rain and ensuing flood waters to provide a source of water through the spring for some hundred Bedu families in the region.
We had for several days been digging out sand from a deep, granite-based ravine, which when emptied would be the base of our final pool in the dam system to capture some of the winter water. On this day the final full buckets would be hauled up and carried down the valley to be dumped below the irrigation scheme.
Spirits were high as we walked down the valley, the camels laden with our equipment and their beautifully hand-woven multi-coloured saddle-bags swaying with the gait of the camels' walk. The Bedu were calling to each other as they coaxed their beasts up the red granite hillside to the ravine, and our band of Western project workers wandered behind in anticipation of, by about lunchtime, looking into the deep hole we had emptied, and feeling proud of ourselves.
Half a day later, with sweat rolling off us, we stood high on the hilltop, Bedu and Westerners together, and we laughed as we looked down into the cleared granite ravine, 20 foot deep, the work of much sweat and tears. But as we stood there in the sunlight, a giant boulder wedged in one wall slid very gently, inch by inch, and finally rolled into the vacuum created by the displaced sand.
The sense of light fell to darkness and despair in seconds. Where moments before we had looked into the great hollowed pool with all offending sand removed and had seen a glimpse of a hopeful future, with fresh water glinting back at us in a year's time, we now saw only immovable rock filling our space. The sand and effort became as nothing compared to what now stood in our way.
It was an interesting moment for me, as I watched some 30 people, half nomadic Bedu, half settled Europeans, who had worked together for weeks, suddenly split ways. The Western lads picked up the giant sledge hammers and with the full force of their disappointment stood on the great boulder and tried to smash it by striking with all their might with the metal heads. Not even a chip of the rock came away. The Bedu, however, gathered some twigs from the Acacia tree in the valley, lit a small fire and, with their shoulders side by side, huddled round in a circle to make tea, to share their disappointment and to live out this dark moment together.
An hour later, as the heat from the sky poured down on us and bounced back at us again from the rock, the muscle-weary group were called to by an old skinny Bedu perched on the edge of the ravine above us. He scampered down and with a tiny chisel and hammer in hand he squatted on his heels on the top of the great boulder, still un-dented, placed the chisel at the centre and tapped. The other Bedouin reappeared, and we sat in the shade and watched together. We watched for hours as the shadows moved, the afternoon wind arrived and cooled our weary brows, and the pink tinge in the western sky heralded the coming of the end of the day.
As darkness crept over us, no one moved. We had come to realise the waiting was not in vain. The surety of the old man in his patient chipping had captured us. And as the young Bedu boy beside me pointed to Venus rising in the sky, the sign for them of another day over, the old man hit the hidden fault line in the boulder. He leapt off the rock and it shattered into a thousand tiny fragments, a pile of movable rubble.
As I walked away that evening from the shattered boulder, with the stars twinkling over head, a young Bedu boy was expressing to me what the day had felt like, what the moment of the rock shattering had felt like. He used an Arabic word I didn't understand. I asked him to explain. So he stopped and acted it out for me. He said, it means to stand tall, to look to the horizon with your head raised, not to feel the need to look behind you, or left, or right, out of fear; not to be hunched because fear is on your shoulders. It is to stand tall and look to the horizon without fear, not to be afraid to move on. Our nearest English word is 'salvation'. He was telling me it felt like a moment of salvation. For the first time in my life, taught to me by a Muslim boy in a nomad's land, I learned in my heart the meaning of salvation and redemption.
Nomads and the settled, east and west, Christian and Muslim trying to make a life which both holds onto the values of the nomadic tribe while looking to the reality of the future in an information global setting, and brings hope to both. There is some hope out of the interaction that is happening and can give the wanderer and the rooted a sense of the past in balance with the unknown we might walk towards beyond the horizon.
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