BULGARIA

Sofia and Dupnitsa

“I go through containers, I find bottles and sell them. One day, I’ll decide to go and work on the highway. I’ll be forced to go there just like the others.” Daniela

Abstracts

"(…) Ghettos composed of slums, expropriation, rampant unemployment, no access to healthcare, educational discrimination, and so on. It’s not easy to be a Rom born in Bulgaria. One hour from Sofia, a contact from an association supporting the development of the Rom community waited for us at a highway exit. The district perched over the heights of the town of Dupnitsa.

It would have been very pleasant if only the town’s highest areas weren’t so miserable. This was where we went. Straight away, we fell under the spell of the smiles and gaiety of Daniela and her four children. We asked her to give us three days of her time: she replied that we could stay for three months if we wanted to. What fun we had!"

Extract from Zoé Zoé, Femmes du mondes, 2007, Éditions Gallimard