Serbia Bound...

This post is much delayed.  My time in Serbia was brief and unexpectedly intense. 

It has taken some time to understand the experience and even more time to be willing to write about it.

Serbia was to be a special highlight of my trip to the Balkans. 

There are several reasons for that….

A little less than a year ago, I found that my father’s family was from Serbia.

I had  always had a deep affinity for all things Balkan…and somewhat of an affinity for Gypsies, as you can see, but I never imagined that it was anything more than a romantic fantasy.

A few years ago, after my 1^st trip to the former Yugoslavia, I took some time off to write
about my experiences there.
In my stack of notes, I came across a scrap of paper bearing the name of my biological father. 
As a child, I had been told he was French Canadian. I accepted it without question at the time.
But seeing his name as an adult made me wonder about its origins.
I was strongly impressed to dig deeper into my alleged French Canadian roots.
I discovered that my father was  an American born son of Yugoslavian immigrants
and that they were Serbians. 
Suddenly, many things about my inner life made perfect sense. 
Things such as my love of their music and dance, which could be a chapter in itself, 
my somewhat edgy and serious temperament,  my inner sense of history, struggle
and deeply felt emotions/opinions. 

Quite typically Serbian, for better and worse.

There was a strong psychic component woven tightly throughout this series of discoveries.

It was as though my father’s spirit was driving me to find him and to know more of his story.
I literally felt a personality over my shoulder for months on end. 
Many times, I grew weary of the search.  I didn’t think it should matter at this later stage of my life,
but I was literally compelled to keep working at it. 
I hit many dead-ends, ran out of ideas and then finally, when it seemed  completely hopeless,
my phone rang one afternoon.

On the other end was the last surviving member of that generation of the family…

an 83 year old woman in Des Moines.

She was as forthright and honest as could be hoped as she began to tell me about
my biological father and their family.
Everything she described fit the personality of the figure over my shoulder…exactly.

It was a heady experience…a difficult story, but one worth knowing.  

It was also a life-settling experience on some really deep levels.

As you can imagine, I could hardly wait to go to Serbia and immerse myself for a time…

to understand them…to understand myself.

Seven months later, I boarded the flight and then the final bus to Belgrade in high hopes!

I had done a fair bit of homework prior to the trip. 

One of the surprising things that emerged was that Serbia was the biggest exporter of gypsies
in the modern world.
Not only that, but that most of them settled in the Midwest…Illinois, Indiana, Ohio and the like. 
My own back yard.
As pieces of the puzzle emerged, I realized that I had had several dealings with them already. 
My curiosity intensified!

Suddenly, I realized that the family that cut my trees down as well as the people that took care

of my driveway coatings were gypsies.

People who offered roof repairs and other transient jobs were, as well.
Even though I was bit leery at times, I had a certain deep-rooted sympathy for them.
My experiences of them were not always perfect, but they were generally good. 
Certainly better than the stereotypical stories that are passed around!

I began to see with newly opened eyes their lives, their families, their not-quite-mainstream lives.

Then I began to share notes with friends who seemed to have a gypsy connection.  
We learned that many of them had blood ties to gypsy families.

In early America, it was forbidden for gypsy men to marry white women. 

They married blacks as well as native Americans, with whom they often felt

a greater sense of affinity. 

There were periods of prejudice in earlier times and often the children were either

not informed of their gypsy heritage or they were told simply that they were part

Native American.

One such friend pulled out old photographs of her great grandmother decked out

in colorful long skirts with huge gold loop earrings.  It was suddenly clear to her

that she was gypsy and not native American. My friend embodies both cultures…

It was often very life affirming for people to find these missing bits of their history. 

to be continued...