Hello everyone, I thought it might be interesting to explain to you a Roma tradition of ‘stealing’ your wife which, is not understood by many and affects schooling and education.

Here is an example – In a school age a young boy and young girl (8 – 9 grades) are hanging out together. There is nothing wrong here, right? Their relationship becomes very strong, lovely and deep. In most cases their parents know about their relationship. There are cases where parents do not agree about the chosen girl or boy, but this doesn’t affect the relation of the youths. Sometimes they become closer and closer. Up to here nothing wrong, right?

Now after a year relationship (if the youths don’t break up the relation) there comes the difficult part. The couple being together so much time now on, of course affects their schools. They start missing classes, not attending at all school activities. Or some drop-out from school. That’s fine – every teenage has to pass through it and to experience it and of course to overcome it. But it comes another stage where the couple would like to have sex – yes right, sex! But as you may know in Roma community the sex before marriage is impossible. The girl should be virgin until marriage; otherwise her image and her family’s image will be crashed. All the community will blame them. Also for the parents of the girl it would be very shameful since their daughter did sex before marriage. So when the couple (just know that there are only 16 years old or less) would like to have sex in most cases ending with marriage. I’m saying married because once they had sex; the girl should marry this boy. And that’s how it comes the part where the boy has to ‘steal’ the girl. They just get out of the town where the live and staying one, two or more nights, depend on the situation at home. Their girl’s parents start looking for them, asking their friends where they are in order to take their daughter, because she is small or the boy’s family is not good enough for their daughter.

It’s accepted when the girl gets married that her parents and the boy’s parents will have a big celebration where the whole community gets together to dance and to learn if the girl is virgin. If she is not,, there is no celebration. There are few cases where they still celebrate but instead of hot Rakia (a traditional alcohol in Bulgaria) cold Rakia is provided. This signifies that the girl is not virgin. Once the couple is together and the celebration and wedding has passed, typically the couple do not continue school.