We have visited our new friends from the "old fair" (or under the bridge). Gorica is the one who sang into the banana during the action. She had invited us for coffee the other day and when we were sitting together she invited us for slava (that is the most important orthodox family celebration) and asked us to take photographs of her relatives and especially of her best man who would come with his whole family. They live about 400 km south from Belgrade, near the border with Kosovo.
On Slava we had a very good time. Meal was fantastic, southern specialities, urnebes (young cheese with spices), various paprica and barbecue. Not to mention the music, we were listening for example Jemal and other roman alternative stars, completely psychedelic stuff! Everything was fine. People were dancing and partying whole night, it was a very intensiv and crazy emotional and social contact, the most sweet were the kids..
We asked them what kind of combination is this and why they live there, while most of them have a house in Leskovac or in the near of Leskovac. Well, they search for work and luck, they hope to find it in Belgrade. On the area of the old fair live mainly Serbs from Leskovac not all are Romanies ("gypsies"). In fact they are poor people who found their belgradian combination in building up a small hut on a place where nobody touches them (only sometimes skins), relatives that help each other, they have small jobs in Belgrade, collect paper or metal.
They also get social help, miserable little but this is Serbian standard, 2000 Dinar per month. If it pays out? Well they say maybe even not. Some have turned back to Leskovac because they have better conditions there and others don't give up the hope to find something better, because for everybody a hut on the old fair under the bridge is only a temporarily solution.
Main problems they have with baggers and vehicles that bring all kind of waste around the settlement and with the government of New Belgrade that tores down the huts from time to time to get rid of them. Of course the hygienic conditions around the huts are a catastrophy. The other problem is the same as for all immigrants: They can not register in Belgrade because they don't have a legal adress. So they are in lack of any stately care like health insurance or social payment. That means they have to go to their hometown to see a doctor without paying.
We got to know a little better a young couple, Tihi and Ivana, born in 79 and 81. They have two children, a 8 years old son who lives with the grandmother in Leskovac and attend school and their 4 years old daughter, who is with them in Belgrade. They are capable people and Ivana prepared almost all the food for Gorica's Slava. Tihi is singer, he recorded already one album with computer and produced a CD. On the question why they left Leskovac they told us that Ivana didn't want to live with her husbands mother in one house, they could not stand it anymore and wanted to live their own life. Most of the people that were on Slava were talking romany or serbian, some even german, because they were there to work.
