Gypsy Hygiene: The Most Unexpected Facts
Gypsies, who can be found in almost every corner of the world, despite the absence of their own state, have amazingly managed to preserve their original culture, which dictates certain models of behavior to them.
Traditional Roma laws regulating various aspects of camp life have not ignored hygiene issues. However, they are more concerned not with the sanitary neatness of the person and everyday life, but with the preservation of ritual purity.
Traditional sanitation
The very low standard of living and the national desire to change the place of residence of a significant part of the Roma do not allow them to acquire permanent housing and establish a modern life in it.
Adapting caravans or dilapidated shacks into houses, they do not have access to communications that would provide them with warmth, comfort and cleanliness.
Ethnographer Lev Cherenkov, who visited the Roma of Moldova in 1969, described their houses as single-chamber buildings preceded by a vestibule, devoid of electricity, running water, and such nonsense as sewage. In the interior decoration of the dwelling, where the kitchen and bedroom were a single space, there was no excess of furniture and interior items, but order and cleanliness reigned, because according to the rules, every woman is obliged to keep the interior of her convent in proper condition and not be lazy to clean.
Many years have passed since then, the building materials for the construction of houses have changed, but the general picture of the places of compact residence of the Roma has remained the same.
Moving from place to place, they became accustomed to the road dust that soaked their skin, clothes, food and modest belongings, and therefore even today they do not attach due importance to water procedures.
Toilet
Gypsies consider the toilet to be the dirtiest object, which is never built in the house. Even in the mansions of Buzescu (Romania), a gypsy city of millionaires, latrines are located in courtyards.
The Romales believe that it is unhygienic to have a toilet under the same roof as the living rooms and the kitchen where food is prepared. At the same time, they are calm about its complete absence, seeing nothing shameful in meeting their natural needs under the bush.
Lev Cherenkov noted that almost every gypsy house in the Moldavian village of Ursari had corn plantations, which served as a kind of toilet.
It is not customary to talk about going to the toilet in Roma society, you should enter and leave it as secretly as possible so that others do not notice this fact.
However, after visiting there, you should definitely wash your hands in order to wash off the “filth” from them and not spread it to other people and objects.
Ritual Corruption
According to the Gypsy code, dirt adhering to the body or clothing in one way or another cannot stain a person in the same way as the “filth” that adheres as a result of a violation of ritual purity.
That is why the non-observance of the usual hygienic norms in their society is not a matter of condemnation, and the unwillingness to purify oneself from ritual impurity entails serious consequences.
Ethnographer Inga Andronnikova noted that in Gypsy life there were things to which ritual “purity” was ascribed, which a woman had no right to touch. Such items included oglobl, as well as all the attributes of men’s everyday life, the most valuable of which were placed by the owner of the house on a raised platform, which was represented by folded belongings.
Women’s “filth”
Nikolai Bessonov, a historian of the Gypsy people, wrote that according to local concepts, the part of the body below the waist of men, women and sexually mature girls is covered with “filth”. But if in the stronger sex it is considered not to spread, then in young ladies, the so-called “impurity” is contagious.
That is why women have to strictly observe a number of ritual rules so as not to defile men and surrounding things with their actions.
In order to protect others, ladies are instructed to systematically wash the lower area of the body, and on critical days and in the postpartum period more often than usual.
It was also necessary to cleanse oneself of “filth” after intimacy with one’s spouse, and it was especially necessary to wash one’s hands when touching intimate parts.
According to researcher Georgy Tsvetkov, according to Gypsy beliefs, absolutely everything that is below a woman’s waist, including a skirt and shoes, is “dirty”, which is why the keepers of the hearth necessarily wear an apron, which is a kind of buffer between clothes and the outside world. Dishes and food can be leaned against the apron, and it will not be considered defiled.
They were not to pass over any object, as it immediately becomes “unclean,” and because of this, the overwhelming majority of Gypsies settle in one-story houses, so that the wives, having ascended to the second floor, do not accidentally find themselves above their husbands, and do not cover him with “filth,” from which even the ceilings do not protect.
A gypsy woman always puts her skirt over her legs, and only on rare occasions, when she wants to intentionally insult a man, she hits him with the edge of this garment.
A gypsy infected with “filth” could not touch clean clothes, dishes and other tribesmen, and if he hid the fact of his “uncleanness” and someone unknowingly touched him, then the culprit remained “dirty” for life. If this did not happen, the purification came within a day and was necessarily accompanied by a feast.
Body Hygiene
If there is a bathtub in the house where the gypsies live, then after bathing the woman, it should be washed so that the man does not become infected with her “filth”. In the absence of a bath, the spouses are instructed to wash in two different basins. But in any case, when taking a shower, you should start washing your body from top to bottom. In the same way, it is worth drying yourself, and each person should use one towel for the top, and another for the bottom, which is immediately sent to the wash.
Washing
Dirty clothes, which are stored in two different containers, one for women and the other for men, are washed by a gypsy woman according to the instructions of her ancestors.
First of all, children’s outfits get into the basin, then this water is poured out and it is the turn of men’s clothes put on the upper part of the body, then men’s clothes for the bottom are washed. Women’s vestments are washed last, and also separately from the top.
Cookware hygiene
Inga Andronnikova noted that according to the laws existing in the camp, women and men use separate cutlery and utensils, and if a husband mistakenly eats from his wife’s plate, he will be considered “dirty”.
Absolutely all dining utensils are washed with water several times, doused with boiling water, and then rinsed again under a cold stream.
Gypsies offer treats to strangers who come to the house in special “guest” dishes, which are thoroughly washed after the feast, and stored separately from home plates and cups.
I am a sedentary gypsy. Neither I nor my family have ever been nomadic. His ancestors were peasants. My parents moved to the city and got an education. His mother is an engineer, his father is a foreman at a factory. I have also been working at the plant for 40 years. The life of my family is no different from the life of all other Russians. Neither clothes, nor everyday life. And you’ll never know I’m a gypsy when you see me in a crowd.
Is it that there is no toilet in their three- or four-storey buildings?! I wonder if there is a great need, for example, in the morning, all the camps go to the corn? Boys to the left, girls to the right….
A woman is not allowed to enter above the ground floor. Men are not supposed to clean the house. I can imagine what kind of shit they have on the 2nd and 3rd floors of huge mansions! But they are ritually pure!
“Don’t you want to help your father, you lazy little thing?” The tall soldier asked the frightened girl sternly. Jeong nodded through her tears. “Then come with us, and your father will be all right,” the man said. Jeong nodded again, but didn’t budge. There was a terrible chill of the man from the man, and she could not bring herself to stand on her feet from the ground on which she had been pushed. The man was obviously tired of waiting, and he roughly grabbed the numb girl by the arm, pulling her along. “Where are you taking her?” – the mother rushed to help her daughter…