By Mary VanRheenen

What does my brother’s backyard in Iowa have in common with Romanian Roma working in Germany? Both involve picking fruit. While I was visiting my brother, I enjoyed picking raspberries in his extensive raspberry patch. And while I did it, I thought about Florien and other Roma who contract to pick raspberries and strawberries on the farms in Germany.

Florien lives in Transylvania. Many Roma from his village go to Germany to pick strawberries and other soft fruits in late spring/early summer. The German employer “provides” lodging, a hot midday meal and a bus ticket to and from Germany. These benefits are deducted from the workers’ wages. While Florien went, his wife Irena stayed in the village with their two small children. Sometimes both parents go. Then the children stay with an aunt, a grandparent or other family.

Florien is back now, a couple of thousand euros richer. He and his wife first paid back all the people she’d loaned money from while Florien was gone. (She had some banking problems and needed money to buy food.) Then they decided to add another room to their three-room house. By August, when Irena plans to go abroad to work for two months, Florien’s pay will probably be gone.

Florien is not worried about that, though. In July and August he plans to go with the children to the mountains. There is a Romanian employer who provides shelter while the whole family (along with other families from the same village) pick mushrooms and wild strawberries in the forest.

Roma from a village in Oltenia go to Spain to work, often to pick garlic. They have no housing and live in whatever shelter they bring or make in the fields. They also find shelter next to the greenhouses where they are working. No sanitation or electricity is available. Sometimes whole families go, including the children. Other times, children are left with extended family members. A two-room house in the village might suddenly have 10 or more people staying in it. Furthermore, a teenaged aunt might be put in charge of six or more nieces and nephews.

Our Roma friends from Moldova fare better. For the past six or more years, many of them have been working in the greenhouses in the province of North Holland. They pick tomatoes and cucumbers and prune the plants.  First, their employer housed them in FEMA-looking trailer houses. Then their employer put them up in a large bunkhouse. Several Polish workers lived in the same house. They all had separate bedrooms but only one kitchen. The absurdly high rent for this housing was deducted from their wages.

Now they have made connections with local Dutch Christians who have helped them navigate the convoluted world of Dutch real estate. A couple of families have purchased their own homes (with 40 or 30-year mortgages). Of course, more than one nuclear family lives in such a house. Lena and Serge, for instance, have at least one sister living with them along with their married son, his wife and their son’s preschool daughter. The son’s wife stays home with the little girl. She wants to learn Dutch. Like others with school-aged children, she plans to send her daughter to local Dutch schools.

I think of these Roma brothers and sisters in faith every time I buy a tomato in the grocery store. Perhaps one of their hands plucked it. And I thought of Florien while I was picking raspberries on vacation in Iowa. I came home with relaxing memories. Florien came home with a sore arm, numb from his shoulders on down because he worked so hard. As hard and as unfair as the work often is, many Roma are grateful for the opportunity to earn some needed cash. Let us pray for their employers to treat them more fairly. And when we pray for God to bless our food, let us also pray for the many hands that helped bring that food to our table.

Mary VanRheenen is a CBF field personnel serving as resource coordinator for Romany throughout Europe. Her husband Keith Holmes is a retired field personnel, but continues as a consultant in translation ministries.