By Grayson Hester

Sometimes the best way to discover home is to leave it. That’s certainly proven true for Ingrid Bangova, a Roma woman from the small village of Cinobaňa, Slovakia. She, like many Roma people scattered throughout the Eastern European diaspora, relates complicatedly to that concept of “home.”

A perennially displaced and persecuted people, the Roma are without land and without border. But they are not without love or hope. Or any of those things which transcend human-made constructs.

“What I love, or I like, about Cinobaňa is that my whole childhood is actually there, my whole family,” Ingrid said, “and that every time I think about it or know that I will be going home, I look forward to seeing them there.” Home can be a people as much as it can be a place. It is to her people, her family, that Ingrid expresses her devotion.

Her family and her ardent faith in God buoyed her journey to the Slovak capital of Bratislava. “I quite like life in Cinobaňa, but it is difficult to find a job or to learn and grow,” she said. “So that’s why I actually decided to go to Bratislava to study.”

A far cry (and distance) from her tiny hometown—Bratislava is roughly the size of Tulsa, Okla. Her home village, in this Austria-straddling metro, represented an opportunity to love more deeply the hometown she felt called to leave.

Life there did not always treat Ingrid kindly. Devoid of opportunities and facing myriad prejudices, both interpersonal and institutional, the Roma people could be forgiven for lapsing into pessimism. The systems work against the Roma people by depriving them of resources, preferring instead to allocate them to those who inherited Slovak nationality or European wealth.

“Many people from the Roma community are worried—they don’t see their future as rosy,” she said. “Sometimes they don’t have anything to cook for the children.”

Interpersonally, Roma people routinely experience bigotry and hate. It is common for them to endure slurs and violence. And unfortunately, Ingrid has not been exempt.

“It once happened that my friend had a birthday party, and his mother told him the day before that he should not invite me there,” Ingrid said. “That he should say that he canceled the party because I’m Roma and I could steal something in the house.”

But it was there that Ingrid also witnessed beauty and joy, sometimes in the form of Cooperative Baptist Fellowship field personnel. CBF features a long-established ministerial presence in Slovakia, focused primarily on the Roma people and enacted by a select few field personnel. Shane McNary is one such person. He met Ingrid early in Slovakia as her village hosted one of the Fellowship’s first Slovak youth camps.

“The difference in equipping men and women for education is often seen in low-income communities,” Shane said. “When a man is equipped by education, it changes his life. When a woman gains an education, it changes her entire family.”

CBF gifted Ingrid with a scholarship, enabling her to receive an education and fulfill her academic dreams.

Somewhere, out of the murky middle between discrimination and divinity, emerges a truism—home is complicated. But Ingrid meets it not with a solution, but with acceptance.

“These situations kept me moving forward because I realized that I had to accept it myself at first,” she said. “When I came to terms with the fact that I am a Roma woman, that I am of a different skin color, it no longer caused that feeling of shame or inferiority. I realized that it doesn’t actually mean that I’m bad or that I’m someone different.” This resolve carried her across the country and into new adventures, propelled by faith in a God whose love became manifest, partially through CBF.

She now studies tax issues and tax consulting at the University of Economics in Bratislava, a field she chose because “it’s a very current topic and I think it will always be needed; so, I hope it will be easier for me to get a job in the future.” She intends to use her earnings to help her family back home, providing for those who once provided for her.

And while material concerns certainly matter, it is not there that Ingrid invests the bulk of her hope. Equipped with every good thing, like education, Ingrid leans primarily into her faith­—in God, in her family and in a home she can never truly leave behind. “My hopes or my dreams for the future are very simple. I would only like that my family, my surroundings, my friends would perhaps search more for God’s word, to open their hearts to it,” she said. “Because I think that is the basis of everything we need in life. That, along with God, peace, love and gratitude also come into life, and I think that we don’t even need anything more in our lives.”

This article first appeared in the Winter 2023 issue of fellowship! magazine. Check out the issue and subscribe for free at www.cbf.net/fellowship.