The Children of the Slums

The Philipovtsy Gypsy slum is like a huge bee nest consisting of hovels in the outskirts of the capital Sofia. It is hard to believe that these gloomy dwellings are places where people live and children grow up. They usually don't hold other furniture than matraces. The most dwellings don't have electricity, water or heating. There are no toilets or washing facilities. Many people have lung and other diseases. As many as eight people may live in one small room.

The monotonous life of the slum is interrupted around noon. Children appear on the narrow streets and run towards the Church, holding bowls and spoons. They come two hours prior to the serving of the food and jump and play on the church yard like little sparrows, waiting for the lunch call.

This is repeated every day, even in winter cold. The small tummies of the children can hold an increadible amound of food. The children can eat as many servings as they want to. The children eat quietly, only broad smiles every now and then interrupt the clatter of the spoons.
	Philipovtsy slum children outside of the Gypsy Church waiting for lunch

15 siblings
The Bulgarian Gypsy families are large, but Gosho's and Lyuba's family that has 17 children is considered large even here. The parents and the children who were born one after another live in a small hovel with shaky, leaking roof. The oldest is 18, the youngest just a little baby.
Gosho ane Lyuba are both unemployed. Without the help of our kitchen, the only food of the family would be what they can find in the garbage.	Dochka and Yeliana belong to the 17 siblings. Without our kitchen these children would be starving.

When we started the food serving in Hristo Botev - another Gypsy neighborhood in Sofia - seven of the children under 14 years of age began to attend. You could see immediately that these people really had been suffering of hunger. They were thin, sick-looking, unnaturally serious. They had dark shadows under their big eyes. When little Hristo, standing in front of the washing bowl, gives you his wet hand, you hardly feel it, it is so thin. The past winter he and his sisters Dochka and Yeliana were very sick of lung fever. The parents spent all days in the city and had left the children by themselves.

We took the children to the doctor and bought the medicine. The treatment, meals and the two loaves of bread we gave them every day helped them to survive.