Eight-year-old Natalie Mirimanov of Novi Sad won first place in the Vojvodina Institute of Public Health's literature competition on "Good for yourself, good for others". She wrote about the friendship between her and a Roma woman who was under daily violence.
Here is her text from the award-winning post:
Semina is a slightly larger girl, with a slightly darker complexion, and had dark hair like a nightgown, slightly lighter brown eyebrows and often torn shoes.
Semina was a Roma woman who was often ridiculed: Nikola, Lav, Aleksej, Srdjan, Dusan, Anastasia and Nera.
It happened on the little and big vacation while the teacher was not here.
They all spoke the same words and repeated them often. And she says, "You're a dirty trash can"
Dusan once pushed her towards the radiator. Then for the first time I saw her crying. No one told Dusan that he was wrong, no one except me.
“Dusan it wasn't nice at all to do it! Why did she push it on the radiator? "
Dusan just said, "Because he deserved it, he's a Gypsy."
I was always told, "Don't take Semina's snack, because her snack is waste" whenever I wanted to share the snack with her.
When I asked Semina, "Hey what do you want me to buy for your birthday?" Nera pulled me up and said, "Don't buy anything for her birthday she will ruin it"
Semina and I felt very uncomfortable.
None of the people I listed wanted to date Semina because she was a Roma.
When you are Roma, it means to them that you sit on a bench, begging, it means to them that they are dirty but not me. Now I feel very sorry for Semina, because she left for Germany, and we may never see each other again.
My message is that we must never laugh at Roma because they are equal to us.
* In relation to the original text written by Natalie, only the names of the children have been changed.
