GYP45109.jpg
At a meeting to organise the dowry presents of skirts and blouses of 14 year old Garoafa Mihai, another young woman named Garoafa sits exhausted breast feeding her child, in the village of Sintesti, in Romania, early August 2006. The dowry consisted of over 200 skirts and blouses as well as a bed, television, refrigerator, kitchen equipment, and all the things deemed necessary to start a modern household. The Kalderari roma of Sintesti are by tradition metal workers, originally making alcohol stills, pots and pans, but now dealing in scrap metal. The large profits from their business have enabled them to build large houses in the village of Sintesti, 20km from Bucharest, and to invest in fast, Western brand name cars such as BMW's, Mercedes and Porsche.