“’NOMAD’ was a good word for Nicolae Gheorghe. He was always on the move, with his worldly goods strapped to his back: a laptop, bundles of e-mails, a ring-binder, three shirts.”
Thus, begins the obituary of an influential advocate for the Roma, a traveling people. He was tireless:
- A well-read, multilingual cosmopolitan
- An academic, writing on the plight of the Roma for the Western Press.
- An award-winning point-man for all things Roma to international organizations.
- A gypsy by blood and upbringing.
- An anthropologist of his own people.
- A secretary to an illiterate “King of the Gypsies”
- An activist when Roma were moved into ghettos
- An entrepreneur, setting up the first Roma NGO
He dreamed dreams for the Roma people:
- That talented young Roma would get involved in business and politics.
- That the wider world would understand the Roma as “transnational, representing a society whose ideals were broader, freer and more enterprising than those in nation states.”
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