UDUPU, Romania, Dec 11, (AP): Halfway through another 12-hour day, Narcisa Tranca scrubs the floor, one eye on her infant son and her thoughts on the tasks ahead — cleaning, cooking, feeding the pigs and chickens.
Forced to abandon big dreams and marry at 15, this has been her life for the past seven years — locked in a joyless union she has come to accept.
On the outskirts of Bucharest, the teeming capital to the west of this drab village, younger sister Claudia takes a break from her English homework. She’s in her last year of high-school and preparing for college, where she plans to study languages.
Asked about marriage, the straight A-student giggles, shrugs, and says: “There’s time.”
Though separated by only four years and a two-hour drive, Narcisa, 22 and Claudia, 18, are worlds apart. But their lives represent more than a tale of two gifted sisters going separate ways.
Reflects
They are Gypsies — and their story reflects creeping change within Europe’s downtrodden minority. They offer a glimmer of hope that coming generations may be allowed to choose education instead of early marriage, empowering them to escape squalor on the fringes of society.
“I was wrong,” says Marcel Tranca, when asked about his decision to force his daughter Narcisa into marriage. Looking at Claudia, he adds: “But I learned from that mistake.”

Among Gypsies, or Roma, marrying young is a tradition born of the need to survive in an environment where young women were fair game for non-Roma men.
Romanian Roma, in particular, turned to early marriage during 500 years of slavery that ended only in the 19th century. Married girls were less likely to be raped by their owners, turning them and their children into outcasts wanted neither by the “white” nor Roma society.
No statistics exist on the number of underage girls forced into illegal marriage-like arrangements among Eastern Europe’s more than 5 million Roma. But a 2008 Romanian report says that 55 percent of Gypsies had their first pregnancy while under 18 compared to 14 percent of non-Gypsy Romanians.
Recent reports of a Roma girl who gave birth in Spain at age 10 may have been overblown — with neighbors from her Roma community saying she was at least 13. But dozens of documented examples over the past decade of Roma girls being “married off” at 12 or 13 indicate that such cases are no rarity in the Gypsy world.

Disadvantage
Figures on schooling also show Roma at a huge disadvantage. A 2006 United Nations Development Program survey on Roma in Southeast Europe showed that two of three Roma in the region do not complete primary school and two of five don’t even start school. One in four was illiterate and just 8 percent had completed secondary school or above.
In the recent past, many Roma kids had no chance even if their parents were education-friendly. In the Czech Republic, Slovakia and elsewhere they were sometimes put into schools for the mentally handicapped on the basis of race alone — a practice that is now changing only after massive international outrage.
Criticism of anti-Roma discrimination has been amplified by recent expulsions of Gypsies from France. But beyond the prejudices, rigid attitudes toward education and marriage also play their role in trapping Roma in their cycle of hardship.

Education
Still, a ray of hope is offered by girls like Claudia. And there are signs that Gypsy attitudes toward education are fitfully evolving. There were 109,000 Gypsies attending Romanian schools in 1990; now there are between 238,000 and 260,000, according to the Education Ministry. The increase is larger than the rise in the Gypsy population.
A poll by Gallup and the Roma Education Fund released last year showed about 1,420 Roma students enrolled in 2006 in places reserved for them at Romanian universities and similar higher institutions — a four-fold increase over 2000.
“They gossip about me, they feel sorry for me, they say my kid can’t find anyone to marry,” Marcel says of other Gypsy parents. “I don’t care. ... The other girls in the neighborhood come to ask advice of Claudia. She’s like a role model.”

Narcisa was scarcely into adolescence when word of her virtues started spreading along the Roma grape vine. Slender, with expressive almond-shaped eyes, Narcisa already was a beauty at 14. More important, she was hard working — able to toil long hours for her future husband while bearing many children.
The Rupitas were interested. Son Marin was already at marrying age at 16 and his parents, prosperous livestock traders in Udupu who spent much of their lives on the road, needed someone who would take over household duties and start giving them grandchildren.
With the blessing of both households, a cousin brought Marin to meet Narcisa in Bucharest. A dowry of $2,000 for Narcisa changed hands sometime between the first of four brief meetings and their wedding seven months later — a feast recorded back then by the AP in these words:
Diesel fumes mingled with the smell of barbecue at the Corina truck stop restaurant outside Bucharest at that wedding seven years ago. Roused by frenetic clarinet licks, the dancing crowd pumped fists into the air and swayed to Gypsy folk — an eclectic mix of Romanian pop and traditional Roma music.

Dreams
‘Long live my husband. I’ve got the perfect wife,’ the sweat-drenched singer wailed.
Broad grins split the faces of the bride’s parents, and no wonder — poised and pretty, she was a dream in white satin, huge gold earrings and faux pearls piled high in her hair.
But Narcisa’s smile was forced and her mind seemed far away as she obliged requests for a dance.
Just weeks ago, Narcisa had been in junior high school, an A-student with dreams of studying medicine. She pleaded with her parents to let her continue her education.
No, they said. That is not the Gypsy way.
“I wanted to be a pediatrician,” she said, resignation tugging at the corners of her mouth. “I told them again and again, but my parents just wouldn’t listen.”
Marin, the groom, said he wanted two girls and two boys. Asked if his wife-to-be agreed, he grinned and said: “I don’t know. I haven’t asked her yet.”
School? “Not once she’s in my house,” said Marin, who dropped out of elementary school after fourth grade. “She’ll be busy with housework.”
Fast forward seven years to Udupu, where horse-drawn carts vie for right of way with cars on the rutted road bisecting the village. Chicken scratch the dirt in the yard of Narcisa’s home, and pigs squeal in the background.
Narcisa stands Madonna-like in her drafty kitchen holding her 18-month-old son, her two daughters 6 and 4 huddled around her. With her delicately modeled face and figure, she still looks more the child forced to wed in 2003 than the young woman now working hard for her children, her husband, and her roughhewn in-laws.
Husband Marin smiles when asked about his marriage, but his eyes reflect wariness.

Household
“Of course we discuss things. She has her say in running the household,” he says. “But I do what I want.”
When pressed, he says he wants his kids to stay in school “so they know more than we do.” But he winces when asked what his parents think — and Narcisa hastily interjects: “We have lots of time to cross that bridge.”
She is wistful about her own lost chance at education, saying “I would have loved to have stayed in school, gotten a good job, had a chance to stay longer with my family.
“Claudia has more freedom, less cares. I’m happy for her but I wish I could be in her shoes.”
She shakes her head when asked if she resents her parents for pushing her into marriage. “It’s not their fault,” she says. “It’s destiny.”

By Roma standards, Marcel Tranca is an educated man. The 40-year old unemployed mechanic and driver finished grade 10 at regular school and then went on to grade 12 — a year short of a diploma — at night school.
“I regret it now,” he said of his decision to quit. “I could have finished, I could have gone on to university.”
What prompted him to force his first born into a dead-end life? And why is he letting Claudia go on with her schooling?
“It was Gypsy custom but I regretted it shortly after we agreed to the marriage,” Tranca says over coffee and biscuits in the tidy pink-painted foyer of his house, a two-story dwelling crowned with fanciful turrets of tin.
“I cried every time I left her with her new family. I realized she missed her childhood. Even after she married I wanted to put her back to school but then the babies came, one after the other,” he says.
Marcel has other plans for his own children still at home — Claudia, 17-year-old son Amir, and 4-year-old daughter Anna-Maria.

Chance
“I want them to see the world, I want them to have good jobs,” he says. “I want them to have a chance. ... It has something to do with our age and our times.”
Wife Mihaela joins in from the background — her place, as dictated by Roma custom.
“Marriage is an important step,” she says softly. “It’s not for children.”
Bookish and soft-spoken, Claudia has already seem more of the world than Narcisa probably ever will. She has participated in two monthlong high-school student exchanges to the United States — in North Carolina and Washington State — and wants to study at a university outside of Romania.
Marriage? A family? Yes, says Claudia, but only after a good education.
Quietly enthusiastic as she speaks of her plans to get a Masters degree, her mood turns somber when talk turns to Narcisa.
“It’s difficult for her,” she says. “She tries to educate him, but his male ego gets in the way — he just won’t listen.”
“She’s the one who has always encouraged me ... the one who always says ‘don’t miss out on the chance I never had.”’