Ramoni Tudorace is 35 years old, she is a young and beautiful Roma, director of a bank branch in Bucharest, who likes to work with people. Ramona doesn’t “steal” your wallet, she takes care of your money. In the beginning, she was just a little girl growing up in Piata Progressul, Ferentari, with her mother, their cat Moantzi, and their puppy Maxima. When I think about my friendship with Ramona, I always remember this song, and the interview I did with her made me know (and love) her even more.

Sometimes when I think about the dear people in my life, I see them as in a story. I imagine Ramona Isabel Amalia Cristina Tudorache as a superheroine. Code name, Super Ramon. This workaholic superheroine was the manager of a bank branch and had three superpowers that you don’t find in any other.

The first power was that he could give loans everywhere, and thus he could protect many people. For about 13 years, she fought against very dangerous villains: commission and usury. With a single blow, Super Ramon could shrink them or even make them disappear.

Ramona’s second strength was love, which she learned from her mother. Then love was the shield of the soul. If you loved and were loved, no spell could touch you and no creature could kill you.

I’ll tell you a secret!

Ramona wasn’t always a superhero. In the beginning, she was just a little girl growing up in Piața Progresul, Ferentari, with her mother, their cat Moantzi and their puppy Maxima. He was a child with a highly developed aesthetic sense. I’m absolutely sure that the school sockets he pulled out of the walls didn’t match the furniture in the classroom, and the board he kept breaking didn’t match the parquet. He was a child with a big imagination, recreating scenes from spy movies right in her living room. An award-winning child from a humble family, who learned discrimination too early on his own skin.

“Ethnically, not everyone knew what family I was from,” Ramona explained to me. “Our family never emphasized this, we were people, that’s all. I am such a mixture, in our family I was from everything.” She never hid her ethnicity, but she understood from an early age that she had to work twice as hard and be twice as clean as other children.

“I’ll tell you about one phase, it’s kind of brutal, but I’ll tell you,” Ramona begins the difficult flashback. “I was at home. My mother was a nurse at Budimex. My mother put the key around my neck, on a thicker rubber band, like that. After school we were supposed to go play outside. My mother came home from work around 6-7 in the evening. I was coming back from school about 11. Didn’t eat, for God’s sake! Dropped my backpack and put on spiked trainers. Did you get those black and red trainers? They were shiny, you ran with them like they were the Cougars of today. I was playing Guardian 10, hide and seek.” . At the request of her mother, one of the neighbors checked whether Ramona had eaten, whether she had come from the games. “And at some point I remember that I did not lock the door. When I got to the house, I ate, and where did I eat? In the living room. And ours slammed the door against the wall, “Where are you Ramona?” I ate and made a mess. She opened her mouth and said, “Oh, what the hell!” The second he covered her mouth with his hand. Then I realized, what that word is, what it means and that it’s something bad. There was something in my mind as a child that something was wrong.”

Behind every superhero is a supermom

If for most of us, childhood smells of goodies that our mothers prepared for us, then Ramona’s childhood smells of plastic. After night shifts at the hospital, Ramona’s mother always left a plastic toy on her bedside table every 19th. He celebrated his birthday every month and these were gifts. He was constantly trying to please her, and Ramona’s eyes still water at the memory of her monthly anniversaries.

“My mother worked hard for me and was always there for me,” says Super Ramon. He always told her to read a lot, go to a good high school, go to college. “I did, but I only read what I liked. You know, I really enjoyed my childhood, although I didn’t keep myself in the dust, but it was wonderful. Probably, if I had been kept in the dust, I would not be here today.” Remembering her mother’s words, more fear, more shame, Ramona studied well throughout her school years.

“I used to pull sockets out of the walls, but I also had good grades, the best,” Ramona laughs today. He received a welfare scholarship for students with financial problems, as well as a merit scholarship based on high grades. “And one day a guy told me his name was Katelyn, and now I remember, ‘only gypsies get a scholarship because they’re poor.’

The little girl was in so much pain at the time that Ramona, a service student at the school that day, went straight to the bulletin board near the teachers’ entrance and tore up the scholarship list.

“At the time it was stupid that it was put on display. They put it back the next day. I broke it again. It was maximum stress. The scholarship sheet was not posted on the bulletin board for two months. I was the happiest until a lady from the administration came to the classroom to hand out scholarships.” When the administrator loudly asked the class, “Who should we take on the scholarship?”, Ramona remained silent. The second time, the woman approached her bank and insisted: “Tudorabolit?”. “Guys, I went underground as a child,” the superheroine admits.

But maybe Ramona’s superpowers also grew from that “earth”. He had accumulated so much shame and pain that he was ready to refuse proper and much-needed financial assistance. It seemed to him that he would not be able to go lower, so he gritted his teeth and prepared himself.

If only her path had been different

In the 10th grade, Ramona got her first job because she wanted to gain some independence and take care of her mother. She was a representative of a cosmetics brand that was too cheap for her school friends, who never bought from her. He did not despair. She could quickly sell her goods because she knew how to please. She sold lipsticks and creams, but dreamed of studying forensics. But her path would be different. At her mother’s request, she entered the Faculty of International Relations and European Studies.

Ramona feels fulfilled, because every day she works among people, in the branch of the bank she manages. She kept her fighting and resourceful spirit from school, learned new skills in college and is proud of the role she plays today. She hasn’t woken up from a comment about her ethnicity for a long time, certainly not at work. She is respected and valued.

But even from the height of a princess with superpowers, around the symbolic “ball” that brings International Roma Day, Ramona wonders if this story will change anything. Will she be perceived differently for embracing her ethnic identity? She asks herself these questions, but knows that the superpower of love will protect her from any obstacles. Her family now consists of two members – her boyfriend and Magdalena, their cat. She loves and is loved.

Also want to know Ramona’s third superpower? Distills dead water and turns it into living water, fit only to pour on friends. This superpower only works in the pre-classical chords of the great composer FS King, but with a bit of courage and confidence in modernism, it can also work with Hurricane chords in the background. I met her at such a magical moment that if it hadn’t happened, there would be no stories…

I knew that Ramona is strong, that Ramona can solve any problem, that she knows exactly what she wants and never asks for help when she’s not feeling well. I knew Ramona wasn’t crying. Now I have also met Ramona who gets emotional when she tells pieces of her soul, Ramona who talks about her mother with tears in her eyes. Every facet of this diamond makes me love her even more.

READ ALSO:

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• “There were times in high school when I felt like I had to work twice as hard to be taken seriously.” The story of a young Roma woman who has been working as a volunteer in the Roma community since the age of 14
• Alexandru Stan: “I don’t know why I’m Roma, why I’m Romanian. I am what I am”
• “Always a little more.” The story of the “musical kid”
• From Ferentari to England and back to Ferentari. Roma or Romanian? The story of Emil Nepot, who is followed by almost 500,000 people on Tik-Tok
• “Come on, will you sing for us too?”. Florinel Karaivan, a boy who held his first accordion in his hands at the age of 12
• The first step that convinced Yasmina that if she wants, she really can. “It’s not just a fairy tale in my head”

On International Roma Day, the Community Development Agency Razom Foundation presents the life stories of Roma who are proud of themselves. The articles are part of the project “Knowledge of the (r)human next to us” funded by the Active Citizens Fund Romania program, financed by Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway through EEA grants for 2014-2021 and aimed at raising awareness of human rights and equal attitude with an emphasis on the Roma minority. The campaign is conducted by HotNews.ro.