Six-year-old twins Gelu and Edi Petrache pose on the ornate stairs of their home in Buzescu, Romania, dressed up for Easter Sunday. They are the precocious offspring not of a Russian oligarch, but once-itinerant Roma who have struck it rich since the fall of communism by stripping defunct factories of their metals and selling them on. They are mostly coppersmiths, or kalderash, known for making cazanes – alcohol stills for brewing fruit brandies. As industrial infrastructure was left to rot, the Roma were quick to spot the potential in scrap metal in what at the time was an unregulated market.
Like working-class lottery winners, they have swapped their horse-drawn caravans for fast cars and gaudy, gated mansions adorned with turrets, pillars and marble floors – what they perceive to be the trappings of mega-wealth. Parents shower their children with jewellery, flashy clothes and mini motorbikes, challenging the perception of the Roma as poor, rootless people. But behind the bling, homes are often sparsely furnished and many rooms are hardly used: some older Roma are uneasy in their villas, preferring to use outhouses and outdoor kitchens instead.
Not all Buzescu's Roma are super rich. Since Romania joined the European Union in 2007, regulations governing homemade liquor have reduced demand for their copper stills, which once sold for hundreds of dollars. Today, only a handful of Roma make them. As a result, men and, increasingly, women are forced to look for work away from home. In a town as small as this (it has just 5,000 inhabitants), they are missed, and many Roma households contain only the old and the young – grandparents and grandchildren. Schooling is hit-and-miss: parents want sons to earn money as soon as possible, while daughters are expected to stay at home to help raise younger siblings; many are married off as teenagers.
Those whose parents struck gold – or copper – may have riches unimaginable a generation ago, but they are hollow fortunes.