Zenia tells the story of her life. She lives in Sweden but was born in Germany and grew up in Spain. She tells about her poor childhood and how many children begged for money for food. Zenia's relatives lived in a tent. Her father worked fixing copper pans and her mother looked after the children. One day Zenia's family moved to Sweden. The first time they didnt get to come in, but they tried again and eventually they were lucky. In Sweden they live in an apartment. It was the first time that they had slept in a bedroom. They also began to go to school, but the Swedish children provoked them and called them gypsies. The gypsies pretended not to hear and laughed, but at night they cried. Zenia didn't like school. Sometimes she played truant. At school she learnt that gypsies come from India. Gypsies left India one thousand years ago, and now they are live right across the whole world. They don't have a country of their own, but they have their own language, clothes and traditions. Zenia had two parallel and different lives. At home she was a gypsy girl, and at school she tried to be a Swedish girl. It was difficult! When Zenia was 17 her family decided to marry her to a boy named Sixten. Zenia didn't want to marry, but she consented and was given a piece of jewellery and real gold money. She was now engaged to be married. Soon after she married Sixten and her brother married Sixten's sister. Later her first child was born, who she called Pepino.
The became a real family but she was unhappy. One evening she went with her brother to church. After that she joined the choir and sang and wrote songs in her own language. She felt happier. Going to church made her feel secure. The had two more children called Luciano and Samson. Zenia was proud of her boys but sometimes she worried about them. She remembered her childhood and didn't want to see her children suffer. She wanted to teach them never to abandon gypsy laws, to always respect their parents, older people and family. Zenia worried and wondered if her boys would be gypsies or live and work as Swedish people. She though that she had changed a lot in Sweden, but she was a gypsy and that she would always be. She wished her children would become proud gypsies and that her people should not disappear. Zenia has described (in a brilliant but simple way) a sad situation that many immigrants have had, are having and will have in the future. They live many years in Sweden, they have a right to vote, they have the same rights to live in Sweden as Swedish people, they have Swedish passports, but real Swedes they are not and will never be!