This is what Maria's life could have been like.

There are enough kids in the town to fill a primary school.

Their clothes are tattered, their faces dirty.

Their homes are are mostly made of mud brick. There are unfinished roofs close to collapsing, there are holes scattered across the walls and the grounds around the houses are covered with rubbish.

The floors are made of dirt. There’s only one bed, which is shared by many.

The rest just sleep on the floor.

The town is Nikolaevo in Bulgaria. It’s a Roma village located in the centre of the country and populated by around 5000 people. Nikolaevo is also the town where Maria – who has been dubbed the “blonde angel” by the media – would have grown up if a few things in her life had gone differently.

Over the past week, the world has been gripped by Maria’s story.

She is the young girl who was found living in Greece, with parents who bore absolutely no physical resemblance to her, and who have since been charged with child abduction.

Maria has blonde hair and green eyes. She’s thought to be around four-years-old, although some media reports have indicted that she’s more likely five or six. At the time of Maria’s discovery, international news agency Reuters reported:

Known as Maria, the four-year-old was spotted peeking out from under a blanket at a Roma settlement near the town of Farsala during a police sweep on Wednesday for suspected drug trafficking.

She speaks just a few words in the Roma dialect and Greek, and police think she may be of northern or eastern European origin, possibly from Scandinavia or Bulgaria.

Police have sent Interpol a file with all the evidence they have on the girl, including DNA samples, to seek a possible match with its records on missing children, a police official said.

They have also contacted international groups and charities that deal with lost or abducted children.

At first, Maria’s story was compared to that of Madeleine McCann – the young girl who went missing from a Portuguese resort she was staying at with her parents in 2007 and was never seen again.

For a brief moment, there was hope that Madeleine might also be found living with a family she’d come to accept as her own.

But that was far from reality.

The reality is a sad story of extreme poverty and desperation.

The 40-year-old woman and 39-year-old man Maria was living with in the Roma village in Greece have been arrested.

Soon after their arrest, DNA tests confirmed that Maria was in fact one of ten children, aged between two and 20, biologically born to Bulgarian couple Sashka Ruseva, 38, and Atanas Rusev, 36.

Doctors believe that Maria’s blonde hair and pale-skinned features are the result of an albino gene that’s carried by her father. Five of the Ruseva’s other children have similar complexions and it’s this link that led investigators to the family in the first place.

Some reports say that Sashka Ruseva and Atanas Rusev sold little Maria to the Greek woman in 2009. Bulgarian police have launched a full investigation into whether this might be true.

But Maria’s biological mother, Atanas Rusev, has maintained that she gave birth to Maria while she was working during the orange harvest in Greece. She says that she left baby Maria with a roommate and returned to her home country – knowing she would never have the financial means to support another child.

If Maria had been left to grow up in the care of her biological mother, she would have grown up in the squalor described above.

Over the weekend, Rusev gave her first public interview.

In the interview, she said: “I have not sold her! I have not… I gave her, I made a mistake. But I haven’t taken any money… I want Maria back! I am her mother, how could I not want her. I do not care what they say. I want Maria back with me.”

If she had sold Maria for a price, Rusev said, she would have money to clothe her family. Instead she continues to live in desperate and devastating poverty.

In another interview, Rusev said: “I missed Maria but I don’t have any money so I did not know what to do. I called the woman several times and I knew she was safe and well. I don’t know why she kept her so long, why they did not send her back to me.

“I don’t have enough money to call the woman in Greece any more so I stopped trying to get in touch with her. I didn’t know what was happening with my child. But I have never stopped wanting her, she is my own flesh and blood.”

But who will ultimately end up with custody of Maria, remains unknown.

A recent CNN report exposed the harsh reality of the place where the Rusev family live; the place that Maria would return to if she should ever go ‘home’. According to the report, 90 per cent of the 12 million Romas in Europe live below the poverty line.

Maria’s biological family live in a one-room home made of the same mud bricks as the rest of the village.

The walls have been whitewashed, and a single window is partly covered with a pane of glass, the rest with a sheet of plastic.

The inhabitants of Nikolaevo complain that when it rains, the houses flood and the mud buildings get drenched.

Maria will most likely end up in Bulgaria and be placed in a crisis centre while the case continues. From there she’ll probably be placed in foster care. Already, Bulgaria’s social services have investigated the living conditions of Maria’s biological family and have removed other children from the situation.

Mamamia will keep you updated on Maria’s situation, as further news comes to light.