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Working with the Roma
Rachel Norton - Letter #6 (February 28, 2007)
Hello! I hope you are all doing well, despite the dreariness of February. This has been a strange month for me because I've spent more time attending conferences and hanging out in Budapest than I have working at the preschool. I'm not complaining; I love those kids, but I need a break from the insanity sometimes! Just as February began, there was a conference
near Budapest for the volunteers working with Önkéntes
Diakóniai Év
(ÖDÉ). Two weeks later there was a conference here in Carpathia
for the volunteers who work with Roma/Gadje Dialogue Through Service
Initiative (RGDTSI). I am affiliated with both sets of acronyms. I'm
not going to waste time with a blow-by-blow of these events, because
while both provided opportunities to spend time with great people,
neither one was particularly stellar in terms of content. I have only been back at work
for a week and a half now, but it's been hectic enough to feel like
a whole month! For one thing, my roommate
and coworker, Alma, has been sick for more than two weeks, first
with the flu, then with some other infection of the eyes and ears.
This
means that in addition to trying my best to be a good nurse to her,
I've been running the preschool by myself! This has been vaguely
disastrous—there
are just too many children for one adult (with limited language skills!)
to handle. I'd like to say I've been totally cheerful and Christ-like
about my extra tasks, but I'd be lying. In good news, however, yesterday
I went with Alma to a clinic in Munkács, where a doctor may
have finally figured out how to cure her various ailments. We'll find
out at her second appointment on Friday. Last week one of the children came in with a swollen cheek. It was literally the size of a grapefruit. He had an infected, rotten tooth that had apparently been festering for quite a while. I told him he had to go home and tell his mother to take him to a doctor immediately. He said his mother wouldn't take him anywhere because his clothes and shoes were muddy and he didn't have anything clean to put on. What kind of reasoning is that? I understand that it would be frustrating, embarrassing, and/or demoralizing to have to go somewhere and be called a dirty gypsy or some such by an unsympathetic, racist doctor. But isn't it worth it for the sake of your own child?!? Often I just don't understand what's going on with the people in the camp. I don't understand why people do what they do. Anyway, I found some clothes in the donation pile to give to the boy so that he could go have his tooth pulled. I heard later from the man who took him to the doctor that the child's gum was so swollen that there was no place to insert a needle of Novocaine—I don't understand that, but regardless of the accuracy of that part of the report, the upshot is that the child had to be held down while his tooth was yanked out without the benefit of anesthetic. Poor kid. He's doing okay now. His cheek is still a little puffy, but he says nothing hurts anymore. Gary (the aforementioned regional coordinator) suggested I tell you an anecdote that I told to him about the worldview of the children in the camp. They think there are only four nations in the world. The first is Nagydobrony, which contains two kinds of people: Gypsies and Hungarians. The second is Hungary, which is where the Nagydobrony Hungarians came from in the first place and with which they still have ties. The third is Russia, which surrounds Nagydobrony on all sides. (To them Ukraine and Russia are indistinguishable.) The last is Holland, a distant land of infinite riches that sends donations and volunteers to Nagydobrony. (It is true that because of the ties between the Dutch Reformed Church and the Hungarian Reformed Church, most donations come from the Netherlands.) While there are four nations, there are only two languages. The one the children speak and understand is Hungarian. The one they do not speak and don't understand is Russian. The children, therefore, think that because we are volunteers with a seemingly limitless supply of paper and pencils, Alma and I must be from Holland. Sweden and the United States are provinces therein. When Alma and I speak to each other in English, a language they do not understand, the children recognize that we are speaking in Russian. Alma and I show them maps and we talk about where we come from and about Ukraine (the nation in which they live!) but so far it isn't having any effect. This understanding of the world is quite logical and very cute in the little ones. But it's less cute in the school-aged children (and even adults!) who do not have geography lessons, and still aren't sure whether I might have traveled to Nagydobrony from the United States on a train. (Once someone asked me this very question, and I responded, "Of course not! That's impossible because there's an ocean in the way!" But then I had to stop and consider whether there might be a train track crossing from Alaska into Russia. I decided that wouldn't be very practical. But can you imagine how long the train ride would be from upstate New York, west across all of Canada, through Alaska, then across the whole Asian continent to Ukraine? It already takes 16 hours just to get to Kiev from here!) I was going to spend a paragraph now talking about
communication here and the ways in which it is different from the
way we speak to each
other at home. I was going to theorize about the ways in which language
might affect cultural norms (for example there's no good way to say, "may
I please…" in Hungarian, so people just say, "Give
me such-and-such. I need it."). In an attempt to keep my blathering
to a minimum, I'll just tell you some of the funny things that have
been said to me recently. Here, there is no real interest in tact,
and these things are not considered at all rude: PS. Right now I'm less than 500 dollars from my fund-raising goal, so I thank all of you who have been generous to me so far! As always, should you wish to contribute to the fund that supports my work here, you can! Just make out a check to the PC(USA) with my name and ECO number, 074436, in the memo line, and mail it to: The Presbyterian Church
(USA) PPS. Once again, I'm trying to attach photos,
even though I know it's only 1% likely to work. These are of the
camp, a pretty depressing-looking
place. The first is the building in which I work. The second is one
of the church elders standing in front of his neighbor's house.
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