The dark side of Hungary

Nowadays if we pay attention to the news we can learn a lot about the inner life of the “village – like” small town: “Tiszavasvári.” Sadly, none of these news are uplifting. I won’t detail them. I will write about my personal experience of the “Divided town”.

Getting off the train gives us a rough picture of the area. On our left we can see a quiet little place. Some shops, some houses, and a lot of poor – looking parks and playgrounds.

But taking a look at the other side makes the view even more depressing.

There is another world behind the trees. The roma settlement.

Houses of loam without bathrooms, one room for ten… rats running around everywhere and everything full of flies and dust. Yet these people are smiling…

It is the beginning of the month… two days after the monthly money supplies were distributed, but none of it is left for today… They bought Nike shoes, wine, make up, - but somehow there is barely ever any money left for food.

Still food is put on the table. Something that makes my stomach ache at the first sight. It’s pasta with some kind of unfamiliar meat… tough I suppose it is easy to define it… In the lack of money they are used to eating basically anything that moves. Cats, rats, mice, hares.

Then they show me their house. A pure surprise. They have a“DIGI” television, and a hi-fi set which is always turned on. Then there is a DVD player. They say they bought it this week. Well I suppose – since there is nothing else I can think of – this is how they want to compensate their poverty.

In the daytime people are at home, or visit each-other a thousand times a day. They all come over to see me, as if I was some kind of a miracle, or rather a monkey presented in a cage. They interrogate me harshly, and I feel like I have committed some crime. I tell them that I am hopefully going to study English next year. They are shocked.

“You know here a girl does not need to be educated, and they don’t have to work either. It is enough to have some kids. It is a shame to work”

I had bitter thoughts about that. Knowing how many kids from the village were given up on, and placed into institutions. Still these kids returned… just to engage in the life of the “miserable.”… Or just because this was their only option… the one last alternative to stay alive.

The kids growing up in an environment like that will never even get to know, that there is another way of life… a life without crime and constant hunger… very few are lucky… Those kids who do not return. They have a chance to try and break the curse, to overcome and rise out of misery.

Still they often fail… Having to face the world all alone.

On my way home I visit the other half of the town… thoughts lingering in my head…

Can society really help a group of people who refuse to take this aid? Or do they only withdraw from work because they can get supplies without it too? Is there ever going to be a bridge between the two parts of this town separated by a railway? Or are fear and misery the only things that stay? – Time will decide.