Inács

will these train rides never end. friday evening through a dark night-- the mist from the morning has long since lifted, fallen, lifted, returned. another small hungarian village my feet will never again feel... we came today to study the Roma, our closest exhibition, though, was a family of eleven on the outskirts of town-- children running all over, chickens, donkeys chased by brooms, and radio wars.
we are standing on the dike, peach orchards to our backs. the river, last year, flooded the fields up to here, and this was very hard for the people. there, too, is a one-room house-- kitchen being the room. it is 'subsidized' housing, but the Roma family currently living there does not pay, he told us. the window on the second floor attic is gone. there are no amenities. they have built a hut outside, for bathroom purposes. the village too provided the blue pump.
but this village is unique in the area-- only about 20% of its inhabitants are Roma. they no longer speak Romani. the surrounding cities are around 50%.
'we do not segregate classrooms,' says the principal. 'others do-- not here. we believe in equal treatment.' students are bussed in from the surrounding villages-- though there their minority population is significantly higher, the ration of Roma students reflects only this city's statistics. somewhere in the kilometers between, children are lost.

we are greeted by the major-- elected rep-- and the chief administrative officer-- appointed. the mayor, Palo, an incredible activist, personable Roma. the administrative officer, a businesslike woman, forced to make tough decisions of a small, poor, aging community.
there is no business here. i ask, 'was the employment better under communism?' they laugh-- of course one-hundred percent employment is much better than the pitifully low numbers today. yes, but today there are three minority representative groups-- the Roma, the Slovaks, the Germans. and the Hungarian government who sends them just below what they need to break even. and the EU, who bestows endless amounts of hope for grants, programs, and development in the form of endless paperwork and logistics-- to a community that very nearly lost is post office this year.
yes, the communist farm produced food, livestock, machinery knowledge. then, the Gypsy ghetto made troughs. today machines cannot fit on the parceled-out strips of land privately owned. there is no opportunity for mass farming. today, the minority government donates euro 15,000 to the orchard, the profits of which go straight back to the poorest families.
'are there plans for attracting businesses?' she hesitates-- we could offer tax breaks, she offers. 'land is cheap. there are many open homes that could be converted into offices...' and trails off. 'perhaps the highway will help.' the highway to Miskolc was completed last year-- it lies some 40 kilometers away, and i'm not sure there are plans to connect it here.

there really are no easy answers here. social politics has turned to the brevity of the free market and locals make do with what they have. unfortunately, the tools they have are not much. do cities start like nation-states? natural resources the first to go, unskilled exploitation, stagnation, attempting to educate, skill, move up... there is a gap but the question is when, how to jump it.