| Email: Rachel
Norton
Dear Family and Friends,
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, a conference was
held here in Carpathia for the volunteers who work with the 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 also don’t have too much to say about the week I spent
in Budapest in between the two conferences, except that it was
lovely. My friend Melissa and I stayed with the Otternesses, the
couple I spent Thanksgiving with. I slept late, read novels, shopped,
and meandered about. I also had the pleasure of meeting with some
PC(USA) mission personnel. First were Joe and Kathy Angi, who
work with refugees in Budapest. Second was Burkhard Paetzold,
the PC(USA)’s regional liaison for Eastern Europe, and Gary
Payton, regional liaison for Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, and Poland.
I did not ask them to explain the boundaries of their respective
territories. Also while in Budapest I had a birthday, complete
with surprise party! Now that I am 27 years old, I am, according
to the old ladies in my village, officially “Too Old To
Marry.”
I have only been back at work for a week and a half now, but
it has 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.
The good news, however, is that 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.
In between shouting at the children to stop hitting each other,
and making them stand in the corners (sometimes I wish there were
more than four in the room!), I’ve started to teach numbers.
The younger children are learning to count, recognize written
numbers, and to show particular numbers of fingers. The older
children are learning to write the numbers. We also continue to
review the names of the colors, the days of the week, and the
difference between left and right. I pray every day that we’re
actually making some kind of positive difference in the children’s
lives.
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 something 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 novacain—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 Payton (the aforementioned regional liaison) suggested I
tell you an anecdote that I told 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 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:
“How much money do you have?”
“You look really exhausted.”
“You’re never going to find a husband if you keep
wearing such a dirty coat.”
“Your handwriting is too ugly to use for Hungarian.”
And my personal favorite, addressed to Alma, “Alma, you’re
too skinny. You need to get fat like Rachel.” Um, I’ll
take that as a compliment, thank you.
Sending much love to all,
Rachel
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)
Individual Remittance Processing
P.O. Box 643700
Pittsburgh, PA 15264-3700
|
