News

Horváth Elemér
Cicsero.net

Payoff of willpower and hard work

János Lakatos has been living alone in Hernádvécse for three years. He was self-employed in the time of the communist regime, too, he worked as a bricklayer. After the change of regime he started his agricultural enterprise to expand his experience and his property. He started off with soil and forestry, then with sheep. Now he is the owner of 128 ewes and the increment. Moreover, he owns 200 acres of grain, 70 acres of wood and 50 acres of oak. He shares the ownership in some forests and due to his reliability and professional practice he receives new assignments from the owners of the forests. He owns every single part of machinery needed for agricultural tasks. The only vehicles he still needs are a combine harvester and a thread-smasher.
He is the one who provides local Gypsies with firewood; they can collect the sliver and the crop and even work down the price of the carriage. Janos still has other plans, he would like to buy more soil and to provide jobs for the unemployed. He hopes that the government’s measures will help him to reach his goals, but he trusts nothing to chance. This year he stands as a candidate in the local elections, he applies for to be the mayor of Hernádvécser. Who does he trust? The 80% of peasantry and the Gyspies, who he thinks are going to vote for him.

Horváth Elemér
Cicsero.net

Payoff of willpower and hard work

János Lakatos has been living alone in Hernádvécse for three years. He was self-employed in the time of the communist regime, too, he worked as a bricklayer. After the change of regime he started his agricultural enterprise to expand his experience and his property. He started off with soil and forestry, then with sheep. Now he is the owner of 128 ewes and the increment. Moreover, he owns 200 acres of grain, 70 acres of wood and 50 acres of oak. He shares the ownership in some forests and due to his reliability and professional practice he receives new assignments from the owners of the forests. He owns every single part of machinery needed for agricultural tasks. The only vehicles he still needs are a combine harvester and a thread-smasher.
He is the one who provides local Gypsies with firewood; they can collect the sliver and the crop and even work down the price of the carriage. Janos still has other plans, he would like to buy more soil and to provide jobs for the unemployed. He hopes that the government’s measures will help him to reach his goals, but he trusts nothing to chance. This year he stands as a candidate in the local elections, he applies for to be the mayor of Hernádvécser. Who does he trust? The 80% of peasantry and the Gyspies, who he thinks are going to vote for him.

Being a Happy Gypsy Woman in the 21st Century
Gypsy women in the captivity of tradition
Pálma Horváth
It’s really hard to sum up or to display even a small detail of a gipsy woman’s life. It would be a complicated, diverse task made more difficult by the prejudices towards the Gypsy culture.

As a member of the Cserehat Roma News Agency I experience the problems of the region day by day. People, families have lived here in deep poverty for long. However, the measures of the today's government have disappointed the poor.

Lifelong Marriages
Mrs. Natasa Gulyas Lakatos

It always makes me wonder, how differently we, Gipsy women think about our lives, compared to non-gipsy women. To us, marriage is sacred. We fall in love with our husbands on the first sight and stay for the rest of our lives together. I met lots of Gipsy women living happily in the same marriage for decades. They told me that love, patience, understanding and adherence are really important, such as expressing one's opinion, even if it's uncomfortable for the other person to acknowledge. Most women consider the most important for their husbands to have a job to provide comfort for the family. Meanwhile, men told me that the most important things for them are love and work.

Is there a way out?
Palma Horvath

Gypsies of the Cserehát in a Vicious Circle
Many people think that Gypsies don’t want to work, they give birth to too many children, they drink, dance and party away the welfare aid they get, in addition to all these they lie and steal, claiming that these are elements of the Gipsy culture. It is so sad that many people believe in these and people tend to generalize.
At the same time, here in the Cserehát we have plenty of Gipsy families with completely different values. I have talked to many people here recently, about how they imagine their future, and how they survive from day to day. They started to give up hope, they don’t have plans, and they are afraid of the future, because they live worse than ever. Everything’s getting more expensive, but they don’t have more money, or even less than before.
Most of the families live under the level of the minimum wage, sometimes they have to save money by not paying the bills. Bills, however, arrive continuously.

The Motto: Struggle and Struggle

Mrs. Gulyás, Natasa

When I ocasionally get some rest – I draw away from houswork, from my children, from everyday duties – I sometimes start thinking about how and why my life worked out the way it did. Could it have been any different or did it turned out the best possible?

During vacations we regularly go to fish Lake Telekesi from Szuhogy. (Starting from Szuhogy through the hill covered with forest we can reach Alsótelkes, and at the end of village, alongside the stock-yards of the Veres estate climb the hill, and on the other side of the hill bursts before our sight the gypsum-quarry, which is still with use, and the deep lake ahead.

During vacations we regularly go to fish Lake Telekesi from Szuhogy. (Starting from Szuhogy through the hill covered with forest we can reach Alsótelkes, and at the end of village, alongside the stock-yards of the Veres estate climb the hill, and on the other side of the hill bursts before our sight the gypsum-quarry, which is still with use, and the deep lake ahead.

Young people living in Szuhogy started to make the football field - which hadn’t been used for ten years - suitable again.

Szuhogy, where we live, is a village in Cserehát, which can be found a few kilometres from Edelény. It has 1200 inhabitants – there are perhaps 200 Roma among them. In the middle of the