Translated by Eszter Tarsoly

In the first role play, a Roma grandmother takes her teenaged granddaughter to the doctor. The granddaughter is pregnant. The doctor’s assistant is a young Roma woman. The four participants of the scene face the dilemmas concerning the fate of the pregnancy and of the young mother-to-be.
The second role play takes place in the office administering the state-sponsored public works scheme. A middle-aged bilingual Roma woman from the Széles út segregate would like to find a solution to her difficult situation by asking for work. Her insistence holds up the queue and the Roma woman behind her, who is from a different segregate, intervenes.

I had to step into the shoes of Hajni, a single-parent Roma woman, as she tries to deal with the clerk at the public works office: this was the person I went to see because I was looking for a job. It was rather humiliating. First of all, I was really upset by the indifferent, patronizing way the clerk behaved. She criticized me for everything, giving me a lecture on why I had so many children and why I did not go to school. He did not even try to make an effort to help me, as a single mother, to find a job. Of course, I did not just take the humiliations lying down either; I could not stay calm. I put myself in her shoes and came to the conclusion that people who cannot stand up for themselves, or had little education, for instance, are often looked down upon and refused the help they should be given. A Bible verse came to my mind (James 4:17): “Therefore whoever knows the right thing to do and does not do it—for him it is sin.” What I learned from this assignment is that we have no right to judge, humiliate, or look down on anyone.

A peaceful solution, I think, would have been if both parties could have gone home without a guilty conscious. For example, if the clerk said to Hajnalka afterward: “Dear Hajnalka, please come back. First of all, I am sorry I raised my voice at you, but I have a terrible headache, and I am dealing with a lot of family problems myself. I promise I will try to help you somehow. Look, Marika, the office’s financial manager, has just coming in. I will ask her if, until the new public works program starts (in about a month), they could employ you at one of the public institutions from their budget”. Marika’s response: “We are actually looking for a cleaner for a month right now, because the person we are currently employing is about to have surgery—we’d be happy to have you”.