Beauty in poverty

Bódvalenke isn’t just any small Roma village trying to make it through poverty and oppression. It is a village that has used beauty and paint to reclaim the stories and pride of the Roma people in Hungary and around the world. As you walk through the village, you are greeted with wall after wall of murals. Of the fifty or so homes in the village, almost thirty of them are painted with a mural. The freskófalu projektiroda (fresco village project) was started by Eszter Pásztor with three goals in mind. The first was to reclaim the dignity of the Roma people by reclaiming their own stories and experiences as a point of pride. The second was to generate awareness around the Roma people and the Roma stories, creating conversation and working to counteract the prejudice, discrimination and oppression the Roma face. The third was to generate income for the people in Bódvalenke and remove the village from extreme poverty through tourism and business investments. Unfortunately, the village was never able to get the initial funding necessary to establish the infrastructure needed in order to make the tourism and business investments a reality. Yet, the project has still produced some absolutely stunning works of art.

The project invites Roma artists from around Hungary, Central Europe and the world to come to the village and paint large murals covering an entire outer wall of a home in Bódvalenke. Each mural has it’s own story and own importance to the Roma people. Funding to keep painting has since run out, and with no one ready to take over the project from Eszter, there seems little hope that the project will continue into the future. Already some of the murals are missing pieces where the wall has crumbled beneath the paint. Despite the pride the people of Bódvalenke take in their village and their best efforts they are too poverty stricken to fight its ultimate decline. For many, their only hope will be to move elsewhere in the coming years. Yet, they were all kind and welcoming, showing us around and welcoming us into their homes. We can still listen and share the stories the paint tells. I will share a couple of these stories with you.

This first mural depicts a traditional Roma creation myth. It tells of a giant who stole the sun and the moon and gave them to a terrible dragon. Two brothers then take it upon themselves to steal back the sun and the moon from the dragon. They play music until the dragon falls asleep. One brother then takes the moon and the other the sun and they begin the journey back to their village. On the way back, the moon paled the skin of the brother who carried the moon and the sun burned the skin of the brother who carried the sun. All white people, with their light skin, are the descendants of the brother who carried the moon and all Roma people, with their dark skin, are the descendants of the brother who carried the sun.

This next mural, entitled “Flying Angels” depicts the journey of Roma people as travelers. They were always wanderers going from place to place as flying angels. They left their home lands, moving across continents and oceans in hopes of finding refuge and a better life. As Eszter pointed out, even the tree tears at its roots to move in the flight. They were encouraged to go. But, instead of being met with kindness and welcome, they were met with hate and suspicion and fear. They were told to keep going or to turn back. And after arriving in a new place they were soon going back to the lands they had always called home. Thus, you see the returning movement in the painting. They returned, but were not welcomed back. They were lost with no sense of place or belonging. This painting is asking the question that so many Roma ask themselves: “Do we have a home?” The faces in this mural are all distorted, because, in Eszter’s words, “when you are afraid or when you intimidate others, then you lose everything worth living for. You lose love and trust and confidence and all the good things, and all that remains is envy and suspicion and fear of the other. And that distorts us; both those who fear and those who make you fear.” Even though this picture was painted to share the plight of the Roma people specifically, Eszter also extended it to encompass the journeys of all refugees.

The last mural, I am going to share here today is not a story specific to the Roma people. But, instead, it is the story of a breakup. The conversation. The pain. The longing. The sadness. The acceptance. The Roma people are still people and many of their stories are simply the stories of being human. This beautiful piece tells just one such story.