Michal Mižigár
My name is Michal Mižigár.
Roma people call me Mizhus.
I come from Czech Republic.
My family came to Czech Republic
after the war, from the tiny villages around Stará Ľubovňa.
We, specifically, came from Hromoš,
my grandmothers and grandfathers came from the several villages of Spiš region.
Such as Plavnica, Hromoš,
relatives from my granddad´s side were from the area around Levoča.
Journey to education
I went to the high school and it was a business academy,
and then I went to Prague to the Faculty of Arts of Charles University,
where I studied Roma studies and ended up with a bachelor's degree.
Then I went to Budapest to CEU,
the Central European University,
in Romani I would translate it as a Central European University,
it was in Budapest, and now it is in Vienna, Austria.
The first year I was in a program that prepares you
to study in an English
master's program at any American or English university.
I studied there, and I was preparing
to take the TOEFL test, and I was accepted
into a master's program in a comparative history,
at the same university.
Like in every American university,
the study system is different.
Here in our country, the student is given a list of literature to read,
or a paper to write, or to master a test.
The way it works in an American university is
that you have to submit a project, an idea
that you're doing research on.
I found such an idea quite difficult to achieve,
as I never studied history,
because I was interested in Romani studies.
And I got the idea, that I wanted to try to compare
the Roma musicians in the nineties
in Prešov and in Košice
and in Budapest, because I knew that all the Roma
in the Habsburg monarchy made their living as a musicians,
but we all know how much they were respected by the Hungarians.
I had all kinds of ideas about how, why,
and I wanted to create such a concept
within the social history.
I set the premise that those Hungarians (Hungarian Roma)
they also spoke Hungarian,
and they lived close to the Hungarian lords.
Our Roma lived here in Slovakia, in the eastern Slovakia,
where there were not many lords, only a few counts,
but there were many landowners.
And if somebody was a respected musician, he used to go and play.
To cafés, to wine bars, to Košice or to Prešov,
but there was nothing more to achieve.
The Roma who were closer to Pest,
to the nobility, to the gentry,
they were more respected, they were better motivated, they were better paid.
So I had a kind of an idea that I wanted to put
in the context with the history of the monarchy.
Problems of historical research
It's very difficult, because if someone wants
to write about history,
there are not enough books, there are no sources.
It is not a problem to document
the history of Czechs or Slovaks or other nations,
but it is still a problem for Roma.
Because it can really be seen,
for example, in Roma literature, that not many years have passed
since the Roma began to write and publish.
But it's still very interesting
that somehow I have to
take my work further forward,
it's just harder now that I have a job and at the same time I'm finishing my work.
Study and work
Now I'm in England
for the second year,
I was there for half a year,
then I came to the Czech Republic or England, where I'm finishing school.
Now I still need to finish my diploma thesis,
because I studied comparative history in Budapest.
At the same time, I work at Compass Charity,
where we have a program in which we deal
with Roma children
who came to schools from the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Romania,
and we ensure that there is better
collaboration, better cooperation
between Roma families and between
the state system, which includes the schools.
In England we are currently involved in a project called
ROGA - Roma of Great Abilities,
which is run by Roma with a great abilities.
This project was founded by Petr Torák
and last year he was awarded, how to say, a kind of Oscar,
which is otherwise awarded to teachers from Great Britain.
Our work is based on going into the schools
and engaging with the children we talk to.
Children are very surprised when someone comes and talks to them in their own language
and we try
to talk to them and find out if they have any problems at school
and find a way to improve the whole education.
Or there are other cases when children do not have problems,
they are very obedient, they are smart,
but they do not have anyone to advise them, because no one in the family
has finished the higher education.
And we pay attention to them and advise them
to read more books, to try to spread
the language more, how to get involved in club activities,
to be active, and then I think it's good.
But it is also true that
there are many problems, and that means that those Roma
who come from the Czech Republic, Slovakia or Romania,
while bringing the way of life from those countries,
including all the problems, to England,
they have to learn and see, that it is a different education system,
that they have more job opportunities,
that their children can thus create the conditions
for a much better life compared to what they would have in the countries they came from.
It's more about trying to show them
what they can achieve, they just don't know it.
And especially for me, it's all very interesting,
because I have the opportunity to see where the Roma come from
and how their children grow up.
It feels very good to see all this.
In addition, I also do my own activities,
which means I teach the Romani language online
and I also teach online in the Czech Republic.
Experience from working in Great Britain and Czech Republic
We came to a town in Wales.
They called us to one school where they were having problems.
And one week before, I was in a school in the Czech Republic and the principal said:
- They are like this and that,
you can't do this with them, you can't do that with them, you can't do anything with them.
A week later we were in England, in Wales,
and the director there says:
- We have such and such a problem,
what more do we need to do to understand them?
What do we need to do more intensively so that this problem is no longer here?
And that alone shows
how they look at you.
And that they treat you like a human being.
And when I think about how far
the successful people who are now in England,
who came from the Czech Republic,
have made it, they are people who should have been in this country,
in this state, in special schools.
It was like a miracle had happened.
Even today, there are many young Roma
in the Czech Republic and Slovakia who had a guardian angel with them.
Who had someone sent by God
to get them into some better schools. That was also my case.
But in England it is so that
the teachers there are used to teach
the children of several nationalities in one class.
This is not like here, where the teacher has Roma students
and there is already some kind of a obstacle, big complications with them.
Inclusive education must be introduced into this process.
In England, they consider it something similar to woods and water.
I mean, for something completely natural.
They don't see it as something they have to do grudgingly.
Our domestic experience shows
that there is simply no desire to be in contact with Roma here.
The refusal to include the Roma
is primarily the result of a prejudice.
Those kids aren't even getting an education here.
Considering what I saw in England, I can say...
Everything possible was being done here to prevent Roma
from coming into contact with non-Roma children.
And that is the biggest problem.
In England, it happens
that those who want to study at universities,
but there are also those who know that they don't even need a university education,
because they get the job they want.
It is only necessary to be polite, behave well,
dress nicely,
speak the language and prove yourself in the job. That is all.
And in the Czech Republic, in Slovakia and in the whole of Europe,
it's hard for me to talk about it, there´s such a myth.
I lived by that myth too.
I will graduate from university,
I will have a good life. It is not truth.
I will graduate from university
and I will only have more of a social capital.
I will have non-Roma friends who will help me
get maybe a sublet, some housing somewhere.
But I will have the same problems as the Roma
who come from the Roma communities. Or from the urban ghettos.
Or Roma who are integrated.
Well, the Roma in the countryside, they are very poor.
But if I remain a Roma and have a diploma,
it does not mean that everything is fine.
On the contrary, it opens
the way for a person to an even greater struggle.
For the right that your children grow up in a good environment,
for the right that your children go to a good school,
for the right that you already know what and how it should be
and you perceive that this is not the case in relation to you.
You should get that, just based on the Declaration
of Human Rights.
So I find it hard to look at this
from some kind of perspective,
that we still have to, that we still have to prove
who we are, that we are good, that we are not like that...
After all, that's not what life is about.
Now I see that we already have generations of bachelors and masters
who are moving forward and asking what they lived in,
what they put that effort and determination into. Is it worth it or not?
Yes, it is worth it.
And it's sad when I have to say
that those Roma who don't have an education mock them,
saying: "listen, you're going to school for nothing, they won't take you to work anyway."
I mean, when they see that some Roma have a hard life and so on,
they identify with it more,
thinking that it is not worth studying...
In many schools, there are
unique principals or unique teachers
who want to help Roma children, but they are on their own.
They do not have the power to influence the entire teaching staff.
And it's a great shame.
But to return to the question, those schools are different, they are different.
There is one in Trmice, for example,
where there is a very good principal.
That was more or less a non-Roma school, from which the non-Roma took their children
and preferred to place them in Ústí nad Labem.
And now both Roma children and non-Roma children go there, all together
and there is no problem, now it is a very good school.
And then we also have the schools that are exclusively Roma.
And I think that can be a problem, because now we have generations
of both Roma and non-Roma
who do not have such mutual contact.
They don't grow up together, they don't know each other.
This is something that I am very afraid of,
because these Roma will fall into the greater poverty,
and as for those young non-Roma,
they will have even stronger prejudices and stereotypes about Roma.
It is not easy to return
When a person goes abroad
the way I went to England, I had no one in that city.
I really went all by myself, the whole family stayed in the Czech Republic.
And I kind of wanted to prove to myself
what it's like to live somewhere else.
And the same thing happened when I was at CEU (Central European University),
it was difficult to return to the Czech Republic even then.
It's that you're in that multicultural environment,
and when you go back, it's not so easy to come back.
So when I found a good job there
I decided to go there and I left a good job,
I left a good job in the Czech Republic.
Because, I had the motivation to go out.
That this way I can learn the language even better and so on.
Anti-discrimination in practice
I would put it this way.
There is also racism in England,
but the law applies.
The law applies.
The thing is, when something happens to you,
you have someone to turn to.
You simply demand the justice.
Not here. In the Czech Republic last year a Roma man was murdered
and nobody was arrested for it, as if nothing had happened.
They just said he was a drug addict,
that he was very addicted and that was it.
And in England it would be a big case.
The law does not seem to be helpful to the Roma.
I think the law is there to enforce the justice
in case something bad happens to us.
Because the law doesn't apply as it should.
And even though there is a racism in England, the law does apply.
And that's why those Roma don't want to go back.
Because they realize that only there they do really feel human.
We are here as the second-rate ones,
and that is why they do not want to feel like the second-rate ones anymore.
They have the choice
to live where they feel respected as a human beings.
Life mission
I don't even know if I will really stay in England,
because I like it there, but at the same time
it will never be my home.
My home is here.
But one thing I know for sure is that
no matter what kind of work I do,
I would still like to deal with Romani history and with the Romani language,
because that is exactly what I consider to be
my life's task, the mission that I have to fulfill.
And now I'm teaching it
or making it more accessible to people, whether Roma or non-Roma,
and that's how I perceive it, that I'm doing something I should be doing.
I would like to do this all the time,
to remain such a Roma patriot as I was
when I was in the Czech Republic.
Family pride
Of course they are proud.
They are proud. I remember when my grandmother was still alive,
one grandmother is no longer alive,
she was very proud.
In front of people, even when she was in the hospital, she praised me there too.
And I kept saying to her: "Grandma, you didn't have to say that", and she said,
if other Roma people had somebody in college,
you'd see how proud they would be, even more than I was.
And you're such a devil that you won't let me do that.
So I tell her, well, if it makes you happy,
do whatever you want.
We even make fun of it.
But everyone also knows that it's not just for free.
I can thank my mother
and my father very much,
because they were not so rich to pay me everything.
But they gave me something
that not every Romani mother, not every Romani father would do.
They let me go.
They didn't tell me
now you're going to work, now you're going to do this, now you're going to do that.
That's why I know that my mother and my father did something
that makes me proud of them, because only now
I realized that they didn't even know what I actually went to study,
what I went to do.
In several contexts, they didn't even know where I was actually studying.
Because if I said the Faculty of Arts of the Charles University
or the Central European University,
it was something they really had to learn to pronounce.
And I would add that the Roma didn't even know what it was.
Now I basically realize that
I admire them, that it wasn't even necessary to have money or anything like that.
But you really have to let go,
let that son, that daughter live.
And for all that, I will thank
my parents, my mother, my father for the rest of my life,
because it's about
what I could have made of myself and for myself,
what I could have gotten.
It is also about the fact that if a person wants,
he will somehow get the funds, the scholarship from somewhere.
Or when it comes to work, I wasn't such a student
that I had everything paid for, arranged.
I also had to work alongside,
but the fact that your family lets you go your own way, that's something even more.
We need a facts and a figures.
When I was an activist in Prague,
I already knew that we need an information,
how to report about ourselves, how to write about ourselves.
That's why I went to study a history,
because I knew I needed a general knowledge.
I would call it a humanities with an overlap into the history and a little bit into the philosophy,
because I needed to grab some context,
because we have the information, the data about the Roma.
What we really need, and it´is very necessary for the non-Roma, is to place this in their own context.
Into the context of their history.
And that's why I went to study the history.
Romani language
Now we speak Romani.
If someone sees and hears this, they will understand that I speak Romani well.
And whether you are a girl or a boy
or a woman or a man, mother, father, grandmother, grandfather,
keep your tongue as long as possible.
Just the fact that you understand this language
is a great miracle, it's a big thing. Our Roma were killed
in the past, the language was not something like a religion
to be taught, or to have books published in it.
The Romani language was the language of the poorest people.
For two thousand years, our Romani language is still here, still here...
No matter what country you are from, we can still talk to each other.
I wish that the Romani language would be preserved,
that you would teach it to your children.
But also that you motivate them to live their lives.
Let them do what they want, but let them not forget who they are
and who their fathers, grandfathers, mothers, grandmothers were,
let the Roma become a president,
let him never forget it, let him not be ashamed of who he is.
That's all I wanted to say.