What are your memories, what kind of difficulties did you have to face as a child because you were deaf?

Because I didn't have hearing aids until I was eleven, I missed out on a lot of what was going on around me. When I had to read at school, I tried, but I could see people laughing at me. I cried and stopped reading, and then the teacher felt sorry for me and started to practice speaking with me separately. It was a special school for disabled children.

What was your family like?

There were seven of us brothers and sisters - two girls, five boys - and all but one of my brothers was born with some kind of disability. Most of us are hearing impaired, although our parents were not. I remember they watched TV at home and because we didn't understand what was going on, we laughed when they did. I started to develop my communication skills when I was seven years old and went down to the boxing gym. Everyone there, including coaches, and teammates were constantly talking to me, I had to keep in touch with them somehow.

Where did the idea of boxing come from at such an early age?

I saw this as an opportunity to keep myself busy and show the world who I am, and what I can do. I was very motivated by the old Bruce Lee and Jean-Claude Van Damme films, they were my role models. I wanted to be like them and the coaches saw my talent, but first I didn’t get medical permission in Debrecen to go to competitions, only later in Budapest.

How were you able to keep up with the others, who obviously had an advantage over you?

I copied their movements, and the coach showed me what to do. I felt like I was doing well.

So much so that you might have suspected that later you would grow up to be an athlete.

I knew exactly what I wanted to be. And the fact that I can't hear has an advantage: I can't hear the cheering fans, for example, so I'm not distracted by any noise.

I have to take off my hearing aid in the ring, where I can only read my coach's lips. At the end of the round, I don't even hear the bell, I just feel the opponent starting to move away and the referee is closing in, that's how I know there's a break coming and I stop punching.

It is inevitable that if one sense is weak or damaged, the others will be stronger...

This is also true for me, my imagination is especially strong. I can imagine how everything will happen - in the ring too. I can anticipate whether I can do the job or not, and I know if I'm going to lose. I've fought over 360 fights and I've only lost ten percent of them, 39. I was a national athlete for twenty years, competing at 51, 54, and 57 kilos, and I never said no to any invitation.

Were you a good competitor type?

Everyone is nervous, but if you're not afraid, the blows don't hurt. I always imagined that my opponent would be as nervous as I was, and I used my imagination to prepare. I was good at sprints and long-distance running, which I achieved by always imagining that I was running in front of a train and that if I stopped, it would hit me. I would run in front of the train for 60 minutes, never stopping before the finish line. And in the sauna after training, I imagined the door was closed for 15 minutes and I could only get out after that.

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Norbert at the Beijing Olympics - Photo: Norbert Kalucza

Did your opponents know about your hearing loss?

No, because I always went to the pre-game weighing without my hearing aids, so I guess they thought I couldn’t understand their language.

Have you ever been mistreated as an adult because you can't hear?

I have been taken advantage of several times without my knowledge because I am not able to pay attention to everything. When I signed to be a professional in the Czech Republic, I found out only later from my manager that my coach was supposed to pass on my share of the match money, but he kept it for himself.

In the ring, however, no one could fool me, it was the performance that counted, so I had a lot of happy moments there.

You want other special needs athletes to experience this kind of happiness, this is the reason why you would like to start a special association - in addition to your present job of coaching boys, girls, children, and adults.

I know exactly what someone born with a similar disability has to face in everyday life. I would offer them a sports activity in my association, where anyone with a disability or coming from a deprived background could come to train. I would also like to make their dreams come true. I always say that if someone wants to try a sport, it's no excuse for not hearing anything, you have to do it, and there is a solution! I will also give a presentation in schools to make more people aware of the opportunity. I'm also looking for children who can become athletes as adults, but also adults who don't want to compete, just learn self-defense, lose weight, get in shape, and relieve stress. I know it is twice as hard to succeed in sports with a physical handicap, but it is not impossible. I will see who is capable, and what can they can achieve with the talents they have, and with patience, I’ll help the achieve it.

Norbi, I have never heard you talk about your Roma origin, but the more people - like other Roma young people - know this about you, the more you can be a role model for...

The bottom line is that I give respect to everyone who comes across me, no matter if they are Roma or non-Roma, no matter what their background. Sport teaches me that. Anyone who speaks badly to me, I leave immediately without saying anything back. That's why we have the police, the security people, or in the old days, the teachers at school, to take action. As a kid, many people thought I didn't understand what they were saying, so they would tease me behind my back, but even then I didn't make a scene then and there. I stood up for myself by telling it to the right person. I developed this kind of defense myself, I learned everything by myself.

And I also know that there are many talented Roma, whether in sports or music, but most of them give up quickly and drop out.

What else do you like to do besides sports?

Dancing. Either at home or in the gym. If someone cancels a training session, I use the time for that. As a training distraction, my students, the kids, really enjoy it. Just like I used to imitate Van Damme's moves, I also learned to dance from TV: folk, hip hop, everything. I don't even need sound, I can feel the beat.

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Photo: Cívishír.hu

How long have you and Vivien been a couple?

It will be twenty years this summer. We got married a couple of years ago, but that's just a piece of paper because we've been together since we met. I owe a lot to her, she helps me a lot to practice my speech: which words mean what, what not to say, how to say hello, how to talk... And I pay attention to her. It happened that she didn't even say anything, but I could tell she was hungry so I brought her a burger.

Norbi, how does it feel to be a father?

Wonderful! Our daughter Vivien Pálma is 14 and our son Norbert is three. He is very fond of his father, spends a lot of time with me at the gym, loves to hit the bag, and seems to be as active as I am.

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The boxer with his family - Photo: Norbert Kalucza

You must be proud, just as your parents must be proud of all you have achieved.

Unfortunately, my mother is no longer alive, but she was very proud of me. All the more because she knew how much sacrifice it took to succeed. When they moved to Sátoraljaújhely, I was still a child, and my mother asked me to go with them. I said no because I wanted to stay in Debrecen in a dormitory, which Sándor Szabó, the president of DVSC, helped me to get.

Crying, my mother was begging me to go, but I said no, I had set my life on boxing, and I wanted to go to the Olympics. She understood.

I promised to come home on weekends, but due to competitions and training camps, I rarely did. This was a sacrifice, as was the fact that when friends invited me to their birthday parties, I was there, but even though I had food and drinks on the table, I didn't eat or drink in preparation for the weigh-in. In fact, I went out just to dance off the extra pounds.

Looking back on your achievements, what are you most proud of?

I have eighty-seven international trophies at home, but I'm most proud of the European qualifying tournament when I won the quota for the Beijing Olympics. It was not an easy draw, though, and I won the gold medal against the toughest opponents. There are very few deaf athletes in the world who have ever qualified for the Olympics, and I am one of them. Wherever I go, people look up to me, respect me, say hello, or hug me. I started doing sports to achieve that.

"We're almost at Hollókő, it's not far from there", says Laci, as his photographer's gear keeps bouncing at every bump on the road. I sit shotgun in a soft, patterned sweater, leaning my elbows on the edge and staring out the window, enjoying the way the sun's rays stream around my face as we wind our way down the road.

"This is a nice village," I say appreciatively, soon after we pass the Rimóc sign, and then the church, the shop, and the brand new sports hall. "There's even a mansion here. Like a hacienda. It's amazing," I point out the window, wondering if we're in the right place. "This must be it," Laci says, as the concrete road runs out from under us and we arrive at the site, which is home to about a hundred families.

The houses are smaller and older than the ones at the beginning of the street, and many of them have half (or all) of their plaster already fallen off. Six-eight children walk along the roadside with young, barely grown women, one of whom is pushing a pram.

A dog spots our car from a distance and approaches us, barking wildly, indicating that this is not our territory. It may bark at every car in the same way, but it may also have a good sense of spotting strangers. "We come in peace," I mutter under my breath as we leave the angry dog behind.

"Green is the forest, green is the mountain"

Men and women gather in front of our destination, the Maltese Presence House in Rimóc. We greet them with big smiles and ask where we can find Lóránt (or as they call him here: ‘Lóri’). "The Boss is in the back", they direct us, and soon we see Lóri in his big red Maltese coat explaining something about the land to one of the workers. He waves to us, pats the other man on the shoulder, and then ushers us into his office. He offers us brown tea and snacks. A beautiful woman with long black hair lives next door, she has been involved in the program from the beginning and loves working here, and she seems to understand the people.

Lóri explains that this building was bought by the Hungarian Charity Service of the Order of Malta (commonly known as the ‘Maltese’) and that on the one hand, the staff is always present, and on the other, the place provides washing and bathing facilities for the people. It's winter, and the landscape is still very gray, but in spring the hillside is green again, with twenty-one people working every day, and much of the farming produce is donated. "All pieces of land are all ascribed to a person," Lóri tells us, pointing out that this way people can understand responsibility more easily and can love what they do. There are always people who drop out, of course, but it is also true that in Rimóc there is now a strong 'core' of public workers who look out for each other.

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Photo: László Katona

From private sector to Charity Service

Lóri, the coordinator has been working for the Maltese Charity Service for three years now. Ha had been the CEO at his previous job, but as agriculture – something he loves so much – was becoming increasingly peripheral to the company's activities, he decided to change jobs.

Before he took over, about half a hectare of land was abandoned, but since then, thanks to the hard work of the workers, it has grown cabbage, carrots, onions, parsley, peppers, tomatoes, and more.

"Anyone can do it. The goal is to try to help ourselves to be self-sustainable. One of the key principles of Maltese Charity Service is to give in a way that requires work from the receiver’s part, too. When we first came here, we asked the people living in the segregated neighbourhood and tried to find out what most of their problems were," explains Lóri the first step of their diagnosis-based work.

It soon became evident that the biggest problem in Rimóc is employment, and more specifically the lack of it. Some of the people living here have not finished primary school, which is a basic requirement for factory work. A survey of adult education was also carried out and it became clear that there was a need for further education, but that it was a long, complicated, and costly process to organize because it had to cover logistical issues such as travel. When I ask him about the trust he needs to do his job, Lóri confirms what we had suspected before: the process of building relationships cannot be described in words, and taught, as there is no tried and tested recipe. No one knew him before, but thanks to his openness and goodwill, he is now allowed into any house.

The lunch break is over and more and more people arrive at the house and start chatting. The "Boss" is really accepted, even loved! This is immediately obvious to an outsider like me. Today's task is to make regular cubes of potting soil in which they will sow onion seeds.

"Today machines do everything, so we have no work"

While the girls are molding the soil, I approach two nice guys to ask them about life here. "I have three kids and we've lived here for a long time. These aren’t bad people. I’ve just started, but I can see that everyone is very cooperative. I used to work in construction, shuttering, but there wasn't always work," explains the young man, who everyone in the community calls Kongó or Kongi. This nickname was given to him as a child because he loved climbing.

Kornél, an older man, also joins us. We had met him and his daughter earlier on the top of the mountain when Lóri showed us around the segregated neighbourhood. His enthusiasm completely overwhelms me, flooding my heart with warmth as he explains. "I used to live opposite there," he points to the barren hillside, "my mum and dad used to live there, but then the water came in and they had to move.

Many of us were born here in one of the houses in Rimóc, and I was born there, right opposite of us, I was five kilos! Unfortunately, the old people have already all died.

When I was a child, there were no machines, only scythes and haystacks. Nowadays, machines do everything, so we have no work..." says Kornél, then returns to planting onions.

As I continue to ask the men questions, we find something in common: it turns out that all three of us like music, and Kongó and I even like to sing. "Sing for us! Do you have a nice voice? Now, why are you shaking your head, are you shy? What kind of music do you know? Do you know Béla Csóré?" - asks 20-year-old Peti, who says it's his first job and he likes it here because the work is not bad and the boss is "cool". "I don't know Béla Csóré, but I'll certainly listen to him," I vow to the company.

I go into the house to sit down for a while and sip the hot drink kindly offered. As we chat, it becomes immediately clear to me that they are as curious about me as I am about them. Where did my name come from? What do I do? Have we met before? It is with great pleasure and curiosity that I talk to them, listening to them while I have a piece of fruit candy from a nice girl in my mouth. The members of the Romungro community in Rimóc speak a very interesting mixed language, that is, they mix Gypsy words with Hungarian. I ask the nice woman sitting next to me to teach me something, so I finally learn, for example, what "Dikh!" means (It means “Look!”)

Presence involves many things

"The point is to keep in touch. We are not an office, a bureau or a customer service. If I'm having breakfast and someone comes in and says there's a problem because, say, a letter has been sent by the electricity company, it has to be read then and there. Work is a good opportunity to ask them how they are, how the children are doing, or what's on their minds in life. Perhaps the biggest change so far has been in the area of debts. Many people are in debt, utility bills and goods credit are a problem, and people are often threatened with pursuance.

We help them interpret the letters, and draft their replies, our colleague provides consultation, and they have started to pay off their debts nicely. This is a very good thing!

But I'm also happy to report that I was recently able to take two young boys with me to the nearby town of Szécsény to an agricultural training course, which could give them a new chance to make a living" - says Lóri, who has two points that he loves emphasizing: one is breaking out of gastronomic poverty, i.e. incorporating regular, varied meals into their lives, and the other is the issue of quitting smoking.

He always has a good idea, he’s always full of plans, the most important ones printed out and pinned up in front of him so that he could keep his eyes literally on the goals. "We have just bought a piece of land where we plan to build an organic farm. This could be a self-sustainable place where we grow crops in deep mulch, where we don't use chemicals and if we build a vegetable processing plant, we could employ people full time," he tells us.

When I ask him about the Presence Award, Lóri smiles modestly. "Of course, it can be motivating if you get such impulses from your workplace, or when you're told in a meeting that we're going in the right direction, that we have results. But it's also a kind of recognition when I see that employees like coming here, like working here," he adds.

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Photo: László Katona

Life in Rimóc is not a fairy tale: if you don't put your heart and soul into the program, you can't expect flexibility, and there are people who do so. "You can't put up with people not wanting to be here for long because you’ll soon have enough."

"It's important to maintain discipline and the work schedule because everyone here is paid the same. I can't let some get away with no work because by doing so I'm disrespecting those who work properly and that’s not what they deserve," the coordinator highlights.

The presence also includes the so-called "vegetable garden" program, which means that people take home what they've learned in the public employment program and put it to good use in their own gardens so that they can grow vegetables at home.

"If someone's garden hasn't been dug up for ten years, or if we can't even talk about a garden, only a yard, we ask them to dig up a small piece, and then we go to help with electronic hoes, and seeds, but it's important that they take on the work and responsibility, and in return, we can help," explains Lóri.

Several villagers are proud to show off their house and what this year's vegetable garden will look like, as they are looking forward to making it better than last year. Because it needs tending, a garden requires a long-term commitment, which is not easy for everyone to make.

The end-of-winter work is still in full swing next to the house, with rows of small clods of soil that will soon sprout onions. Someone starts singing loudly "Eight hours of work, eight hours of rest, eight hours of fun", and I join in the chorus, gesturing to Peti and Kongó to see if they can hear that I have finally sung for them.

The time of farewell, the promise of reunion

"You will write good things about us, won't you?" - asks Fuko, with whom I was earlier chatting in the kitchen about the cultural differences between Romungro and Olah Gypsies. I smile at him and pat him on the shoulder. Together with Lóri, the group is lined up by the fence, waving enthusiastically, and we are all very hopeful of seeing each other again. As we turn out of the village, in the car I type in the search keyword and my phone soon finds this:

“I live among gypsies. That's where my homeland is. There, where my lover’s voice flies" – I hear the singer’s voice. I smile, wondering what they will say when I come back to Rimóc in the spring, singing – among the seedlings – the songs of the legendary Béla Csóré.

Since the 2017 cover interview, the preacher's life has changed a lot: his twin daughters were born and he went through depression. "I'm at a different stage in my life now," says the 40-year-old Vujicic, who spoke about his new mission at a press conference before his talk.

"It is God's will that we adopt"

The motivational speaker and his wife have four children, two sons and twin daughters born in 2017. The couple recently decided to have a fifth child. "I suddenly had the idea of adoption. I felt like God was nudging me and it went on for two weeks every single day.

I've learned that when God is nudging you, you have to obey his will.

Before I told my wife, I was afraid of how she would react, since she does most of the child-rearing, but afterwards she told me that God had put the same thing on her heart, too."

There are currently half a million children in the United States waiting to be adopted or placed in foster care. Vujicic said that not everyone is called to adopt; they want to give direction to those who are also considering adoption and send a message to the church. "A hundred years ago in America, it was primarily the church that took care of orphaned children, then the government took over that task, and today it's a mess," he said, pointing to the problem.

Fighting depression

Nick Vujicic also spoke openly about the depression he went through a few years ago. "The year 2019 was very hard for me: a grenade was put  in our garden by an unknown person, then a lawsuit was filed against me, spreading the word that I was anti-LGBTQ, and then I was expelled from a bank." To help him process what happened, he sought the help of a counsellor. The conversations also brought up past memories, as he had been betrayed by several people he knew in recent years. He says men in crisis don't want to appear weak, so they are reluctant to ask for this kind of help. He was reluctant at first, but now he is grateful to have received counselling.

He feels that it has been healing to be able to say all the things that have been accumulating in him for the last twenty years.

After books and talks, he starts making films

Perhaps recent events have contributed to his desire to slow down, travel less, and spend more time with his children. "I want to set on a road when God calls me to go," explains the preacher, who has so far reached 750 million people with the Word of God and given 3,500 talks in nearly 80 countries. However, he is only cutting back on travel but not stopping work: he is starting to make documentaries with his production company. He wants to make films about people’s stories and the American foster care network, and he has plans for Hungary. "America has no idea how many [Ukrainian] refugees have people taken in into their homes in Hungary and Poland. I would like the world to know about this so that with this we can support these two countries," he said.

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Vujicic and his interpreter on the stage of the Papp László Budapest Sport Arena - Photo by András Tóth/Ez az a nap!

Nick Vujicic is also co-producing an animated film about the biblical David, which is being made by the creators of The Chosen series. He is also planning a new book, 12 Keys For a Full Life.

The Twelve Keys are faith, gratitude, humility, perseverance, perspective, vision, courage, discipline, community, patience, generosity, and our own legacy that we leave behind in the world.

In the e-book, he not only writes about the importance of these values, but also about the trials and tribulations of his past three years. They want to translate the book into 66 languages and make it available free of charge to those whose financial situation would not allow them to buy it.

He will come to Hungary every year

In recent years, he has become increasingly attached to Hungary, where he experiences something very different from America, where anti-Christianity is on the rise. Hungary, he says, is like David fighting Goliath, and he stands with us. "I feel God will use this country in a special way for his plans," he says.

Before his current appearance, Nick Vujicic last visited Hungary in 2019 but plans to visit every year from now on. In fact, he will be back this September, but not to give a talk: he wants to meet pastors to introduce them to his discipleship training program, whose methods they can then use in their work.

Launching a program for the conversion of Americans

In addition to these projects, evangelizing Americans became the preacher's main mission. The number of Christian churches in the United States is decreasing, and many are leaving their Christian communities. "We need to heal the hearts of American Christians," said Vujicic, who is also concerned about other pressing issues.

"Human trafficking is most prevalent in America, and has recently increased by 700 percent."

"Sex has become the driving force: never before has so much pornographic material been produced than by the current generation, and one in three girls under seventeen has suffered sexual abuse." He says the church is trying ineffectively to tackle the problems. He sees the solution in training Christian students and church members to learn how to talk about these sensitive issues – this is the goal he has set for his own program with which he wants to reach more and more people each year. It wants to reach one billion people with the Good News by 2028.

Norbert Ormai has gone down in history not only as the first martyr of Arad but also for his exciting life. He was born on 28 May 1813 in Dobřany, Czech Republic, into an Austrian military family with the surname Auffenberg. He changed his name to the Hungarian-sounding Ormai in December 1848, expressing his enthusiasm for the Hungarian nation and the Hungarian struggle for independence. His father worked as a cavalry master in the Austrian army and served in Hungary for several years, so his son completed his primary education in Pest. Norbert decided at an early age that he wanted to pursue a military career, which became a reality in 1828.

He was promoted to second-lieutenant in 1838, but he must have carried a hatred of the Habsburgs in his guts because in 1840 he was involved in a Polish conspiracy in Galicia, which was exposed because of the treachery of a fellow officer. He was arrested along with 16 others. He spent seven years in remand prison, was sentenced to a further 14-years imprisonment, and was imprisoned in the castle of Munkács (Mukachevo). He was released on amnesty on 2 May 1848, when the Batthyány government, formed after the revolution, granted amnesty to political prisoners. No wonder that Ormai then enthusiastically supported the Hungarian War of Independence, joining Mieczysław Woroniecki's volunteer troops in Pest, where he served first as a lieutenant and then as a captain.

In June 1848, he sent a letter to Lázár Mészáros, Minister of War, in which he offered his service for the country: 'I feel with all my heart and soul the call of my homeland, and for it I will sacrifice my last drop of blood...'

Soon after, he was promoted to major. In December 1848, Lajos Kossuth entrusted him with the task of setting up a Fighter Wing, which later became the governor's permanent bodyguard. Later, he continued to increase the numbers of the Hungarian army with great talent, recruiting almost eight thousand soldiers to strengthen the War for Independence. Lajos Kossuth mentioned him in his later memoirs: "Colonel Ormai's love of freedom, his hatred of tyranny, his chivalrous feeling for the oppressed, and his heroic resignation to sacrifice were inherited from his father, and these feelings were combined with the most sublime strength of character, which, as was shown by his conduct before the so-called court-martial, which sent him to his death, rose to the loyalty of principle and steadfastness reminiscent of the most beautiful characters of classical antiquity. "

However, Norbert Orlai, with his charming looks and wit, won the sympathy and support not only of the leader of the freedom struggle but also of the women around him, especially the wives of his superiors, such as Kossuth's wife and sister, much to the envy of his contemporaries, who attributed his rapid rise in the ranks to the influence of women. But his excellent skill in military organization was recognized even by his envious peers.

Love at first sight

In 1849 he was given the task of organizing new regiments. It was then that he met Lajos Rozsváry (Kornhofer), who, at 46, was the oldest member of his regiment. The aging gentleman, in his respect for Ormai, invited him to his café in Nagyvárad (Oradea). The Colonel gladly accepted the hospitality and left for Oradea on 19 March 1849.

On that day, the commander was captivated not only by the atmosphere of the café but also by Lajos Rozsváry's daughter Vilma. The young girl, only 18 years old, had already been through a bad marriage. According to locals, her gambling addict husband had literally "gambled her away".

The first meeting awakened deep feelings in both of them. Ormai, who was 36 at the time, did not hesitate to ask Vilma out that very evening.

The officer walked the young girl home from a walk on the Kőrös beach holding her hand.

From a rendezvous to the altar

After the events in Oradea, events accelerated not only between Norbert and Vilma, but also in the country. By this time, the alliance between Franz Joseph and Tsar Nicholas I, whose aim was to put an end to the Hungarian War of Independence, was already evident. However, the new lovers tried to ignore this and spent as much time together as possible, and when they were apart, a courier brought their love letters almost daily. Just over two months after they met, on 27 May 1849, Norbert Ormai married Vilma Rozsváry – but to be able to do so, they had to convert from Catholicism to Calvinism because of Vilma's previous marriage. Meanwhile, Norbert's military career was soaring, and on 25 April Kossuth promoted him to colonel.

A verdict that ruined a fulfilling love

On 7 August, from Pankota the colonel reported sick to his superiors and resigned from his rank. Haynau had already begun to crack down on the war for independence, sending reconnaissance teams into the country with the aim of arresting anyone who had taken part in the uprising in any way. On 12 August, Ormai was also caught, captured, and transported to Gyula as a prisoner. On 21 August, he was allowed to go to Arad to surrender himself.

He had to leave his pregnant wife behind. The next day, Haynau's court sentenced him to death by hanging.

"The day before yesterday I began the business, I hanged a man named Auffenberg, who was once a lieutenant in the Mazzuchelli regiment, and later became a colonel and Kossuth's assistant officer – he will be followed by Kiss, Leiningen, Poeltenberg, Vécsey, etc., as soon as they arrive. The procedure will be as short as possible. We’ll determine about the person if he has served with us as an officer and has done armed service in the rebel army. The proceedings will thus be completed as soon as possible (...) There will be no more revolutions in Hungary for a century, if necessary I guarantee it with my head, if necessary because  I will root out the weed," Haynau wrote after the man's execution.

Cheating for survival

After her husband's death, Vilma did everything she could to ensure that her unborn child would not be stigmatized because of her father. She felt that she had reached a dead end, as the name Ormai would have betrayed her, but she could not use her maiden name either, as this would have made her son illegitimate. So she devised a cunning plan: she had to find someone with the same surname as her husband who would be willing to take on the role of father. In this way, he would remember his love, but the truth would never come out.

With the help of her friends, she found a landlord, József Ormay. They approached him and explained the gravity of the situation. At first, he refused the deal. He feared imprisonment for being caught and, as a believer, damnation for fraud, but Vilma managed to persuade him with a large wad of money and a serious promise.

Vilma made a promise to József that she would never, under any circumstances, reveal the identity of her child's real father, and she felt it safer to leave the country after the birth.

József not only accepted the offer but also married Vilma. Norbert József Ormay was born on 28 February 1850 and, thanks to the wedding, was baptized according to the laws of the Catholic Church – with a surname spelled with a ’y’ at the end.

The widow who exiled herself to the other side of the world

After the child was born, Vilma kept her part of the bargain: she left the country and went to Constantinople alone, leaving her son with relatives. In Constantinople, she met a wealthy Brazilian plantation owner, whom she married soon afterwards in Brazil, and sent money home to raise her child. Little Norbert's step-parents never spoke to him about the War of Independence or his real parents, avoiding the subject as a taboo. After the Great Compromise, the widowed Vilma is said to have visited Hungary and even settled in Wiesbaden, where she died in 1884, aged 53. Before her death, she had arranged for her large fortune to be bequeathed to her son. This is how the son of the first martyr of Arad, then 35 years old and working as a civil servant, learned the story of his origins in 1885. The huge inheritance turned the life of the family, who had lived modestly until then, upside down. He left his job and travelled to Texas with his wife and two sons, bought a farm, and started raising and trading cattle - but his is another, equally adventurous story.

Resource:
https://hu.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ormai_Norbert
https://mek.oszk.hu/06100/06162/html/aradiv02845/aradiv02845.html
https://mult-kor.hu/ki-volt-az-zvegy-aki-az-elso-aradi-vertanut-gyaszolta-20180914
https://mult-kor.hu/az-elso-aradi-vertanu-zvegye-20180820
http://amulok.blogspot.com/2014/03/texas-es-vegul-del-brazilia-nekem.html

At dawn on 6 February, a devastating earthquake struck Turkey. When did the HUNOR rescue unit receive the alert to leave? How much time did they have to prepare?

It was an ordinary day, everyone was carrying on with their own lives, and some people were on duty. I was on my way to the Vienna airport because I was going to an exhibition of search and rescue equipment in Düsseldorf. As I was driving to Vienna, I received several calls, I was looking at my phone, and at 10 o'clock I received the alert by text message, and it was decided very quickly that we were on our way. The Ministry for Interior Affairs’ National General - Directorate for Disaster Management alerted 80 HUNOR members to go to our station immediately, and they were expecting us to arrive at the Budapest base by 2 pm.

We are a certified rescue team of the UN Special Forces. Countries that have a similar force register their own force with the international organization every five years. When an incident occurs, the country concerned signals to this organization that it needs international assistance. When this happens, a standby status is established, which is the designated rescue teams' state of readiness.

What was your role as one of the leaders of the rescue team working in the damaged area in Turkey?

From HUNOR, 55 people were out: staff, coordination, logistics, operations, and medical personnel, that's how the numbers add up. The search and rescue were done by two teams, "Alpha" and "Bravo", two teams of 12 people each, I was in charge of Alpha. I had eleven companions, all professional firefighters, as well as canine demolition teams and medical personnel from the National Ambulance Service. Alpha and Bravo worked 0-24 hours.

When we arrived at dawn on Tuesday 7 February, the Alfa team started work at noon that day while Bravo was setting up camp.

We worked eight-hour shifts until noon on Sunday.

What were your first impressions when you arrived on the scene? How shall we imagine it?

After we landed the plane, we travelled another 200 kilometers to Antakya, because the airports in the disaster zone have all been torn up by the earthquake, destroyed, and couldn’t receive any planes. After we landed in Adana, we went on in a troop bus and four trucks. We arrived at the site at dawn, and as we approached, we were greeted by an increasingly dramatic sight. I don't think anyone here in Hungary has ever seen anything like it. It was like going to a war... It's very similar to what we're seeing in the news from Ukraine: houses completely bombed, everything destroyed to the ground.

HUNOR rescued seventeen survivors. Do you remember the first successful rescue?

Each one is a different story, and each one is very heartbreaking. Success always makes the team feel good, we can relax a little afterwards as we watch in silence as the locals take the survivor to the medical center applauding. Imagine having to scrape someone up from several meters below, bring in a stretcher, and then fix the casulty on it.

Hand over hand, the stretcher emerged from the narrow tunnel, which was lit by an aggregator. Sometimes eight hours was not enough to get a person out: the Alfa would start, then the Bravo would continue, or vice versa.

We'd bring a person up and hand them over to Turkish medical staff, and then we usually didn't know what had happened to them. We were always out on the ruins with dogs, relying on their intuition. We only deal with those we can hear the voice of, or with those living people who the dog indicated. For us, this work is about saving as many lives as possible.

In the first days, could you still hear cries from under the rubble?

You can't hear anything really because there's so much noise. The machines are running, the crowd is noisy. There are some ruins that we could go into, like tunnels or collapsed buildings. But even there you can't see anything because it's pitch black. We send in the dog, who, if he finds a living person, starts barking. Then we scan the area with our instruments, looking for survivors, and watching for any tunnels where we can continue digging. A lot of debris has to be brought to the surface in buckets, hand by hand. We went in the direction the dog indicated, and we always took down one of the Turkish rescue team members who started shouting in Turkish, and it happened that someone shouted back from under the rubble.

Aftershocks continue in the region. Were you able to sleep during the rest periods?

The first aftershock was scary because many of us had never experienced an earthquake before. When we started work on the first day, we were right under the rubble when that first one came. Everyone reacted differently, it was quite scary.

It took about four seconds, and the rule is to come out of the rubble area, and check if any of us were injured or if the structure of the building has changed.

For the first three days, there were aftershocks every three hours, even if you were asleep, it woke you up. You got so used to it that by the end I knew that once you were under the rubble, there was simply nowhere to run. We'd look at each other, wait for it to pass, and keep working.

Our camp was in the enclosed garden of a restaurant. HUNOR is self-sufficient, we went there with our tents, beds, sleeping bags, food, medicine, and everything. We did not rely on the locals. There is no such thing as 24 people from two teams resting at the same time, so while 12 people were resting, the other 12 were working. The eight-hour shift rotation means that there are times when you work during the day and times when you work at night, so our daily cycle changes. My body adapted to that, I could even sleep for six hours. It was minus 6-7 degrees at night, which is not easy, but we were given blankets and then heating through the logisticians. Ambassador Viktor Mátis brought us a big diesel generator.

You spent six days on rescue. How long is there a realistic chance of finding survivors?

The first four days - what we call the first 100 hours - are critical for the rescue. But it's influenced by many things: if it's minus 10 degrees, it's no use trying to find survivors, they'll freeze to death the first night. But if someone is in an isolated area, they have a good chance of not freezing to death. A lot of things affect survival. There have been lucky situations where a survivor had air, a blanket, or a water bottle.

So it’s possible to survive for ten days even.

How was the cooperation with the Turkish authorities?

We were soon noticed and the word spread around town about how Hungarians worked. They relied on us because they saw that we are professionals, our equipment is professional, our knowledge is great, and our dogs are successful. We worked in an area north of the Orontes River, on a main street. We didn't even meet any other international team there, only the Turks. We were given the very famous Renaissance Residence as our area of operations, a luxury apartment complex with thousands of people, a lot of actors, athletes, and Turkish celebrities living there. The whole building had fallen on its side. It was widely reported that the apartments there were sold as earthquake-proof... The owner and the architect of the building tried to flee the country, they were the first to be arrested.

Did you talk to Turkish civilians and families?

We had an operations control center, and many civilians approached that center to ask for help. They knew we had two instruments that they hadn't seen in other units. One is a fiber optic camera and the other is an acoustic device that is very sensitive to sound. With a dog and these two instruments, we went to a lot of places when someone asked for help.

You arrived home more than a week ago. Is it more physical or mental fatigue that you suffer from?

At noon on Sunday, our superiors told us that the operation was over, we were breaking camp and the plane was coming to pick us up. You let go of stress, you let go of concentration, you suddenly feel relieved. We left there all the equipment that the Turks could use, our tents, sleeping bags, drinking water, food. We only took the rescue equipment and the instruments. It was important that no one in the team was hurt, we were glad that everyone was okay. When the stress gets out of you, there comes a feeling of fainting from exhaustion. We also look back on the past period with such pride because many people didn't know about the existence of the HUNOR rescue team until now.

We are all professional firefighters, we are not civilians and we are not volunteers. Everybody has 20 years or more of firefighting experience. Our team consisted of the best professional firefighters from all over the country.

Physically, your body’s working turns upside down. We were up for about ten hours, then we rested for five or six hours. When we came home, it was the same thing, it didn't matter if it was noon, 8pm, or 4am. In the first few days, I would sleep for four hours and get out of bed at 2 am, because that's what my sleep cycle indicated. We got home at dawn on Monday, and that went on until Thursday. Then I tried to get back into the pattern of going to bed at night and getting up in the morning. Thursday night was the first time I slept for six hours straight.

Do you, as a firefighter, still dream about what you saw?

I didn’t really dream about anything, but during the search and rescue we always shone our headlamps into each other's eyes at night, which was distracting, so we had to cover each other's headlamps. Since we came home, once or twice at night I have had a dream of someone flashing a light into my eyes.

Does the team receive any psychological help to process what they have seen and experienced?

Yes, we are obliged to undergo a special psychological screening.

Earlier this week, Turkey experienced another earthquake of 6.4. Are you in contact with your Turkish colleagues?

No, we aren’t, but they expected these aftershocks. While we were in Turkey, there was another shock of  4.3 just after 8 pm on Saturday night, which was not an aftershock, but a real earthquake. Just as the Alpha and Bravo were taking turns at the damaged site. We were standing in the street going over operations with the Turkish troop leaders when the quake hit us hard.

The semi-collapsed building we were standing in front of crackled and crumbled. Pieces of the building were falling off, but fortunately, no one was hurt.

There are a lot of buildings that are really only hanging on by a thread, it's no wonder that damaged buildings collapse on their own later. The authorities don’t let anyone back into their homes, so people are living on the streets or in their cars. When an earthquake happens, it is very important to know the exact time when it happened. The 6 February quake was at dawn, which is why it caused so many casualties because practically everyone was asleep. People were asleep, and if it had happened in the afternoon, there would not have been so many people in their homes.

Has HUNOR been in such an operation before?

No, this was the first one. We've worked on other incidents - the 2013 Danube floods, the Serbian floods, the 15 March snow emergency, gas explosions, and house collapses - but we've never worked on an earthquake. The organization was founded twelve years ago, and since then we have participated in many trainings. Every year there is an international training similar to the one in Turkey, so we knew each other, we knew that everyone was experienced. Everybody knew their job, that's what we've been preparing for twelve years. Our unit has to be re-certified every five years by international experts, so we have been certified twice as an urban heavy category search and rescue unit.

Recently, the HUNOR rescue team, like other rescue teams, visited the Sándor Palace, the official residence and working place of the President of Hungary. Did you receive an award?

Not an award but a commemorative card congratulating us on our success. It was a gesture on the part of the President of the Republic, Mrs. Katalin Novák, to host us.

Before settling on the southern part of Lake Balaton, she’s been all over the places in Hungary: she grew up in Révfülöp (The northern side of the Lake) with teacher parents as great role models, thus becoming a teacher herself. She went to High School in Sopron (Western part of Hungary) to the Széchenyi István High School, then attended the art college at the Apáczai Csere János Teachers' College in Győr, and finally graduated in English at ELTE, in Budapest. She started her teaching career in Szőlősgyörök, Somogy County, where she taught drawing, and began teaching English in 1991 when she started afternoon language classes in Balatonboglár.

Before I ask you about your career as an English teacher, I'd like to know how much of your life is or has been devoted to drawing and art.

To this day, I still love this subject and I offer drawing lessons whenever I have the opportunity. Teaching drawing was an exciting time in my life, I took part in many competitions with the children and even went to Sochi, Russia. Looking back, even then I was open to the world and to broaden children's horizons.

It is incredible that I have students who are the grandchildren of these first students of mine. I call them my "grandchildren" too, it's so beautiful to me.

How and why did you switch to English and language teaching?

I went to a high school with a specialization in English, where I had great teachers, with a different approach to what I had experienced before, and they got me. A career in teaching was practically a given for me, as my parents were also teachers, my father taught geography, and my mother art. Of course, they were not happy that I wanted to be a teacher, but they accepted it. The teaching of English came with the end of Russian language teaching, at first I had the opportunity to give lessons in the afternoon, and then in time, as part of the morning curriculum, English teaching officially started in Balatonboglár.

Earlier decades probably demanded a different way of teaching languages than the one we have today. How has this changed in your lessons?

I've always tried to adapt to the children and adapt my teaching to the world around them because needs change. 15 years ago, when the digital world started to take off, I started to go along with it, which was completely new at the time. Today I can say that being part of the international scene has given me a lot, it has opened up a lot for me and for the children.

I see that it is very important to reinforce the use of live speech and to base language teaching on the idea that young people should be able and dare to speak while being aware of basic grammar rules.

Finding the balance is not easy, but the digital world is a great help.

Does the fact that some of the lessons are online make children more willing to learn the language?

It's a method that has evolved with the changing world and the needs of young people, but the point is that in an online game or video call at the beginning of a lesson, with the same age group on the other side but from a different country, everyone participates, from those who are excellent at the language to those who need more help. It gives them a boost, they can forget about themselves, and in a situation like this, anyone can stand up, speak out and have a sense of achievement - that's what it's all about.

Over the past decade and a half, she opened a window to the world for her students using the internet to travel to many parts of it. It has become a goal not only to learn English but also to learn about other countries' cultures and to learn about our country's traditions. Ms. Gyöngyi and her students have participated in the Global Connection Day program several times, singing around the world with more than 80 schools. In 2018, they joined forces with a US school and appeared online on NBC's Today Show, and in the autumn of 2021, they were awarded the School of Excellence Award in the Climate Action project organized by Koen Timmers and Dr Jane Goodall.

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Photo: Gyöngyi Tóthné Bán

How did you start building international relations and how does it work on a day-to-day basis?

At the time, when I was on maternity leave with my third son, I joined several foreign internet groups, where I noticed that I was the only Hungarian there. They were interesting and I wanted to show something of our culture to them, so whenever I went to events, I took photos of Hungarian folk dancers, for example, of thematic festivals, and sent them in. That's how I started to build relationships with other teachers, and that's how the online classes started. We spend 15-20 minutes on the web, video chatting with students from other countries, and with the little ones we play games, e.g.: ‘barcochba’ (ie. a guessing game in which a player comes up with a word, while the other player(s) must figure it out by asking only yes/no questions), which is a good thing, you can combine it with learning about the inner and outer characteristics of a person. With the older ones you can talk more, even send letters.

We are currently in contact with one school in Pennsylvania, one in Japan, one in India, one in Indonesia, and one in Vietnam.

At the end of 2021, it was not only your school that was recognized but you and your work, too: you were one of the 50 nominees for the Highlights of Hungary and the first Hungarian recipient of the Global Teacher Award, which is given to the best international educators. How do you feel about this?

It was a huge thing for me, but it's important to underline that it was also about the work of the children, and everyone who came and comes with me, and for that, I am infinitely grateful. The international award is based on a referral system. One day, out of the blue, my colleagues suggested me and said that I should apply. It was a long process of gathering references from colleagues around the world, but I received an enormous amount of help. It was all too sad that, due to the pandemic, the award ceremony was held online.

What’s your goal with the online type of schoolwork?

I wouldn’t call it a goal, I’d say it’s a tool, a process rather, in which the kids can have an experience while learning English. For them it’s a foreign language, they have to study it, and we like participating in projects that value this effort. Besides, I like keeping in touch with teachers from other countries, I like organizing joint lessons and meeting them occasionally to exchange ideas at conferences and workshops.

Besides English teaching, sport is also very much part of your life, I understand that you swim on the Balaton Cross Swimming every year and also run regularly.

Exercise is where I switch off, it gives me an amazing amount of pleasure. Swimming across Lake Balaton is now a family event for us and an interesting part of my life.

Since the event takes place between my hometown and the place I was born I often say that I swim home from home.

I swam every year except maybe the first two or three occasions and when I was pregnant, and I have participated more than 30 times. I started running when I was approaching forty, doing small distances at first and then, as usual, longer and longer distances. At the age of 40, I decided to run the marathon and started training, but in the meantime, I got pregnant and completed the distance later. I did it several times over the next few years, but since I've been through Covid, it's been harder. That being said, I go to as many races as I can because I get tremendous power from running and when life gets harder, it gives me a goal to focus on.

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Photo: Gyöngyi Tóthné Bán

What was your most special marathon location?

I've run in many special places, for example, a friend of mine once came to me saying she wanted to run the marathon, but in Venice. So we travelled there and ran it together. I also did it in Rome once and I did it several times in Vienna because my middle son lives there. I hope I will have the opportunity to do something like this again in the future. Then there is cycling as another hobby.

Like around the Lake Balaton?

I cycle with my class around the lake every year. This place is the closest to my heart.

Last year, my class graduated, and afterwards, they asked me, "Ms. Gyöngyi, are we going?" And you can't say no to that. I take so many stories with me from these programs, it's impossible to list how much we experience together. I also enjoy cycling in my free time, often cycling to the north coast with my youngest son, who now sets the pace. I also have a great passion for sailing, a hobby my husband and I share. When we were young we loved to surf, and when the kids came along we changed the boards for sails. I have my license even for a cruiser, but I couldn't safely take the boat out of the harbour, so I prefer to stay in the background and enjoy the ride from there.

You live a life rich in experiences, thus setting an example. Are you doing this on purpose?

I want stories, that's what's important in life! Basically, I focus on the present and try to live my life in such a way that every day is interwoven with experiences so that my imaginary book would be full of colourful pages so that one day I’ll be able to look at them. I also try to pass on to my students that they colour their own books, and that the pages will be colourful when they find and cultivate what is important and joyful to them, and from which beautiful memories are born. I hope to add many new shared adventures to all this in the future.

Why would they have been? Once the animal had been killed, there was no question of eating every bits and pieces of it and thus putting it to good use. Thinking of it, that is what gives its death, and life, meaning. This old perception is a far cry from today's practice, which, in the spirit of industrial-scale food production, sees the animal only as a commodity to be placed on the refrigerator shelf, often only as a sought-after fillet. Therefore, it does not matter if the turkey cannot walk from its unnaturally enlarged breast; if the pig cannot even get up from its abnormal weight throughout its whole life, and so some part of its body is always covered with boils; if the chicken never sees the light of day because it is forced to end its short life in a huge building. If you think about it for a moment, maybe it's not the old food that's strange.

From ears to tails

"Cut the ear and the tail to the length of a finger and boil it, add vegetables, carrots, bay leaves, ground pepper, and vinegar, drain and put the meat in the bowl, strain the juice and serve with grated horseradish" - wrote Aunt Rézi, a cook from Szeged (Southern Hungary) in 1876 in a recipe on pigs. They also served the pig's ears and tail "baked in their own robe": they sprinkled paprika on onions fried in fat, threw the chopped meat on top and roasted it until tender. Meanwhile, potatoes were boiled, peeled, and then mashed. Finally, they greased a baking tin, spread a finger and a half of mashed potatoes on it, spread the paprika on the meat, covered it with potatoes, and baked it until red. It was delicious with homemade pickles.

Tongues

Although tongues are still eaten today, mostly as a cold cut, the tongue meat served in a lemon and butter sauce is less well-known. According to a recipe from 1601 from Késmárk (now Kezmarok, Slovakia), it was popular, stuffed with boiled eggs, bacon, parsley, saffron, salt, and pepper, then rolled up and roasted on skewers. But we don't have to go back that far in our culinary history! In the 1930s, Elek Magyar left us recipes that are still usable today. He used to pre-boil the beef tongue in salted water, then stuff it with minced meat, eggs, parsley, lemon zest, and capers, bake it brown in butter and serve it with a lemon or caper sauce. The veal or sheep tongues, after having been precooked, were stewed with tomatoes and served with macaroni.

And as for the cold cuts, János Bittner wrote about black tongue cheese in his book Finom hentesáruk ('Charcuterie'), published in 1909, which was interesting because the cheese was blackened with blood (which also served as a thickening) and seasoned with cinnamon and white pepper.

Offal

The liver and kidneys are among the less overlooked offal. Of course, they are also found in old cookbooks, for example, roasted on skewers. Both were served with vinegar and garlic base. Lungs are less common nowadays, but they are also very easy to prepare. "It should be in a thick broth so that you can eat it with a spoon because that's the first secret of the offal. The second secret is to cut the lungs into small slices, the size of a fingernail because that’s how you make it tender. The third secret is to add not just a spoonful of lemon, as in modern restaurants, but a lemon cut in half," Krúdy wrote of the classic dish. Lungs were also popular as a soup garnish: eggs were added to the chopped offal, fried in fat, and stuffed into a paste. It was cooked in the soup. Just like lung strudel. According to Elek Magyar, this was made by mixing pre-cooked, finely chopped lungs with buns soaked in milk, fried onions, sour cream, salt, and pepper, and then this mixture was stuffed into a strudel. And then served with hot vegetable soup.

And so on…

The only time we eat blood (roast, with onions) is at a pig slaughter. However, in traditional Hungarian cuisine, this is one of the oldest materials used for thickening. In the 16th century Cook's Science, we read that it was used, for example, to make a sauce for sheep-testicle stew. The testicle should be "thrown into the fire and its strong skin will flake off. Clean it well in water, draw the skin off, wilt it, and make a black broth of hen's blood for it. Pour cow's-meat soup and vinegar on it. Put bread, apples, pepper, and saffron in it, and let it boil in the black soup," says the five-hundred-year-old recipe. The description of 'stuffed sheep's stomach' is just as old. For this, other parts of the animal, along with the blood, salt, and pepper were stuffed into the stomach and then cooked in vinegar and horseradish soup. Lentils and bacon could also be added. A cow's udder was also a fine dish. It had to be boiled in salted water until tender before being rolled in flour and fried in hot fat. According to Aunt Rézi, 'it can be served with a broth or sour cream sauce and garnished with lemon slices'. It was also served with sauerkraut - for this version, thyme and basil were used as spices. In the 17th century, it was fried with bacon and served with a cinnamon-allspice sauce. The list of ingredients, once all unobjectionable, goes on and on. They (also) contributed to the variety and richness of our cuisine. 

In the late nineties, you and Ajándok Eőry were pioneers in this country in healing the poor. Did the two of you go to the people in need?

Initially, Ajándok Eőry, then a biologist, started working as a naturopath among the poor and later joined the homeless care service of the Hungarian Charity Service of the Order of Malta. When I met him, he had just started medical university as a family man. I started working with him as a medical student: we used to drive an old German ambulance, through the woods and squares of Buda, collecting people in crisis and taking them to hospitals. At that time my knowledge was fresh, and I had a much more plastic picture of medicine, I could deal with an internal medicine case more easily. Ophthalmology came into the mission later: as part of an academic initiative, we started to carry out medical examinations in small villages in Nógrád County, and we provided spectacles to the visually impaired. From there, we started our "Sight without Borders" program (“Látás határok nélkül”) in the areas beyond Hungary’s borders, as well as our "As far as the eye can see" („Látás határok nélkül” ) preventive medicine program inside the borders of Hungary. At that time we worked with the Maltese, but later we set up our own association. Today, we cannot even count the hundreds of thousands of people we have reached.

Your medical group brought together dedicated doctors from several specialties.

The Hajnalfény Medical Group is special in that nearly ten professions are represented with some regularity in the critical areas. We set up an inflatable tent where we carry out physical examinations and start the patient's journey with a targeted diagnosis. Today we have tools that go beyond the level of primary care. We took photos of patients' skin lesions with a mobile phone, and our colleague in Budapest would analyse the pictures. The identification rate was 70-80 percent, as was the therapeutic guidance, accordingly.

But for the team to really come together, tragedies such as the Asian earthquakes, the tsunami, and the war in Lebanon had to happen in the world.

We represented Hungary in these areas, in cooperation with civilians. It was interesting to see that in the Islamic world, the people who helped were mostly there through some kind of Christian organization.

These were temporary missions, but we realized there that there are similarly desperate situations at home, in Hungary, too, however, those cannot be measured on the Richter scale. From the very beginning, all our programs include eye examinations since identifying and supporting children with visual problems is essential to their studies and development.

Does social security not support access to glasses for children in need?

No, it doesn’t, and no decision-maker has yet managed to achieve this. We are the ones who must have these glasses made and delivered to the villages. Sometimes these are not financially wise decisions but we said that even if our mission is not profitable, we will do it. Like in the case of our last trip to Transylvania: we didn't even have enough company funding for fuel.

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One of the tents of the Hajnalfény Medical Group - Photo: Hajnalfény Medical Group Association's social media page

Can cheap reading glasses from drugstores be bad for your eyes?

The ones you get in a drugstore do not match your biometric data. The easiest way to understand this is to consider the asymmetry of our bodies as a law that pervades all life.

Our two eyes should be considered two separate organs.

So these ready-made glasses are not made for us, they are only good when you just grab them out of your packet to look at something but they can cause autonomic nervous system disorders with regular use. People in need select their frames and, based on biometric measurements, the lenses are made, put in the frames, and returned to them.

How quickly did the members of the Medical Group become reliable, equipped helpers?

Very quickly, because the core of the group remained the same from the beginning, thus it developed very quickly. There's a dynamic when a team comes together.

Are there young people joining the Group?

Interestingly enough, very few. Their attitude is very different from what ours used to be. This kind of charitable attitude is slowly disappearing from young people, people have become more egoistic. Today, a graduate student's vision includes a PhD, a career and money. It is difficult for them to see how this kind of charitable energy comes back to them in their work, but we see that it gives us a lot of strength back. We advertised for university members, but very few people applied. Maybe the university education is to blame too: narrow specialists are being trained, young people who think in algorithms, and thus have a weaker ability to solve problems and connect with people. As fresh graduates, we used to go to the slums without a background diagnostic park. It was deep water then, with deep dives: we were confronted with rare diseases that we had to understand and process there and then.

Have there been any dramatic incidents during the missions?

There always are, but the most harrowing experience was in Transylvania, in a home for the most severely disabled children in the area. Several of them were brought back from the dead several times. The only sign that they perceive that they are being cared for is the smile the nurses assume they have. It was moving to see those eleven or so little children full of cannulas.

There I felt that should those Transylvanian nurses give five minutes of their lives to each and every person living on the globe, the whole of humanity would be different.

I saw many desperate situations, but this was the most shocking.

Have you ever felt so sorry for anyone that you invited them to your doctor’s office in Budapest?

There have been many such cases. One of the important milestones in the development of our program was to take patients with serious conditions by hand and bring them into our own institutions. After screening for colon and rectal cancer, our abdominal surgeon operated on the patients who were screened at the National Institute of Oncology and saved them from death. Our dermatologists and cardiologists have also been in contact with those in need. These things still work like this, even today.

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Photo: Hajnalfény Medical Group Association's social medis page

Were you still a university student when you first went to Transylvania?

No. When I was a child I went with my parents. But what I remember most from those times ('70s) is the experience of deprivation.  Later, as a university student, I returned with a cultural hunger, and since then I've been going there with the medical group several times a year. In Transylvania, there are still communities that are even more disadvantaged than those in Hungary.

When we meet a patient, we need to give a general picture of their physical and mental condition, and then pass it on to the specialist care there, which can take the work forward locally. Such a health screening involves a lot of quick decisions. The team that I work with has mastered the philosophy of this way of working and is very used to making professional and rapid assessments and decisions.

You are, involuntarily, holding up a mirror to the professionals in the state health care system. Do your actions bother local doctors, is there a rivalry between you?

It’s true that our presence shows the shortcomings of primary and specialist care, but I always think that we can do better, even if we have to change our methodology. The fact that in many places in Hungary, blood pressure treatment works by prescribing drugs on the basis of a single measurement without laboratory control is not medical care to me.

The essence of healing is to look at the patient as a whole.

Vision control also means that a nearsighted child who gets minus 2 dioptres at the age of 4 and sees well with them will not see the same way later: if you don't follow them, they will get stuck with what you prescribed then and it won't meet their needs later.

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László Szalai – Photo: Zoltán Pitrolffy

Ajándok Eőry based his philosophy of helping on providence and the love of Jesus. What do you base it on?

This is what we all base it on. When I started this, I was first taken by the freedom of healing: to heal with the joy of freedom. Of course, there were drawbacks: I was on my own, and inevitably I had to be connected to the rigid, well-trodden paths of the healthcare system. Later, I was touched by the power of charity: you help and you get re-energized by it – we must make this good energy work in us.

What will you be when you grow up, Emil?

Emil Karáth Jr.: Some kind of biologist.

A marine biologist perhaps, like your father? Are you also attracted to the deep?

Jr.: My parents took me to swimming lessons from a very early age, later on, I learned to dive and passed the diving exam. I did my first open-water dive two years ago in the Maldives, so it is indeed possible that I would like to do marine biology.

Emil Karáth Sr.: When teaching him to swim diving wasn't the priority, but rather the water safety. Mostly because of a bad childhood experience I had, I wanted them to learn to swim as soon as possible.

When you were a little boy and accidentally got sucked down a drain in a pool and almost died...

Sr.: No, that’s a different story. When I was four, I fell out of the rubber ring in Lake Balaton, I could barely breathe, and I was drifting in the deep water, till I was pulled out. On the shore, I was turned upside down like in a cartoon to cough up the excess water. I didn't want that to happen to my children.

Do you think that maybe the trauma made you want to regain control of the water and this got you into marine biology?

Sr.: Maybe… Not consciously, that's for sure, but the fact is that I almost drowned twice. People thought that I would never even put my toe into the water again but in the end, it was not traumatic.

You have just returned from your first trip to Tanzania together, which you described as a trip about regenerative tourism. What does that mean?

Sr.: In the summer of 2021, while volunteering, I met a professor of biology who is setting up a coral gene bank in Tanzania.

For example, if a coral reef is destroyed for some reason on any coastline in East Africa, the gene bank can be used by experts to rebuild the reef.

We set up a coral nursery, which has been expanding ever since. The professor gave a presentation at a conference on, among other things, the development of a new kind of tourism. In the case of "classic tourism", we do not pay attention to how much trash we leave behind, or how much we damage our environment. With ecotourism, we pay more attention to our environment, to avoid leaving a big ecological footprint if possible. And the point of regenerative tourism is that when you go somewhere, you have a positive impact on the area you are visiting. The corals we strung up in the nursery will only become coral reefs decades from now, I won't even see them, but my children and their generation will. So I wanted them to get involved in this work.

Jr.: So during our ten-day trip, we contributed to the conservation of the underwater world around the small island by expanding the coral nursery, giving the tiny corals a chance to breed in a protected environment. Together with the kids, we cleaned up the stretch of beach near where we lived.

Did you know the people you went on the trip with before?

Jr.: The first time I met the boys was when we went to the dive shop to buy their equipment, and we became good friends on the plane. Four of us flew from Budapest and the others joined us in Dar Es Salaam. From there we flew together to Mafia Island. In total, there were five children and three adults. One of the boys was 14 years old like me, two 16-year-old boys and an 18-year-old girl were also with us.

How did they find your program?

Sr.: After our interview appeared on kepmas.hu, one of the mothers read the article about me. She contacted me because her son and his best friend used to go to a nature conservation kids camp but as they turned 16 they had "grown out of it". He found the program exciting. So the boys wanted to join us. But for those interested, all the information can be found on our association's website anyway.

How do you remember the arrival?

Jr.: We were travelling for a whole day.

Our first accommodation was in a baobab tree, where there was only electricity until 4 pm, and we had to light the kerosene burner with fire to have hot water for showers.

When we arrived on the island of Chole, we visited the nearby village and the local school. It was interesting to see that here the girls sat separately from the boys, as the coastal part of the country is Muslim. After that, an elderly woman took us to a muddy beach where she was rotting the coconut fibre that is used to make the rope for the coral nursery. She showed us the process that goes into making a rope. It was interesting to see how a coconut eventually becomes a thick rope.

Sr.: I wanted them to see this process before we go underwater so that they’d have an idea of how we are preparing for coral restoration. We will be attaching tiny but healthy pieces of coral to these ropes. It is important to us that the materials used in the coral nurseries are made from natural materials, but also that the women of the island have a job through this.

Jr.: The next day, my dad and I got up earlier than the others because we went to a place where fishermen had blown up the reef earlier. We wanted to find usable, healthy pieces of coral for the nursery. When we got home, the others were having breakfast.

What did you eat?

Sr.: Seafood, fish, rice, fruit, vegetables, and we even tasted the fruit of the baobab tree – on top of the muesli. It doesn't have much taste, but it's rich in vitamins and minerals.

How did you start coral restoration?

Jr.: We broke the corals into pieces the size of a finger and placed them on the coconut rope a palm width from each other. We worked in teams, one holding the rope and measuring the distance, the other inserting the coral into the rope. Then we took them underwater and attached them to bamboo poles.

Sr.: The coral nursery actually looks like a huge underwater clothes rack.

What other programs have you participated in?

Jr.: For example, we went to the blue lagoon, which was a place where everything was determined by the tide. When we got there, the problem was that the water was still very shallow and the boat got stuck.

Sr.: We arrived 15 minutes before high tide. The kids jumped out, as they too had to push the not-so-small boat. It was an adventure!

Jr.: The next day we collected red "mangrove seeds" in waist-deep water.

Sr.: Mangrove is used by the locals as building material and fuel.

But what is very important is that this plant binds five times as much carbon dioxide as our forests, and if, say, a tsunami were to hit, the trees would slow the waves, so there would be less damage to the settlement.

Jr.: In the evenings, we listened to lectures where dad shared interesting information about the ecology of mangrove forests and their important role in the carbon cycle. It was interesting to learn that mangroves reproduce by dropping small plantlets into the mud where they grow roots. So we got involved in mangrove planting, too.

What was your best experience?

Jr.: It's hard to choose, but swimming with the whale sharks was special.

Is their migration route there?

Sr.: The world's largest marine fish spend their time there between September and March. Of course, they are not there by magic, the area is one of the stops on their migration route. Every time we went out, they were there.

Jr.: We were very lucky! On the first day, we saw some that were up to 15 meters long. They were very fast, but when Anna and I swam past the head of one of the whale sharks, it spotted us and slowed down so we could swim together. It was a really nice one! One time they surrounded dad, almost in a yin-yang formation, and it looked like they were so close they were about to squash him, but in reality, it was something completely different.

How do you swim with a whale shark?

Jr.: Not everyone knows the rules. You have to be at least 2 meters from it. On the first day, the professor told us how to behave when swimming with whale sharks.

Sr.: Unfortunately, not everyone abides by the ethics of swimming with whale sharks.

Jr.: The rule is that there can be a maximum of ten people around the animal because they are disturbed by the bustle.

You organized the programs within the recently formed Kids For The Oceans Association. What else does this organization do?

Sr.: Within the association, we would like to launch an educational program for primary and secondary school students entitled "Dive with us".

These one-lesson-long lectures would fill a gap, as children do not learn about these ecological processes at all in school.

We believe it is important that students have access to up-to-date information on sustainability and the environment. The 45-minute sessions will give children a unique insight into the world of the seas: they will be able to dive with us into the depths of the sea using VR glasses. This will allow many students who might not otherwise be able to do so to get up close and personal with marine life. We are currently working on purchasing VR goggles and are looking for donors.

How long have you been researching knight's castles?

I have always been interested in the Middle Ages, especially the 12th and 13th centuries, especially the castles. One of the reasons for this is that when we lived in Miskolc, my parents and I often walked to Diósgyőr Castle, near Miskolc. If you add the castles to the 12th-13th centuries, you soon get the result: the Gothic period, chivalric culture, and crusades. Growing up, I also realized where all this manifested itself most: the Middle East.

What were you the most interested in about the mixed, European-Levantine culture that had developed there?

Most of all the daily life of a European colony of about a quarter of a million people. For almost two hundred years, the four crusader states were home to soldiers and civilians, family members who had emigrated from the old continent.

Speaking of numbers, what was the proportion of the local population compared to the European population?

It is estimated to be about ten times higher.

The question arises: how have different cultures managed to coexist throughout the centuries of constant warfare, at least according to history books?

First of all, the Principality of Antioch and Tripoli County had predominantly Christian inhabitants, and at that time Islamization was far from advanced in those areas, but it was also slow in many other areas. When Saladin (1137-1193) conquered Egypt in 1171, about seventy percent of the population in the land of the former pharaohs was still Christian. Of course, Islam was already present in the region, especially in Palestine, in the Akko region, but in the holy places of Bethlehem, Nazareth, and around Jerusalem, Christians were in the majority, as in the northern part of modern-day Lebanon and in the Syrian coastal areas as well. In the north, we find mainly people of the Shiite denomination, who were often persecuted by Sunni Muslims.

All in all, Christians and non-Christians understood each other very well.

Even in spite of the wars?

As Foucher de Chartres, one of the first chroniclers of the Crusades, wrote, "we are slowly forgetting where we came from", meaning that Europeans were rapidly assimilating. What must be seen is that it is impossible to look at that period from a completely wrong perspective, influenced by our own time and ideology. Who can read Arab chronicles today? Who even wants to, when so many documentaries have been launched and so many books published on the subject? Most people believe that this modern literature - written by Europeans - is not wrong, which is why today's generation rarely studies the Latin and Arabic sources of the time. The horizons that Western scholars used to embrace are rapidly narrowing.

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Balázs Major during excavation - Photo: Balázs Major

Would the sources you mentioned paint a different picture than those published in the literature?

It is extremely important to be aware of all the sources because that makes it clear that we should not think of the Crusades as a constant day and night battle between the peoples living there, but sometimes twenty to forty years would pass in a given area without any military movement. Unlike in most parts of Europe. Going back to your original question, I was curious to know how the different Christian and Muslim denominations lived together since religion was the only thing that mattered then – and, let me add, still matters – in the region. Arab sources also show how peacefully European and Arab peoples of different religions lived together.

Could you give us an example?

Ibn Jubair, a Muslim official in Andalusia, who was terrified of traveling, drank alcohol once, despite his religion's teachings. Ashamed, he felt that only a pilgrimage to Mecca could atone for this mistake of his. How did he get from Andalusia to Mecca in the 12th century? By boat. The Mediterranean was then dominated by the Venetian and Genoese galleons, so if you wanted to travel cheaply and safely, you went to Alexandria on one of them, then by land, and then across the Red Sea to Mecca. In other words, a Muslim pilgrim to Mecca would get from one Muslim port to another by a Christian boat. But this is only the beginning. Although he did not like to travel, once in Mecca he decided to visit the surrounding sights. He went to Baghdad, Damascus, and from there back to Europe. On the way, he encountered Saladin's army returning from the north to Jerusalem with European prisoners and stolen treasure.

He was a little apprehensive about travelling further, as he had to pass through plundered Christian areas, but to his surprise, no one harassed him.

Again, the above-mentioned Arab traveler writes: when he stayed in a Sunni village, he was told by the locals that they were living peacefully under the Crusaders and had no problems with the Europeans. He even learned that foreigners collected fewer taxes than Muslims. They describe the Christian rulers there as just and good. Another thing: big European companies, mostly Italian, maintained depots in Aleppo throughout the war periods, including even the tiny town of San Gimignano, which monopolized the saffron trade in Europe. After driving out the Crusaders, the Genoese continued to have a colony in the city of Latakia for about 150 years and traded freely.

What motivated you in your research?

I like specific, tangible things, I am not the man to write a sixth book out of five. Of course, that doesn't mean I don't read or am not familiar with the relevant literature, I just want to emphasize the importance of my own field research. I was interested in how people lived in the past, how their everyday lives were, what memories have been preserved of their everyday lives, and where bridges, castles, and residential towers still stand. I was particularly moved by how people lived in the countryside. When I was a university student, I started to look for monuments in Syria, not only medieval ones but also Roman and Byzantine heritage. Unfortunately, the rate of destruction of monuments in the region is such that many remains are now only visible in my photographs.

If these structures have survived for over a thousand years, why are they disappearing in the 21st century?

On the one hand, many monuments were destroyed in the war, and most people care less about what happens to monuments when they have lost a family member or their home in the war. In peacetime, infrastructure development makes way for itself.

In Hungary, we are overjoyed with a knee-high castle wall, as most of our medieval monuments were destroyed by the Ottoman period at the latest, but in this region, even ancient monuments up to roof height are commonplace.

Where there are ten-story castles spread over several hectares, an investor rarely cares whether there is one more or one less residential tower left in the country, and where every square centimeter of farmland has a high value. We are past the twenty-fourth hour.

The Hungarian research you are leading is taking place in the castles of Margat and Crac des Chevaliers. Why are these Crusader castles significant?

By the 13th century, interest in the Holy Land had decreased at the European courts, but warfare had developed enormously and castles needed to be fortified. The crusaders sought to make up for the lack of manpower by improving fortifications. This was the era of the construction of these great fortresses, the like of which were not built in Europe at that time. The two forts mentioned are so large that they will keep researchers busy for decades to come.

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The fortress of Crac des Chevaliers - Photo: Balázs Major

What are the main results of the research programs?

I see their greatest significance in the fact that for fifteen years Hungarian experts have been working on the excavation of one of the world's most famous monuments. Even in Hungary, it would not be easy to maintain an excavation program for so long, let alone abroad. What's more, the work has led to the establishment of a university course. The success in Syria has led to the launch of an archaeology course at Pázmány University, which will make use of the professional knowledge and network of contacts we have built up over the years in Syria. Our former dean had explicitly requested that we incorporate this knowledge into the university's teaching. The Institute is up and running, with four departments. Half of our students are from abroad, mostly from Syria, through the Stipendium Hungaricum scholarship program. They will hopefully be re-employed later on in the protection of monuments and education in their own country.

What successes have Hungarian archaeologists achieved on the site?

We have fully mapped Margate, with only the inner Johannine castle covering one hectare, the settlement built within a defensive ring around it covering five hectares, and under the castle, we have identified an outer town with houses, churches, and a cemetery covering a further ten hectares.

The biggest achievement was to find out the function of almost all the rooms in the castle. This is not easy, even in the case of a small Hungarian castle, let alone a fortress system of this size.

We have also explored the castle's water management system, making it the only one of its kind in the Middle East.

Why is this last result particularly important?

We are in the Middle East, in a fortress built on a volcanic cone. We could dig, but we'd find no water. The entire fortress, the soldiers, the civilian population, the animals, and the baths, were supplied with collected and purified winter rainwater for a whole year.

You mentioned baths. It is widely believed that people rarely used to bathe in the "dark" Middle Ages.

We also discovered four baths for crusaders in Margat. The castle hill was full of drilled cisterns, where rainwater draining from the flat roofs was led by an elaborate collection system. Moreover, this system can be reused today, after eight hundred years. In today's world, what is more precious than water in the Middle East? When we were asked to find a way to drain the wastewater from tourist toilets, we found old sewers that we could clean and reuse by laying modern pipes. Among the results, I would also mention the discovery of the aforementioned ten hectares of outer town, where a complete bathhouse was also located.

Is there no mention of it in the written records?

Unfortunately, there are hardly any sources about the huge Crusader fortresses, and the few sentences about Margat that do exist, do not mention the outer city. While surveying the hillside, we discovered human bones sticking out of the bush-covered wall. Looking further afield, we came across fragments of Crusader pottery, and then a silver denarius from Tripoli and a fragment of a fresco. All these suggested that the site had been a funerary chapel, so this was high on the excavation agenda for the following year. We found a complete cemetery from the Crusader period, the remains of the chapel and twelve dwellings. Another summer I noticed a white arch spire, also emerging from the bush a few hundred meters away. Here we were able to identify a two-bay church and uncovered the remains of elaborate wall paintings.

Was there a discovery that you considered to be a "worldwide " success?

All of the above, but the one that made it into the New York Times is a huge fresco that our restorers uncovered in the church of the Margat Castle. The church wall had been researched before, but in 1980, American-British experts concluded that the geometric lines they had discovered could only have been part of an underpainting. This led to a study that suggested that the appearance of Saladin in the Middle Ages may have caused the work to stop. Well, it did not.

We brought Hungarian experts there, who found huge frescoes in the first summer, and in the apse, they also discovered that there were several layers of wall paintings on top of each other. This is how we discovered the largest Crusader mural cycle in the Holy Land, the largest part of which depicts Hell in three registers.

A very large arsenal of weapons was also found, probably gathered by the Muslims after the siege of 1285. All this proves that Hungarian experts can achieve the same results as their Western colleagues.