Well, the cease fire of not pressuring me until I hand in the thesis didn’t last long with Mission Year. Within 2 days it was broken with yet another e-mail this morning demanding details of fundraising and fee payments. I really, really, really don’t need this kind of pressure. All this demand on time and money slowly but surely puts me off the ethos of Mission Year. I am crumbling under pressure and they send me detailed e-mails about how they think I should keep to my commitments. Situations in life change. I was supposed to finish the thesis by the time I started the program, but I couldn’t. My parents are not well, my finances are rocky, I am not even sure if I can manage to finish the thesis and I am given a lecture by a ‘supposingly supportive mentor’ who comes across more like a ‘holy-bully’ about the lack of my level of cooperation. I just so wanted to send a shockingly short e-mail with 2 little words in it and put an end to this whole pressure-plantation situation. Yesterday I got an e-mail asking to think about any of my friends who would like to join the program from January. To be honest I would only recommended it to people, who are not in debts and have savings. This kind of Mission program only works if you can afford it or if more than half of your team have well-paid city jobs, otherwise you are under constant pressure from the organisation to pay and go to their training evenings, regardless if you have no money at all for bus or buy food. People do not believe these things. Poverty starts when one has less coming in than the necessary going out and there is nothing left for bus fares and food. If I hadn’t got a food parcel last week I would have been really stuck in the past few days. We are told we should help each other out, but half of our team including myself are overdrawn and the rest is on the edge. I cannot wait for the first time I earn enough to be able to do a food shopping for mself.
Anyway, I better start writing my four 312words per subheadings that I promised myself to complete this evening. The time is 19:08. Let`s see when I finish with it.
19.23 pm
I just popped out with Diana to check out a Chester draw on the landing thrown away most likely by one of our neighbours and also spent other 10 minutes on filling out a questionnaire for a lovely friend of mine about hiring a wedding planner. For the question of ‘Are you married, or planning to get married in the next 5 years?’ I very ambitiously answered: ‘Yes, next year if I meet the man of my life.’
20.44pm
I just had the nicest sausages and mash with my flatmates and green apples with Hungarian acacia honey for dessert.
New strategy! I have 30 min for each section with a 15 min break in between, maybe this would work, because I haven’t written anything yet since 19.08 when I was supposed to start, but I had a great conservation during dinner and ended up coming upstairs with a cup of hot water with a random curiosity to look up Mormon pants on the net, as I have never heard that those things existed before and certainly haven’t seen any. As a true fashion/clothing industry graduate I straight away started to think about success rates and competitors of a business with such a specific target consumer in question. Internet is off again, I wait until I write 2 sections before I restart the laptop and look it up then.
23.18
One section out of the 4 is nearly finished, but I am going to finish it tomorrow morning. I have 7 and a bit for tomorrow to keep up with my schedule. Ouch!
From the thesis:
‘Local materials went through a considerable amount of change during the last century in Kevermes due to historical changes. The political scene brought more rigorous and sudden changes than climate change or environmental awareness.
Hemp:
After the World War I, when two third of Hungary was given to the surrounding countries including Transylvania to Romania, it brought a major change in local material growing and production. The nearest town to Kevermes was Arad, which became part of Romania after reducing Hungary’s territory during the Treaty of Trianon by 72% in 1920. Arad had and still has to this day a hemp processing factory where in the early 1910`s the writer’s great grand parents took their hemp to be processed. At that time every household used to grow Hemp in Hungary. (Kep kender toro) the long stamps were used to make ropes. (Appendix Kendert hehlo asszonyok).
Silk:
In the 1950’s the writer`s great grand parents have farmed silk worms. For that purpose trees were planted just outside of the village. The silk worms were kept in the ‘tiszta szoba’ a room kept tidy and clean without use to celebrate special occasions such as Christmas. The small paper boxes on wooden shelves were kept in the dark to be able to produce silk. (Domany to Fodor 2009). The mulberry woods have long been cut out and replaced by pine trees and the last traces of silk production stopped by the end of the 1950’s in Bekes county.
Cotton:
From the 1780’s onwards up to the mid 1950’s there were several strategies trying to produce cotton in Hungary. The country’s climate is not suitable for cotton production, but the. The plant needs 7-8 months warm weather, which in Hungary only lasts for 5 months. The most famously infamous cotton project of the 1950’s communist Hungary sprung from the embargo when the major exporter the USA stopped exporting cotton to the Sovjet Union and the Eastern Block.(LADÁNYI LÁSZLÓ: A magyar gyapot történetehttp://www.historia.hu/archivum/2004/0401ladanyi.htm).
Wool:
Wool production has been a significant part of Hungary’s economy since the Settlement of the Magyars of the Great Plain in 895… to be continued!
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