Flower beds would replace a packed earth lot and by the intersection, where today stands a lonely cross, a small gazebo. “For the tourists,” local children explain. “And also for us.” The municipality of Dobrá Voda u Toužimi has not seen many tourists in the last few years. An air of defeat rules the area, much like in other villages in former Sudetenland. Most houses are abandoned, and those that have tenants are mostly broken-down apartment buildings inhabited by problem citizens. The scene is to change for the better this year, however. And local children are to play an important role in this transformation.
Absolutely everyone
Over the last 20 years, Dobrá Voda became something of a world unto itself, wedged between empty fields. As has often been the case in the past, the Toužim town hall set aside old apartment buildings for non-paying tenants from neighbouring municipalities.
“Most of the residents are Roman. Their relatives in many cases moved in with them. Now 80 of the 90-person village are Roma,” says Jana Kosová, head of Český západ, an association that helps provide social services for people in need and operates a local community centre.
The association was founded by the monks of a nearby Trappist monastery. “When they came here in 1998, Dobrá Voda looked awful. It was a mess. You had garbage containers and car wrecks lying around by the entrance doors. They looked for a place to change that, and that’s how Český západ came 2002. She says the support of the monastery helps keep their group afloat.
Unlike, other similar locations in this country, things are moving forward. The Toužim town hall has begun to work together with the centre and set up and after-school programme for Dobrá Voda children at the Toužim school. You will no longer come across over-turned garbage containers or car wrecks here, and more improvements are in the works.
Český západ, which has its headquarters across from the apartment complex, came up with the concept. “We wanted absolutely everyone to take part in the transformation,” says Kosová, explaining why the local children were also included in the project. In the end a third of the area’s 30 children became involved. And they already have a plan ready for what they want their new home to look like. Besides flower beds and benches, their sketches also include an artificial creek and a trampoline. Every repaired area is to have a local guard – for now figurines made of clay, waiting to be fired in a nearby kiln. “The adults will have their say after that and then we will hand over the plan to an architect, who will design the final appearance of the reconstruction,” says Kosová. Wherever possible, the locals can repair their own homes by themselves, with the aid of about CZK 200,000 that the organisers were able to put together through grants.
But does a flower bed and gazebo have any purpose aside from looking “nice”? “Of course, it’s one of the steps toward helping the local residents learn to take care of their own problems, rather than just relying on outside help, not to be just observes watching things happen around them,” says Kosová.
She is looking forward to seeing the entire community take up shovels and get to work. “The coexistence between Romani and non-Romani residents has always been and continues to be problematic. It was bad, but it is getting a little better,” says Kosová. “But the key thing is interaction and communication,” she adds.
Jana Vávrů, one of the local residents, confirms her words. “Seven years ago, houses would get broken into. There was a lot of mistrust on the part of the white people,” he says. “But in the end, you get to know these people and realise that most of them are, of course, great people. So when conversation turns to Roma, and that happens quite often here, I tend to be one of those defending them,” she adds.
Team work is supposed to accomplish something else: “If the children are able to leave their mark on a place where they have spent their childhood, they will create ties to that place,” says Kosová. “Maybe someday they “ill come to see Dobrá Voda as their home.”
“The author is a journalism student at Charles University.
