The mayor offers an award to the next. Scientists want to investigate his disappearance. And the television crews have come to look for answers to the strange population anomaly of a small Polish town. In almost a decade, no male child was born there. This detail initially caught the attention of Polish news media when the village sent a team made up exclusively of girls to a regional competition of young volunteer firefighters. Since then, Mayor Krystyna Zydziak noted that the situation in the Miejsce Odrzanskie village had become “a bit weird and uncontrollable.” Recently, four different television teams were sent to this single-street village with 96 houses to cover the issue of the lack of males.
Some scientists have expressed interest in analyzing why only women were born here,” said Rajmund Frischko, mayor of the municipality of Cisek, where this village is located. “They also call me doctors from all over the country to give me advice on how to procreate a child.”
He mentioned that he had just spoken to a retired doctor from central Poland who said that a baby’s sex depended on a woman’s diet, which must be rich in calcium if she wants to have a child.
The team of young volunteer firefighters of girls in the village of Miejsce Odrzanskie, Poland, on 1 August 2019. New York Times.
“And if this doesn’t work,” the mayor said, laughing, “there’s always the proven method of Highland Poles: if you want a child, keep an axe under the marital bed.” In the years since the last male baby was born, there have been twelve births in the village, which is an agricultural community on the shore of Poland’s smallest and least populated province. Residents don’t know what this anomaly is all about, but many believe it’s perhaps just a coincidence, such as when multiple coins are thrown consecutively into the air and all fall on the same face. Frischko has decided to offer an award to the next couple who have a child.
There has been so much talk of us in the media that for an instant I was considering putting the name of the next child born here to the street,” he said. “In short, let’s give him a very good gift. In addition, we will plant an oak tree and name it.”
Like many other Polish peoples, there has been a significant decline in the population. After World War II, there were approximately 1200 inhabitants; now there are 272.
For nearly a decade, the 12 children born in the farming village of Miejsce Odrzanskie have been girls, a rarity that has caught international attention. New York Times.
Since the disintegration of communism in 1989, emigration has left the country’s spooky areas empty, a trend that accelerated after the country joined the European Union in 2004. Now, more than two million Poles live elsewhere in Europe. Here, all the families have one of their members living abroad, said Zydziak, who has two daughters, one of whom lives in Germany.
Some people in the village are concerned about who will do the agricultural work in the future,” he said.
In the summer there’s a lot of work here. The landscape in August is covered with fields of freshly flat wheat and hay piled meticulously in round and golden bales next to the cornfields waiting to be harvested. Many girls and young women work in the fields. Adrianna Pieruszka, 20, has spent a part of her summer vacation driving a tractor in her parents’ wheat fields, even though her passion is the fire department.
In a village that has no schools, cafes, restaurants, and not even a grocery store—and where hours can pass without any cars appearing on the horizon—the volunteer fire department has become the center of social life. Recently, in a practice in the local department of young fire volunteers, a team of women alone moved in unison to extinguish a fire and to care for the victims. The youngest recruit, two-year-old Maja, had to get out of the fire truck with the help of a larger girl. Pieruszka, who studies preschool education at the university, was the supervisor of the girls’ brigade for four years.
There are almost no boys on the team, but we’ve been winning Poland’s top competitions since it was founded six years ago,” he said, sitting in the volunteer fire station’s common room where dozens of medals and trophies were on display. Golden.
Tomasz Golasz, a professional firefighter who founded the village’s young fire brigade, mentioned that doing so was not his idea.
Irena Kubas Zareba, Eryka Blana and Jozef Sluga, residents of the village of Miejsce Odrzanskie, Poland. For nearly a decade, the 12 children born in the farming village of Miejsce Odrzanskie have been girls. New York Times.
“In 2013, I was approached by a group of girls and asked me to train them for a competition,” she said. “These girls live it and breathe it. They have great passion and determination. Two months before each competition, they come to train every day or every third day when they leave school.” Malwina Kicler, 10, who has been training to volunteer for almost three years, mentioned that most girls didn’t care that there were no boys on the team.” The boys are boisterous and naughty,” he said. “At least for now we have peace and quiet. You can always meet guys anywhere else.” But maybe not in this village.
