BINGO!

Location: Budapest
April 15, 2010
Adventure #11

Whether we were to conduct a bingo game for a group of Hungarian hipsters or the local elderly patrons who are our actual target audience, the most popular prizes would be the same: coffee and cigarettes.

Nearly every month since I moved to Budapest, I’ve helped the North American Women’s Association host a bingo game at a local nursing home. As a non-Hungarian speaker, my role is pretty simple. I help set up and distribute snacks and juice, then watch over a table or two to ensure the players don’t miss any numbers and confirm that winners’ Bingos are legit. Players get really into it, and I love hearing a seemingly reserved person yelp "Bingo," causing their competitors to let out equally loud groans.

Not only do I enjoy spending the time with the elderly and my American and Canadian cadre, the game has helped me learn my Hungarian numbers from 1-75 and how to correctly pronounce the names Bela, Illona, Nula, Gabor, and Olga, since our bilingual caller uses these names as a culturally relevant B-I-N-G-O substitutes.

Of course, the downfall of a volunteer project like this is that I can’t hold conversations with the volunterees because of the language barrier. However, this situation proves how far one can go with non-verbal communication, which was underscored when I recently tried to assist one of my favorite regulars in claiming his prize.

In addition to the always popular cigarettes and coffee (so coveted that we limit winners to one carton of cigarettes), the prizes include candy, some food items and lots of toiletries. Now this dour man who I was assisting is one of the most entertaining gamblers because he is an inveterate word worm who brings a newspaper to every game and reads as much as he can between each play so as not to reduce himself to talking to his peers. When someone else wins he scowls and opens his paper wider – pretending to be too good to play Bingo anyhow. On this particular day, he ended up winning a round, so I asked him what prize he would like. Apparently he told me “deodorant,” but since that word is at the bottom of my need-to-know Hungarian vocabulary hierarchy, I had no idea what he wanted. In response to my confused stare, this elderly gent raised his arm and mimicked rolling on some freshness over his flannel shirt. Naturally, this made me giggle, and I even provoked a rare smile from him.

Even though I can’t speak in complete sentences, at least I inspire a smile now and then, especially when I resort to cheating. There is nothing more disheartening than watching over a table for more than an hour where no one is winning and the people are getting frustrated. Thus, when it comes close to the end of our session and there are still some players who haven’t won, we signal to the caller to announce auspicious numbers that lead to a gleeful utterance of “Bingo!” Yes, even fabricated Bingos sound as pleasing as orthodox ones.