MIEJSCE ODRZANSKIE (POLAND): The mayor is offering a reward for the missing. Scientists want to investigate their absence. And television crews have come searching for answers about a small Polish village’s strange population anomaly.
No boy has been born there in almost a decade.
The detail first attracted the attention of the Polish news media when the village sent an all-girl team to a regional competition for young volunteer firefighters.
Since then, Mayor Krystyna Zydziak said the situation in the village Miejsce Odrzanskie had gotten “a little crazy and out of hand.”
On a recent visit, four separate television crews had been dispatched to the one-road town, with 96 houses, to cover the case of the missing males. “Some scientists have expressed interest in examining why only girls have been born here,” said Rajmund Frischko, mayor of the commune of Cisek, which includes the village. “I also have doctors calling me from all over the country with tips on how to conceive a boy.”
He said he had just spoken to a retired doctor from central Poland who said that a baby’s sex depended on the woman’s diet, which should be rich in calcium if she wants to have a boy. “And if that doesn’t work,” the mayor laughed, “there is always the tried way of the Polish highlanders: If you want a boy, keep an axe under your marital bed.”
In the years since the last baby boy was born, there have been 12 births in the village, an agricultural community on the edge of the smallest and least populated province in Poland. Residents do not know what accounts for the anomaly, but many think it might all just be a coincidence, like a run of coin flips turning up heads.
Frischko has decided to offer a reward for the next couple who have a boy. “There has been so much talk about us in the media that for a minute there I was considering naming a street after the next boy born here,” he said.
Like so many other Polish villages, this one has seen a steep decline in population. After World War II, it had about 1,200 people; now there are 272. Since the collapse of Communism in 1989, emigration has hollowed out the country’s sparsely populated areas, a trend that accelerated after the country joined the EU in 2004. Over 2 million Poles now live elsewhere in Europe.
Malwina, 10, who has been training to be a volunteer firefighter for almost three years, said that most girls did not mind the absence of boys on the team. “Boys are noisy and naughty.”
No boy has been born there in almost a decade.
The detail first attracted the attention of the Polish news media when the village sent an all-girl team to a regional competition for young volunteer firefighters.
Since then, Mayor Krystyna Zydziak said the situation in the village Miejsce Odrzanskie had gotten “a little crazy and out of hand.”
On a recent visit, four separate television crews had been dispatched to the one-road town, with 96 houses, to cover the case of the missing males. “Some scientists have expressed interest in examining why only girls have been born here,” said Rajmund Frischko, mayor of the commune of Cisek, which includes the village. “I also have doctors calling me from all over the country with tips on how to conceive a boy.”
He said he had just spoken to a retired doctor from central Poland who said that a baby’s sex depended on the woman’s diet, which should be rich in calcium if she wants to have a boy. “And if that doesn’t work,” the mayor laughed, “there is always the tried way of the Polish highlanders: If you want a boy, keep an axe under your marital bed.”
In the years since the last baby boy was born, there have been 12 births in the village, an agricultural community on the edge of the smallest and least populated province in Poland. Residents do not know what accounts for the anomaly, but many think it might all just be a coincidence, like a run of coin flips turning up heads.
Frischko has decided to offer a reward for the next couple who have a boy. “There has been so much talk about us in the media that for a minute there I was considering naming a street after the next boy born here,” he said.
Like so many other Polish villages, this one has seen a steep decline in population. After World War II, it had about 1,200 people; now there are 272. Since the collapse of Communism in 1989, emigration has hollowed out the country’s sparsely populated areas, a trend that accelerated after the country joined the EU in 2004. Over 2 million Poles now live elsewhere in Europe.
Malwina, 10, who has been training to be a volunteer firefighter for almost three years, said that most girls did not mind the absence of boys on the team. “Boys are noisy and naughty.”
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