"A Wee Separate Bit"

It’s been a busy week here, one full of excursions and lots of time in the classroom. We just had our last day of seminars in Coleraine and had a phenomenal lunch at the home of our program director, Nigel, where we were spoiled with homemade soups, bread, scones, and sweets as well as hanging out with his two adorable, ‘wee’ children. After lunch, Nigel drove us to a beach called Benone beach to the west of where we’re staying. The short drive along the coast was beautiful and reminded me somewhat of Big Sur in California or the Oregon coast, we saw a few waterfalls coming out of the basalt rocks and a crumbling palace of an old archbishop. The beach itself was absolutely gorgeous, stretching for miles in either direction, most of us dipped out feet in and got a bit wet before taking some photos and enjoying our last day together before the 5 Derry and 2 Ballycastle interns leave tomorrow.

It’s been an incredibly challenging and fascinating few weeks and I honestly feel that I’ve learned more in the last month than I do in some entire semesters. I’m really enjoying getting to spend so much time focusing on learning about many aspects of one place and all that’s happened here. We’ve spent most of our days in class at the university with a wide array of speakers and discussions, examining different aspects of the history of Northern Ireland and the conflict.

They have been long days, but really rewarding in that I feel as though every session brings a new set of questions and constantly challenges what I’m thinking about. In addition, we spent two days on field trips, learning about the cities of Derry and Belfast and speaking with individuals from different communities. The only way to describe the situation and all that we’ve learned is that it’s completely overwhelming and challenging but in a lot of ways really exciting to be able to grapple with so many dimensions of conflict, history, violence, peace, communities, traditions, and so on.

A few notes on Derry/Londonderry (Protestant/Unionists refer to it as Londonderry because it was renamed for the London Company but Catholic/Nationalists just call it Derry and purely because its easier to just write Derry, that’s what I’m doing here): Derry is the second largest city in Northern Ireland but with only about 80,000 people and essentially no buildings over 3 stories high, it feels much more like a large town. Though Derry/Londonderry is mostly Catholic today, the city is very important for Protestants/Unionists because of the Siege of Derry in 1690. In the Siege, Protestants defended the city for over 100 days from a Catholic army with the motto “never surrender.” This mentality is still very strong in the Protestant community in Derry even though the city is majority Catholic today.

We spent time with a local tour guide on the city walls, in the Unionist Fountain housing community, and in the Catholic Bogside. We spent most of our time in the Bogside where we visited the Bloody Sunday memorial, the famous murals of the Bogside Artists’ murals depicting different aspects of the Troubles, the Museum of Free Derry, and had lunch and discussion in a community center promoting healthy living. It was an incredibly moving afternoon that raised many questions about how individuals and communities deal with trauma, violence, and justice. We were definitely all pretty drained but managed to enjoy ourselves on the way back to Portrush in the mini-bus, affectionately dubbed ‘the beast.’ Nigel has been playing music for us on many of the rides we take, speaking about what the songs refer to and where the musicians are coming from. We’ve been listening to a wide array of genres and artists but Wednesday night on our way home, Nigel cranked Semisonic’s “Closing Time” and (nearly) everyone sang along. It’s nice to have a group of people experiencing and processing along with me and I’ve really appreciated the diversity of opinion and perspective in discussions.

Belfast on Wednesday was a very different, but equally as thought-provoking and interesting, experience. We met in the morning with representatives from a Catholic Republican organization that gives political tours of the Falls Road, a Nationalist/Republican heartland. On the tour we visited a number of political murals, memorials, the Sinn Fein headquarters (Sinn Fein is the Nationalist political party), and a cemetery where the Republican plots are. We ate lunch at the Republican Club and had a Q&A with our guide and another representative who are both former IRA political prisoners.

After lunch, we hopped over to the Protestant, Loyalist Shankhill Road neighborhood, directly parallel and very close to the Falls, where we toured the area with a former UVF political prisoner. In the Shankhill, we saw murals, memorials, peace walls, and community spaces that parallel those in the Falls but express a very different sentiment. I think the tours of the Falls and the Shankhill, particularly our experience with our guide in the Shankhill, challenged many of us to think about different perspectives and facets to the conflict. I know I was personally challenged to think about notions of what peace means, the psychology behind being a former prisoner and perpetrator of violence, and the legacy of some of these ideologies and memories. In other words, it was another emotionally and mentally taxing but crucial day that ended with the Beast bumbling back towards Portrush.

This post is crazy, crazy long… I guess the only things left to say are about food and fun:

1. Smarties flavored McFlurries: would be better in Dairy Queen blizzard form.

2. Scones just keep getting better.

3. Mr. Chips fish and chips are going to kill us all.

4. When you ask for a lemonade at a sketchy Chinese restaurant in Portrush, they’ll bring you 7-Up.

5. Last weekend we experienced some serious Northern Irish partygoers both nights out, but particularly at Kelly’s, the dance club we went to Saturday night where one of my flat-mates summed it up best as the most of the girls “look like they left half of their clothes at the Jersey Shore” …