Friday morning we made our way to Belfast. First we explored the "Troubles" exhibit in the Ulster Museum--I'm so glad we did. I had heard of the Troubles, knew the tensions that existed in Northern Ireland, and had heard of ongoing violence between the Catholics and the Protestants. But I had no idea what we were getting into that weekend. I had no idea that nearly 4,000 people died in 25 years, or that so many innocent people were arrested, tortured, or worse. "The Troubles," in my mind, were a thing of the past. But they "ended" just 13 years ago, and strong divisions still exist today.
On to Stormont, the Parliament buildings. The Northern Ireland government is more inefficient than I could have imagined. There are two ministers--First Minister and deputy First Minister. One nationalist (Sinn Fein) and one Unionist. The Assembly has 5 different political parties making decisions. They've passed something like 32 laws in the past 6 years. Can you imagine having Republican and Democrat co-presidents? Nothing would ever get done. But they feel that this is the only solution to keeping the country at relative peace. We met with first advisor to deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness...Kevin gave him a run for his money. I guess Kevin believes that the only way to get a spontaneous, truthful reaction out of a politician is to provoke him. And provoke him he did. Not only did he confront the man, but he made his argument personal: "YOU plunged this country into this mess," "how can members of the IRA be running this country," "Don't you feel like a hypocrite," "because of YOU we are farther from a United Ireland than ever before."
The guy certainly got a little annoyed (and he sent Kevin a couple jabs in return, making it perfectly clear he thought Kevin was ignorant and overly-emotional) but he handled himself like an articulate politician and explained as best he could how difficult the situation was on everyone. The entire Notre Dame group was blushing, eyeing each other, holding our faces in our hands. It was so uncomfortable! But we survived it unscathed and didn't get thrown out of the parliament building. Kevin is probably more on the Sinn Fein side of things, but apparently he just wanted to play Devil's Advocate.
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| Not cool. |
After a snack in beautiful downtown Belfast, we made our way to Derry (officially Londonderry, but the Catholics and IRA guys we were chillin with would kill me if I called it Londonderry...).
After the most delicious burger in my entire life at the Ramore Wine Bar (who knew tobasco onions and pepper sauce made such a fantastic combo?), we dropped our stuff off at the Sheep Island View hostel in Ballintoy and went on to find a good pub. Kevin Whelan was hellbent on hearing me sing that night. There was a cheesy guitar player at the pub, and Kevin asked him if he'd let me sing a song. Mind you, he didn't ask me first if I even wanted to sing!! So...I refused. Not the time at all. So then he recruited a couple other Notre Dame kids to join me. "WIll you sing now??" he asked. Then I felt horrible for being shy and not being better craic. I agreed to sing with the group...and someone chose Country Roads, a song I barely know the chorus of. It was a relatively horrible rendition, but at least it was over quickly.
After the song, around midnight, Kevin Whelan gathered up a few followers to explore the dark beach in Ballintoy. It was the most beautiful, black night, with thousands of bright stars. I've never seen so many. When we first made it down to the beach, we grouped together and stood in silence for a few minutes, staring at the sky. Suddenly a shooting star flew across the sky, and in perfect unison, we broke the silence with shouts and laughs and "woahs!" Next, still determined to hear me sing, Kevin said "Alright then Clare, let's hear a song. It's the perfect time now, ya can't say no. Just sing a song, any old thing." Last thing I wanted to do, but I sang "The Park" by Fiest. It was a good one to sing...everyone just staring at the stars, no movement or noise at all except for the ocean and my voice. I must have sounded pretty good because everyone was blown away and wanted to give me a hug! So that felt nice. The rest of the night we all sang little songs (Kevin Whelan enthusiastically joined in) and walked around the cliffs and looked at the dozens of shooting stars. Such a peaceful, idyllic night.
Saturday morning we woke up, exhausted, and hurried to the bus to see the giant's causeway (the 4th greatest natural wonder in the UK). We hopped off the bus, rounded the corner, and couldn't believe our eyes. I'm never going to the cliffs of Moher again, I'm bringing people here. Such intense green, such beautiful cliffs, not to mention the actual causeway itself. Ok, here's the legend: Fionn McCool built the causeway (bridge) in order to walk over to Scotland and fight with the giant Benadonner. But when he saw how much larger Benadonner was than himself, he hurried back home. Afraid Benadonner would follow him, his wife dressed him up as a baby and put a blanket around him. When Benadonner arrived looking for Fionn, he saw how huge their child was, and ran away in fear of how giant the father must be, apparently breaking the bridge as he went.
So now all we have left are hundreds of perfectly interlocking stones, forming their own little game of tetris (after I typed the word tetris, i wasted 20 minutes of my life playing it online. high score: 3,079). The real history behind the mystery of the causeway involves a volcanic eruption, contraction, heating/cooling of lava, etc. WHATEVER. It's pretty hard to imagine the causeway being made by nature. The stepping stones rise and fall and interlock beautifully, with each stone in a nearly perfect hexagonal shape. The more raised stones look like perfectly parallel columns, forming a staircase up to the sky.
After Kevin Whelan gave a 20 minute sermon on enjoying nature/travel/appreciating life/living in the moment, we spent another hour hiking around the area, climbing little cliffs, enjoying the view. We drove to downtown Derry for a Field Day Conference at the Playhouse. We didn't really know what "Field Day" was, and I don't think any of us really know now. Kevin must have given a little explanation on the bus ride over, but we were all sound asleep. Therefore, when Seamus Dean (a wonderful author who wrote Reading in the Dark) spoke to us about the Field Day Production company and its affects on Northern Ireland, etc, we were all left in the dark. Plus, we were still exhausted. So there I sat, 10 feet away from a relatively famous writer (not to mention inches away from the actor Stephen Rea) and I could not, for the life of me, keep my eyes open. I don't think I ever fell asleep. But it was a struggle. The entire time I kept thinking "Okay, this is really interesting, you want to hear this, come on, please don't fall asleep," but my eyes weren't agreeing with me. Oh well. (side note: When I was in the bathroom before the lecture began, two older women asked "Are you a Notre Dame student? Coming to see Seamus?" When I answered yes, they told me "We are Seamus' sisters, we are." It didn't hit me until later that those women were either Ellis, Una, or Dierdre, the women I had read about in the book. How cool!)
After an hour of struggling, he ended his lecture. Stephen Rea joined him on stage for a little talk-back. Through listening to people's comments (artists and members of the Derry community all flocked to the lecture), I learned that Field Day was a theatre company that formed as a reaction to the Troubles. Stephen Rea and a playwright called Brian Frield presented a play called Translations. Apparently the play and the theatre company were groundbreaking. People spoke of how the first performance was "magical" and how for 20 years Field Day replaced the Abbey as Ireland's national theatre. The plays must have continued from there (but I don't know for sure since they never explained what the heck Field Day was!) and included authors like Seamus Dean and Seamus Heaney. They kept the theatre company in this tiny, country town, right in one of the hotspots of The Troubles. The people in Derry spoke of Field Day as though it were a miracle. Apparently it sparked further creative and cultural experiments in Derry, and Derry has developed one of the most active cultural and theatrical cities in Northern Ireland.
Afterwards, Seamus Dean and Stephen Rea both came back to the Tower Hotel in Derry where all the ND students were staying. It was supposed to be a little reception, with a bit more of a question/answer session if we took the initiative. Even though there was champagne provided for us, all the Notre Dame students were, of course, told we could not drink it because Notre Dame was technically paying for it, and they were not allowed to give alcohol to students. Silly. At one point Kevin Whelan and Stephen Rea were having a chat, and Kevin called me over. I don't know, Kevin must think I'm this incredibly brilliant actress/singer, because he wanted me to talk to Stephen personally. I didn't know what to say! But luckily they were already in a conversation about musicals in which the actors play their own instruments, and how stephen is thinking of doing such a musical in 2013. I had something to add to the conversation, thankfully, and I talked about the Broadway revival of Company in which the actors played their own instruments (thank you brian davenport). Anyways, for a while in was just me, Kevin, and Stephen talking with about 15 students surrounding us listening, but later others joined in. Stephen asked if I played any instruments, how long I was going to be here...he mentioned that he was thinking of casting NOW. I answered his questions hurriedly, well aware that he was not going to cast me in his show!! But it was still nice that he asked.
That night we all just went to a pub in Derry, but I was pretty exhausted so I chose NOT to stay up until 5am to watch Notre Dame beat BC. The next morning started with a walking tour of Derry, led by Seamus Dean's brother Eamon. Very early on in the tour, we heard a loud shot. Probably a car backfiring, right? But then we heard another. Eamon stopped talking, looked around, and said "well...those were two high velocity shots. Someone's in trouble." He explained that those shots were either a Target shooting (perhaps someone the "Real" IRA, as they call themselves, has been pursuing), or a Punishment shooting, where a man gets kneecapped (shot in both knees). Pretty damn scary. The entire group was perrrrtty jumpy for the rest of the day.
Eamon showed us around town a bit. There is a beautiful World Wars memorial in the center of the town. It had been graffitied and abused for years and years, since it was a symbol of Britain in a lot of ways. It got to the point where they had to put a gate around the statue at night. Finally, they realized something had to be done. They traced back hundreds of names on the monument to find out if they had any relative still living in Derry. And they did. Dozens of families came forth to support the statue and remind the Nationalists in Derry that the World War monument is about the people who died, not the British government. From that day onward, there have been no further attempts to hurt the statue.
I learned that Derry was quite instrumental in the Troubles. It resisted internment in a way that no other town did, leading to the Battle of the Bogside where the residents of the city WON and the police were withdrawn. To celebrate that victory, there are signs and murals all over proclaiming "Free Derry." But it's not entirely Nationalist. There is still a very small pocket of Unionist families, all living in one specific corner of the town. On the protestant side, there are British flags and "warning signs" everywhere.
p.s. Feel free to read my review of The Plough and the Stars
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| Beautiful scenery outside our restaurant outside near Ballintoy. |
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| My friend Kyle looking pensive... |
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| Mary and Maisie rock climbing |
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| See those columns? Totally made by a giant. |
After an hour of struggling, he ended his lecture. Stephen Rea joined him on stage for a little talk-back. Through listening to people's comments (artists and members of the Derry community all flocked to the lecture), I learned that Field Day was a theatre company that formed as a reaction to the Troubles. Stephen Rea and a playwright called Brian Frield presented a play called Translations. Apparently the play and the theatre company were groundbreaking. People spoke of how the first performance was "magical" and how for 20 years Field Day replaced the Abbey as Ireland's national theatre. The plays must have continued from there (but I don't know for sure since they never explained what the heck Field Day was!) and included authors like Seamus Dean and Seamus Heaney. They kept the theatre company in this tiny, country town, right in one of the hotspots of The Troubles. The people in Derry spoke of Field Day as though it were a miracle. Apparently it sparked further creative and cultural experiments in Derry, and Derry has developed one of the most active cultural and theatrical cities in Northern Ireland.
Afterwards, Seamus Dean and Stephen Rea both came back to the Tower Hotel in Derry where all the ND students were staying. It was supposed to be a little reception, with a bit more of a question/answer session if we took the initiative. Even though there was champagne provided for us, all the Notre Dame students were, of course, told we could not drink it because Notre Dame was technically paying for it, and they were not allowed to give alcohol to students. Silly. At one point Kevin Whelan and Stephen Rea were having a chat, and Kevin called me over. I don't know, Kevin must think I'm this incredibly brilliant actress/singer, because he wanted me to talk to Stephen personally. I didn't know what to say! But luckily they were already in a conversation about musicals in which the actors play their own instruments, and how stephen is thinking of doing such a musical in 2013. I had something to add to the conversation, thankfully, and I talked about the Broadway revival of Company in which the actors played their own instruments (thank you brian davenport). Anyways, for a while in was just me, Kevin, and Stephen talking with about 15 students surrounding us listening, but later others joined in. Stephen asked if I played any instruments, how long I was going to be here...he mentioned that he was thinking of casting NOW. I answered his questions hurriedly, well aware that he was not going to cast me in his show!! But it was still nice that he asked.
That night we all just went to a pub in Derry, but I was pretty exhausted so I chose NOT to stay up until 5am to watch Notre Dame beat BC. The next morning started with a walking tour of Derry, led by Seamus Dean's brother Eamon. Very early on in the tour, we heard a loud shot. Probably a car backfiring, right? But then we heard another. Eamon stopped talking, looked around, and said "well...those were two high velocity shots. Someone's in trouble." He explained that those shots were either a Target shooting (perhaps someone the "Real" IRA, as they call themselves, has been pursuing), or a Punishment shooting, where a man gets kneecapped (shot in both knees). Pretty damn scary. The entire group was perrrrtty jumpy for the rest of the day.
I learned that Derry was quite instrumental in the Troubles. It resisted internment in a way that no other town did, leading to the Battle of the Bogside where the residents of the city WON and the police were withdrawn. To celebrate that victory, there are signs and murals all over proclaiming "Free Derry." But it's not entirely Nationalist. There is still a very small pocket of Unionist families, all living in one specific corner of the town. On the protestant side, there are British flags and "warning signs" everywhere.
We took a tour of the different murals in town, which you can check out here. After Mass at St. Eurgene's Cathedral (beautifulllllll) we headed back to Belfast for a walking tour there. Peter Maguire, a man who lived through the Troubles, took us on the tour, and shared some pretty brutal experiences. He took us to Bombay St, where the Troubles are said to have begun. The Protestant police force in Belfast saw the violence that had been mounting between the Catholics and the Protestants, and they decided to put an end to it. They lit dozens of Catholic homes on fire, killing many and destroying every home on the street. The IRA, which was small at the time, began to gather community support after the burning, and developed into the horribly violent, Republican group we think of them as today.
After a tour of more murals and streets filled with tragic history, we met up with a man who was, in fact, a member of the IRA for 40 years. He had been shot twice, had been a political prisoner for 7 years of his life, and said he would do it all again. He admitted that some IRA members were as brutal, as violent, and as aggressive as they are depicted in movies, but some like himself were fighting because they couldn't stand to watch everyone around them die. I loved hearing about all this from men that were actually in the thick of it, and seeing that they have a normal life and children to take care of now. Both men said they don't tell their children most of the things they tell us--they don't want their kids to grow up hating Protestants. To end the day, we went to the Protestant side of town, Shankill road. Kevin and Peter Maguire told us that they would never have dared set foot on this side of town as little as 5 years ago. There is still a huge wall dividing the city, keeping people from throwing bombs and rocks to the other side. At 8pm every night, the gate between the two sides closes. After 8pm, you can't leave your side. The division is everywhere--in your name, in the church you go to, in where you go to school, in who you're friends with. I had no idea that tensions were still so strong today. They remain two different worlds, literally just a stone's throw away.
That was the weekend. Sorry I wrote a novel, but there's just too much to say about all of this. I made the font and pictures smaller though, in an attempt to make it look shorter :) I'm going to go write a theology paper now! I'm heading to Edinburgh Thursday night, so I'm sure there will be another long blog post coming up!
Slainte,
Clare Mairead
p.s. Feel free to read my review of The Plough and the Stars
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