I was extra prepared this time--more sunscreen, more varieties of sunscreen, repeat applications, etc. I still got a damn sunburn. Are we closer to the sun here? Is the sun more intense? Am I outside more? I guess it doesn't really matter. All I know is that despite what people tell me about the typically dreary weather here, it's always relentlessly sunny when I'm in Ireland. I'm not the only one with a sunburn though, I'd say about 80% of our students are sporting some variety of sunburn as well--peeling noses, red necks, scorched parts.
Also, I'm still fighting off this damn cold. To make things even worse, when we got home from Belfast yesterday, I discovered that I've got some kind of conjunctivitis in my right eye. So now I'm sunburned, coughing, and I have a crusty right eye. The pharmacist gave me some drops and I'm praying that they work...
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| Brolene eye drops. |
But, hey, we're still having fun!
Day 12
Friday started off with Tim and I taking a ride to the
Marino Institute of Education to meet our students and the van that would be taking us to Belfast. The campus is in a neighborhood, but set back off the street with a gated entrance. It's lush and green with old buildings with slate roofs.
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| Reception. |
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| Campus buildings and gate. |
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Courtyard near reception.
As I've mentioned in previous posts, students have been great about showing up where they need to be on time. Today proved to be the exception. We were supposed to depart at 9:30 to meet up with our first tour in Belfast at 11:30, but we didn't get on the road until 9:45 because one student was still trying to pack and had to be fetched from her room. Despite our late start, our van was comfortable and our driver got us to our destination nearly on time. |
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| Tim playing cards with students on the van to Belfast. |
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| Students reading Are You Someone? |
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Back of the van.
Our tour in Belfast was organized by Coiste and is designed to provide students with multiple perspectives on the Troubles in West Belfast. If you've never been to West Belfast, you're in for a shock. Or at least I was when I first visited seven years ago. I grew up listening to reports about the Troubles on the news, but after the Good Friday agreement (thanks, Bill), I naively assumed that, well, things went back to "normal." I had no idea what normal was or what normal could be. Until you visit West Belfast, you can't imagine a modern city literally divided by "peace lines" or "peace walls." Throughout the six northern counties there are over 20 miles of peace walls--up to 25 feet high. This is something I tried to prepare our students for, but it's difficult to imagine without seeing it for yourself. There are also gates in these walls that lock every night at 7:00 pm to protect those on either side largely from each other.
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The first half of the tour was on Shankill Road by a loyalist tour guide who was former British military. This part of the tour was difficult to swallow--at this point our students are not neutral on the occupation of Ireland, especially in the northern six counties. So, to listen to a tour guide compare Sinn Fein to ISIS and to hear him argue about the unfounded terrorist activities of the IRA required patience and a fair amount of goodwill. The public memorials to people who were killed by the IRA and the glorification of Ulster military groups was hard to hear, especially considering that he told us that he's never been to the Irish side of Belfast. Not once in his lifetime (he's lived here his whole life and was easily in his early 60s) has he been past the peace wall to the Irish side. He assured us that what we would see on the "Catholic side" would be just as graphic as what we were seeing on the loyalist side of the wall. How could he know that he was absolutely wrong?
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| Union Jack bunting left over from the coronation and in preparation for marching season. |
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| Loyalist propaganda. |
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| Loyalist propaganda comparing the IRA to ISIS. |
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| Obnoxious tribute to King Charles. |
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Mural glorifying the UVF.
The second half of our tour was told from the republican perspective. We met our new guide outside the peace wall--the guides shook hands. The loyalist guide wasn't sure how the hand off would go (would the other guide shake his hand, would there be any acknowledgement of each other, etc.)--that's now much these tensions are still a part of day-to-day life here. Now, up until this point we've had great republican guides. I'm not saying this guide wasn't good, it's just that he wasn't very mindful of how hot it was or the fact that we'd just come off of another hour and fifteen minutes tour. Also, his accent was difficult to understand and could have used a mic. Regardless, we saw and learned much on our tour including the fact that our guide served seven years in prison for belonging to the junior IRA, that he used to play table tennis with Bobby Sands, and that he's not much of a fan of Bono. |
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| Standing on the protestant side of the peace wall with our loyalist guide. |
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| The gates in the peace wall. |
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| Students listening to our republican guide--you can practically feel them melting in the sun. This is when the sunburns really started kicking in. |
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| View of the peace wall from the Catholic side--you can see that there are extra reinforcements on the back side of the houses so that children can play outside without worrying about stuff being thrown over the wall at them. |
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| Where the street ends. Before the wall was built in the late 60s, this road went all the way through. |
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| Mural to Bobby Sands. |
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Outside Sinn Fein headquarters.
If you can believe it, after nearly three hours of tours, we still had more ahead of us. In the Coiste headquarters we listened to a panel that offered three different perspectives on the Troubles--one was loyalist (served many years in prison for shooting three IRA), one was republican (served many years in prison for various "crimes"), and one was a former British solider who was deployed to West Belfast during the Troubles. The panel was fascinating and it was easy to see that it was difficult for these men, especially the loyalist and the republican, to sit together and to listen to each other's stories. The question of truth is one that spins around without any resolution--whose truth? Truth in what context? Truth for which purpose? |
An hour and a half later, we were finally deposited in our hotel. Mine had a view of
William of Orange. Sigh. I guess with signposts like this you never wonder what part of town you're in. Overall, we had an exhausting, but wonderful day with our students and I think we were all grateful for our beds that night.
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| Mural of William of Orange |
Day 13
After an enormous breakfast at the hotel, we all climbed back on our van and headed off to the
Giant's Causeway. This was my third visit and it never fails to impress. And while I'm fine with walking down to the site, because of my previous visits I now know that I have no interest in walking back up. So, I made sure that I had a few pound coins in my bag for Tim and I to take the bus back up! I get the same otherworldly feeling when I visit the Giant's Causeway that I get when I've been to places like Yellowstone. There's a barren beauty to it. And despite the hoards of tourists, it isn't difficult to find a spot to sit down and to reflect on the fact that while the world is filled with terror, it's also filled with unspeakable splendor.
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