Day 3 Belfast, unedited

Quick disclaimer: our tours and experiences were mostly from the perspectives of Catholic Republicans, but this is not to put down the plight of the Protestant Unionists who have been living in Northern Ireland for hundreds of years as well.
Wednesday was pretty wonderful/dramatic. We went on a tour of Belfast with the famous Gerry, who showed us around the city, demonstrating which streets constituted which neighborhoods (the difference between Republican and Unionist neighborhoods can be a mere street) as well as the most amazing surprise along our mural tour – Danny Devenny, the artist who is responsible for most of the murals! This cannot mean much to someone who hasn’t met him, but he is such a wise, enlightening man with a powerful presence. I’ll talk about him later in my account. Anyway, it was an on and off bus tour that was unfortunately rushed and definitely not long enough, but Gerry presented us with photographs of the city from 30 years prior during the Troubles and then we compared it to present-day Belfast. Even today, you can see large dents next to the police station where they fired three rounds of RPGs, and the station is surrounded by metal protection and cameras. It gives you an eerie feeling like the protection is still definitely necessary. Gerry talked about different quarrels between the local Unionist groups, the UVF (Ulster Volunteer Force) and the UFF (Ulster Freedom Fighters), and that there were individuals with their own agendas who would use violence as a means to an end. Some families were mixed, meaning that there were Catholics and Protestants in one unit; nothing is black and white in these situations. No individuals are enemies in these situations; no sides of a fight are “bad” sides. When kids play games and one kid plays the “good guy” and the other the “bad guy,” they often grow up completely unaware that they apply that mentality to real life situations, and that’s just not applicable most of the time. The Republicans are big supporters for Palestine’s cause, flying the Palestinian flag in some places, so we talk about that situation and its applicability to Ireland often. I think that the Gaza blockade and the recent Israeli attacks on the flotilla providing humanitarian aid are absolutely despicable, shame on Israel, but they started as a displaced people in search of their holy land. I sympathize, and shame on America for involving itself yet again in affairs that it doesn’t understand or respect. In fact, on our fabulous mural tour, we witnessed some politically charged murals (you can see fabulous Danny Devenny in front of a Bush mural) with portraits of people like MLK Jr., Nelson Mendela, and Mother Theresa. Danny was the artist who painted the internationally famous mural of political prisoner Bobby Sands, the mural that grabbed public attention and was shown on international television programs. Bobby Sands was a Republican political prisoner who won an MP seat in the British parliament while in the prison Long Kesh; he died almost a month after the election from starvation, a product of his world-famous hunger strike to achieve POW status instead of criminal status. He exposed the world to the lack of civil rights by the extremity of his actions, and many see him as a martyr (though old British PM Margaret Thatcher did not). Currently, there is a feeling of hope for the future and a sense of peace that is slowly settling in people’s hearts, and Danny engendered that feeling of peace gained from the wisdom many developed from surviving the Troubles. He said something that really impacted a lot of us: (paraphrased) hindsight is like looking in a rear-view mirror; if you look too long, you’ll crash. What a hopeful reminder to stay present and work toward peace for their people! I’ve heard these hopeful sentiments from many different places and people, and it’s really refreshing after hearing about violence as a result of political control.

That night, we saw the O’Malley experience, some AMAZING, funny Irish musicians who played with traditional Irish river dance-style dancers. The concert was a blast, and the boys of our group tried (and almost succeeded) to dance with the ladies for a song! Irish music is full of anecdotes and history, and the stories behind the music are just as enjoyable as the music itself. They were so good that we demanded an encore, which I’m pretty sure is an American thing, and the last song was so raw that I shed a few tears. It was a culmination of everything that we’d been exposed to all day. Afterward, drinks at the pub, wandering around looking for good dancing, and one of the most intense moments of my experience in Belfast.
A new paragraph is necessary for this. Chris, Molly, and I were journeying home from the city centre to Elms Village, and three guys a little younger than us got off of a bench in front of city hall and tried to get Chris’s attention. Chris stopped to talk to them, and they surrounded him.
Guy: Hey, where are you from?
Chris: America
Guy: Oh, cool! Well, what were you doing tonight?
Chris: We were just having some drinks at the bar.
Guy: Oh, great! Which bar did you go to?
Chris: Uhhh, Dukes of York.
Guy: Great! Well, you can go on. Have a nice night!
It felt so much like these guys were really territorial and they were making sure that we went to the right places, had the right political allegiance, and they might have jumped Chris if he’d said something wrong. We took a taxi the rest of the way home and have ventured in only large groups ever since.
So that was my third night in Ireland, and we’re at night 7 or something, but I’m too tired to keep writing. We’re taking a coach to Dublin early in the morning, and Chelsea’s meeting me there. So excited!! To be continued…