Derry/Londonderry

I haven’t updated the last two or so weeks, so I hope everything will be pretty fresh. In my other updates I haven’t mentioned the weather. Every single Irish person I talk to tells me how unusually warm and sunny it is – 3 weeks of nothing but sun in Ireland!
The last two days in Belfast were free days, and we spent a lot of time at the pub at the Bot (the Botanic Inn) watching the football games and drinking beer. I’ve been drinking a lot of Jameson and Smithwick’s, though in Dublin there’s a bar called the Porterhouse that makes its own brews. Delish! Also, I had steak for the first time in months… well, I had it twice… in a steak and Guinness pie. When in Ireland, right? Also delish! I cannot stand the Irish tradition of frying EVERYTHING they eat, and I was constipated for almost a week (sorry for the overshare, but bodily reactions are a part of the traveling experience). One night in Belfast, we went to the city center and watched two guys from the O’Malley Experience, the show we saw the night before, play a show outside (brrr) a neat old pub… well, almost every pub in Ireland is a neat old pub. They are break-your-heart good musicians and played some blues and a few old Irish songs and bought us beers after the show. They said that the show was one of the most enjoyable they’d ever played, despite the cold. Lovely gentlemen.We took a train the next day to Derry/Londonderry and made the long hike with all of our luggage and had another free day in Derry/Londonderry, unfortunately on a Sunday when everything was closed. We were staying in a sweet little hotel/hostel/community center… I’m not really sure what to call it… in the middle of the local uptown park. We were far away from everything, so we did a lot of walking. They gave us meals everyday while we were there, and this was the beginning of the real upset stomach. I basically didn’t have any vegetables for 5 or 6 days, and so I broke down and purchased my own produce, which isn’t very good in Derry/Londonderry. The apples are the most fantastic apples I’ve ever had, and the carrots are good. That’s about it. Anyway! Kari and I took a walk over the river to look at the city, which is still covered with graffiti, flags everywhere demonstrating areas’ political allegiances, and a strange, almost hostile hush on the city that is indicative of the tension that still exists between both sides. We were walking on the wall around the city built in the 16-1700’s, now called the “peace wall,” and it obviously divides Catholic from Protestant neighborhoods. The peace wall exists in order to separate the neighborhoods and prevent people from either side to attack or bombard the other side. There are metal gates in front of the residential areas to prevent petrol bombs, rocks, nail bombs, etc., from hitting the homes. People’s backyards, where you can see children’s yard toys, are basically fenced in. It’s really shocking to see, 12 years after a formal ceasefire has been declared. We kept walking, and we accidentally found the Bogside, the Catholic ghetto of Derry/Londonderry (called Derry in the Bogside). It was surprising because we didn’t expect to come upon the site of so much violence and rioting and raids and political turmoil so quickly after seeing the nice Protestant neighborhoods. On a lighter note, Kari and I also went to a little shopping mall, where I purchased a new camera!
Monday, we went on a mural tour of the Bogside and the Bloody Sunday museum. We had two really fantastic tour guides, John Kelly in the museum and Adrian? around the city. Adrian told us in-depth history of Derry/Londonderry and showed us a lot of the murals that are painted on the sides of buildings that tell the stories of Bloody Sunday, the civil rights movement, how the women were involved, who has inspired peace in Free Derry, mourning the dead, etc. Bloody Sunday's a really fucked up event in 1972 when the British, who were supposed to be protecting the peace during a civil rights march, fired on the Nationalists and innocent civilians. The British soldiers got off almost completely blame-free because they claimed that the civilians were carrying weapons and throwing nail bombs. On June 15 (while we were in Belfast) The Saville Inquiry, after 11 years of reexamining the event, released a statement that all those killed or injured in the event were found to be innocent. John Kelly, brother of one of the victims Michael Kelly, was our tour guide in the museum. He explained that all he and his family had wanted was for Michael's name to be cleared. Michael's mother is now smiling in Heaven. Adrian also told us about growing up in the Bogside, in the same building as one of the leaders of the IRA. He told us about gathering any free cloth, such as from drapes or old clothing, for the women who were assembling trays of Molotov cocktails in the kitchen. When the British soldiers came to the edge of the Bogside (there was a blockade that the Nationalists had pulled down when the British soldiers first arrived, and then after Bloody Sunday they built it back up) and fired “non-lethal” rubber bullets at civilians, children would all wait for the rubber bullets to ricochet off of buildings, and then they would chase after the bullets. When the British left, the children would look for the metal shells from the bullets. While I climbed trees and played with my dog as a child, they were playing with rubber bullets. One mural commemorated a 12 year old girl who was shot by a British soldier with a rubber bullet and killed. These personal stories are what make the situation so potent and humanize the violence; I do want to say that we only went to the Catholic and Nationalist neighborhoods while in Derry/Londonderry. We have also heard the Unionist and Protestant side in Dublin, and I very much sympathize with both sides. However, hearing gory details from one side helps me understand how civilians have been inextricably involved with the political movements that civilians have no control over, how labels and names and symbols play their roles in these situations, how people are so apt to make judgments when they just don’t know.
Our last night in Derry/Londonderry, the whole group got together and watched a World Cup match and then sang karaoke and danced at the Icon, basically a nicer version of TGI Fridays, haha. They loved us, called our group a “breath of fresh air.” It was a nice wind-down from the heaviness of the day. The next morning was the last morning I would endure a traditional greasy Irish breakfast.