Comings & Goings -Through Ireland's Revolving Door

Introduction

2010-04-09T15:35:00.000-07:00

Immigration is now a significant reality in Ireland, and one that is changing the dynamics of our culture and economy. This book attempts to give these immigrants a voice, a chance to tell us how they are experiencing Ireland, and the Irish.

While on the surface it might be easy enough to adapt to a new country, the mental adjustment takes years. All the subtle nuances of communication, the cultural, political and social worldviews, picked up so gradually via radio and TV, the different humour and identifications of the host population have to be assimilated if integration has to be successful. And while the immigrant is using a lot of energy and effort to adapt, the locals don’t bother much to imagine what it’s like for immigrants – unless they’ve been there, done that, themselves. These stories give Irish natives a chance to understand their point of view.

It’s the concept of home that is so elusive to immigrants and refugees. Home doesn’t necessarily mean a house of your own, but a sense of belonging to a community, to a place, sharing a cultural identity. New immigrants often sacrifice their own need for a sense of ‘home’ in the hope that their children will one day be part of Ireland’s new cultural identity.

One of my interviewees, Sahr Yambasu, from Sierra Leone, writing an essay about his experience of migration in Unsettling the Horses, quotes Stuart Hall:

Cultural identity…is a matter of ‘becoming’ as well as of ‘being’. It belongs to the future as much as to the past…Cultural identities come from somewhere, have histories. But …, they undergo constant transformation.*

In the next generation or two, a transformation will take place in our cultural identity, and it is up to us how integrated and successful that transformation is.

Immigration is the biggest single factor influencing our society today. The Census figures for 2006 show that the Irish native population numbers 3,707,683, while non-Irish figures are already almost half a million, at 419, 733, with the highest number coming from the European Union. This means that one in every eight people in Ireland is an immigrant. This is reality that must be faced – now.

Given the low rates of immigration until the recent past, it’s not surprising that government is only now giving serious consideration to facilitating integration. But it is an issue that will require careful and sensitive handling for assimilation to take place effectively and with the minimum of disruption to the status quo.

While many Irish people have expressed alarm at the exponential rate of immigration, there are undoubted benefits for the country. I remember once seeing eleven obviously Irish faces on the cover of a Time magazine, the accompanying story telling us that as a monoculture, Ireland has such a small, in-bred gene pool, that every native looks like one of the faces on the cover! We obviously need to add new blood. The economy also stands to benefit from immigration. For employers, the advantages are a more efficient service and greater productivity, as well as a larger consumer market. Sure there’s more competition, but with increased competition comes higher standards.

Ireland was quick to predict the IT revolution, train up the youth, and offer tax incentives to foreign companies locating here. But now that salaries are not so competitive any more, foreign investors have already begun looking to relocate to countries such as India, where there are equally well-educated, trained and (let’s not forget) English-speaking IT experts. Something needs to be done to stop all that investment from being withdrawn. With multi-lingual workers joining the workforce, Ireland becoming a popular base for call centres, the picture looks more attractive to investors.

Another aspect of the economic climate in Ireland that needs to be addressed is our prohibitive childcare costs. Many women would like to work – or would work longer hours – if they could find affordable child care. Immigrants can be employed at competitive rates to look after children so that parents, typically mothers, can be released to do higher-paid jobs.

People who migrate tend to be young, healthy, enterprising and adventurous,* thus they are a rejuvenating influence in a country that is already seeing the effects of a falling birth rate and increased ageing. Many of our care workers are foreign, and will become more highly valued as the population ages and residential homes fill. Just as the supply of migrants is likely to increase, so too is the demand.

These advantages are, of course, be offset by the disadvantages, such as increased housing and waste management, as well as the social challenges of opening Ireland up to other cultural influences. But Ireland is very homogenous and hardly at risk of losing its own individuality. With careful planning, and a gradual filtering process, the outcome is more likely to be a welcome ‘sprinkling of colour on the Irish green’, as one of my interviewees put it. The Irish can well rise to the challenge, seeing this as an opportunity to redefine Ireland’s potential as a dynamic presence in Europe. As we are a relatively recent host country, we can benefit by the hindsight of other countries such as Britain, Australia, France, Holland and Sweden, who have had their doors open to immigrants for decades longer, and have learned by trial and error how to minimise the potential disruption to the status quo.

Unfortunately, in spite of the Irish reputation for being humanitarian, donating more per
capita to charity than most other European countries, in the last number of years, racism has been on the rise. Immigration has ignited a sense of resentment among many natives, who express their objections to immigrants in economic terms, when often the lashing out is actually racially motivated. It’s a common phenomenon in Ireland to project social problems onto a marginalised group. It used to be single mothers; then it was Travellers. Now it’s immigrants.

Asylum seekers are often treated with suspicion. Many locals are misinformed and don’t bother checking their facts. I’ve heard Irish people complain that asylum seekers are being given cars, mobile phones, ‘buggies’ for their toddlers. According to a Social Welfare officer interviewed in a film about immigrants called Who Are We Now?* this is ‘all rubbish.’ As for benefits received, they are more than repaid in taxes paid by working immigrants.**

Little attention is paid to the benefits that cross-cultural immigration brings. Many developing countries, such as India and Pakistan, have more graduates than they need, and according to UNESCO, as many as 30 000 Africans holding PhD degrees are now living outside the continent.***

Ireland, as one of the receiving countries, reaps undoubted benefits from their skills. But the current immigration policy is wasting this valuable potential resource. One negative aspect about the situation for asylum seekers is that while waiting for their applications for refugee status to be processed, they are not allowed temporary visas to work, and must instead depend on social welfare.

The asylum seekers I spoke to, hate not being allowed to work. They feel isolated, frustrated, anxious, depressed, stressed and bored with the monotony of waiting for their applications to be processed. Unless they come from a high-profile country like Nigeria, whose applications are fast-tracked, they could wait up to three years before getting on with real life. They are also deprived of the dignity that a job engenders, and remain in a
limbo state. Living with almost no money, and nothing to do, is humiliating and psychologically damaging. They cannot make progress in their new home. If temporary work permits were issued while their applications were in process, it would reduce expenses to the state and facilitate integration and a sense of individual well-being.

There is no doubt that the state’s handling of the situation, and the media’s tendency to highlight nationality in criminal cases, are partly to blame for the tension created by the rapid influx of immigrants over the last decade.

While temporary work permits would definitely alleviate the situation for immigrants, the state also has a responsibility to act morally, to set an example of humane treatment to refugees who are often too traumatised or in fragile health to contribute much to the economy. ‘Asylum is about morality’, writes Caroline Moorehead in her excellent book, Human Cargo, and ‘in an age of globalisation, it is simply not possible to ignore the world’s dispossessed. How a state deals with its refugees should be a measure of its social and political health.’ *

The media has the same moral responsibility. Editors should be particularly alert to potentially damaging headlines, such as, “Refugee rapist on the rampage”, one headline which was rightly criticised in a Questions and Answers programme in February 2005. It should be remembered that, whatever a foreigner’s reasons for leaving their homeland, the vast majority would not attempt to begin a new life in a new country with a hostile or aggressive attitude. It’s more likely to be one of humility, and hope.

These stories speak for themselves. They show us who we have living among us. They describe how immigrants feel about the Irish, what their attitudes to living in Ireland are, what their expectations were when they came here and how they have found it. It shows their courage, ability to adapt to a new culture, sometimes a new language. It also describes their experiences on arrival, and gives locals more of an awareness of the immigration process for asylum seekers.

I found it interesting to gain an insight into other cultures, from the viewpoint of natives of
those places, and to see Ireland through the eyes of immigrants. As long as we humbly accept their opinions as valid, we can only benefit from their ideas.

Different backgrounds and cultures emerge. These are personal perceptions and opinions of their cultures, not necessarily accurate, historical accounts. But mostly, they are simply stories of individual lives. They reveal the common ground that we share as fellow human beings: here we see, yes, some individuals who have suffered from living in communist, or war-torn countries, but also those who have studied, fallen in love, experimented with drugs, tried out different work experiences, endured cancer, the death of a loved one, the difficulty of single parenthood, the trauma of separation and divorce. In other words, just people, like us.

Afric McGlinchey
November 2007

*Unsettling the Horses, quoting Stuart Hall, cited in Rutherford, 1990:225.
* Central Statistics Office (www.cso.ie)
**(Nasc, the Irish immigrant Support Centre report about asylum and immigration policy and practice in Ireland.)
*The No Nonsense Guide to International Migration p.90
*Filmed by Eddie Noonan of Frameworks.
** Nasc report.
*** The No-Nonsense Guide to International Migration.
*Human Cargo by Caroline Moorehead

It's all the same lonely planet

2009-11-16T16:25:00.000-08:00

Gene is a big man. And that’s not just a physical description. A Vietnam Vet who moved to Ireland in the eighties, he lives in Schull, where, with only one third of an acre at his disposal, he has developed a nursery and gardeners’ paradise. We met at his house, and he took me on a tour of his garden while he talked. I have never met anyone so relaxed, yet so alive, so enthusiastic about life. His slow, southern drawl was hypnotic, but otherwise his dreads and woolly hat, his personality seemed more Jamaican than American. While talking, he picked organic lettuce leaves from different heads for me to take home.

I was born in South Carolina. My mum had me, and three days later she went back to picking cotton. They had these bags, which they dragged along. So she just put me on the end. What did I see, there on the sack? Then we moved from South Carolina - we still have the 40-acre farm there – to just outside Philadelphia, and did a lot of migrant work, picking vegetables. So I grew up in the suburbs of Philadelphia. There were eight of us kids, four boys and four girls. I was number four.

Everyone was mad for Mum and Dad. They did all of this, and had eight kids, without welfare. To this day, I don’t approve of the welfare system. We didn’t even find out we were poor until we moved into town! And somebody told us, ‘you’re poor,’ and we went, ‘oh no, shit, we’re poor!’ Whereas our life was fine, we always had plenty to eat. I don’t recall crying or being underweight. We all worked on the farm, picking vegetables around the area, and Mum always packed enough, and canned enough and froze enough. We ate chicken feet and chicken necks; I still remember, ‘don’t touch the wings!’ To this day, I get the wings. It’s just like fish. We used to fry the whole fish. Bones to the left, bits to the right. No complaints.

My mum was great. I used to tell her that I was going to dress her up in a pink bikini and put her on my boat when I got custody of her! That’s the kind of stuff we used to talk. She goes, ‘as soon as I get those arms around me I’m gonna grab that pair of scissors and get that beard off your face’. The she got dementia. She was getting to the point where she didn’t know me. My sisters were taking care of her. She just passed one day. I’m the only one with good memories, because I don’t do funerals.

They knew I wasn’t coming. My brother had cancer. I went over to see him. We sat there and talked. He was washing his car and doing his stuff. Ten days after, boom, he was dead. He had prepared everything and he just went on out. His family was all there. And my mum was having the best day of her recent times. Then she went home, into the bathroom lay down and died. All I got is happy memories of both of them.

When my boys asked what happened to their Gran, I said, ‘She went fishin’. So now that’s what we say. My father – Liam is named after him - is very cool, deeply religious, overweight. He had a stroke. He was expected to die. He had fallen, was bleeding in the brain. He was in hospital, on a do not resuscitate thing. We were just waiting for him to die. Then one day he woke up, said, ’I can’t eat this food any more. I got some chicken at home I want to eat.’ And he got up and left! He couldn’t walk or anything, and now he’s made a complete recovery, he’s gotten over the trauma of losing his wife of fifty something years, and he’s great. No ill effects. Just before I came over to visit him, the family goes to him, ‘um, look, it’s pointless you dying, ‘cos Gene’s done booked this ticket!’ So you got to wait till next Thursday. Then my little brother was dying. And he goes, ‘Look. You try to copy everything I do. I’m dying, now you wanna die!’ The next time he says he’s not gonna make it, they go, ‘your niece is coming at 8.30, you have to wait till then.’ And so it went on. You can’t die without permission.

So anyway, when I was 17, the Vietnam War came up, and in 1964, I volunteered to go to the Air Force to avoid combat, and ended up in the first combat outfit in the Air Force! It was just like the movies, getting trained in the jungle, I mean, this is it, living off the land, counter intelligence, all this stuff. Because it was a new idea to have combat engineers in the air force, which doesn’t make any sense, they decided they were going to intensively train us. We were already in the military with the Air Force, so they had the navy, the marines and the army train us all again! We had six of these outfits, specially named Red Horse, which stood for Rapid Emergency Deployment of Heavy Operational Repair Squadron of Engineers! In other words, they would drop 600 of us anywhere in the world – we had doctors, lawyers, cooks, everybody – and we would build cities, instantly, for the people who were coming. So we were like, on our own in danger zones, to make ready for the ones who were going to come to protect us, afterwards!

They gave us $2 million worth of equipment. Everyone had their own vehicles, everything.

The whole place was a combat zone. So it was nothing to go to sleep and wake up in the morning and find that half of everything was blown up. We had the Russians and the Chinese versus the Americans. These two great powers with the Vietnamese in the middle.

How did you feel, emotionally, about the situation at that time?

Well, Flower Power was only just beginning to kick in. The hippies weren’t even hippies yet. It was great, we were John Wayne. We were heroes. We got to die for our country! I was 17 and this was it. No one thought of the politics. All of that was hindsight. When we left the States in ’64, everyone was throwing flowers on us. Everyone was there, your parents were hugging you, your friends…when we came back everyone was throwing rocks at us.

Did you ever kill anyone?

Probably inadvertently. There was no hand-to-hand shit. Forget all that stuff. If anything, everyone runs in the opposite direction anytime shit goes down. But by loading the planes, by calling in for help or something, you were just as involved whether or not you actually saw it. I’d say everybody did like I did. If you heard someone shooting at you, you shot back as many bullets as you had, and you hoped it got quiet before you got hurt, you know? When you really, really got scared, you wanted to get hurt. Not badly. Only in the leg, in my arm, just to get out!

There were 50 to 60 000 guys a month, rotating there. So there were millions. I came back when the momentum shifted during the Tet offensive. The Chinese New Year. There was an all out reversal. They attacked us to the point where the Americans decided to leave. I made it. I got home. My brother didn’t make it.

Were you there together?

No. There was actually a law called the Sullivan Law, whereby brothers never went out at the same time. All of the Sullivan brothers died on one ship. So if there’s no one to carry the name on, you don’t have to go. But they hold you on the side so you’re next. So they gave us the choice that if he did go, he could ask for whatever he wanted. So he got to be a pilot. And he got killed.

In my neighbourhood, out of say a dozen guys I knew, three, four, five of them were killed, a couple were wounded, a couple never talked straight again. The neighbourhood I came from was devastated. It wasn’t devastated to a point where it didn’t regenerate, but 12 or 14 guys you grew up with, were gone. Aged only 17 or 18.

I do think human beings are stamped and set. The people who were affected mentally, would have been affected mentally in another situation. You can bury a little, but, basically, if you got up and started working, you would end up somewhere. As far as control goes, you have to try and get to a point where you can make decisions – do you turn right, or left - there are still decisions to make, still different outcomes.

After four years in Vietnam, I came back. I had done a lot of growing up in a very short space of time. Then I went to university. I took art. What happened was, when you went to Vietnam, your education was free after you got out, and you got paid x amount of money a week, just to go to school. And sitting around after Vietnam was kind of mild, like you don’t have your machine gun, you don’t have your hand grenades, you don’t have a licence to kill if necessary…

In the military I was an aircraft mechanic, specialising in metals. Anything that broke or snapped or cracked, that was my job. You come into a place like the military at age 17, they send you off to school, and they teach you. Then there you are, an 18 year old in charge of a 30 or 40 million dollar plane, and it’s your word to say what to do. You have a gun, you have all this stuff. What a head sweller. Then when you get out, now they don’t like what you did in hindsight. Me I just go on. I developed a tolerance for whatever people want to do.

What did you do after the war?

I signed up for evening classes and I had a lovely job on the garbage truck. I did that for seven years, and went to university nights. I really enjoyed it. I took glassblowing, sculpture, painting, English, photography. You accumulate sixty credits, and then you declare your major. You do it the way you want it. So I did all the things I wanted to do.

Tell me about the garbage job.

In the States all the black guys used to work on the garbage trucks, that was the low life job. So in this private company the Mafia had taken over, there would be three guys on the truck. And the incentive was you got 1000 houses to do and when you got done, you got a day’s pay. Now if you did it like this…(trudges along slowly) you’d be out there for 10 hours. But if you did it like this (races around the room) you’d be done by 12.30!

You’d be on the back of the truck. The driver would pull up to the trashcans, stop and put the mechanism on. And by the time he’s done that, you’ve grabbed the two cans, taken a step around and there’s a bar on the back of the truck, which you’d use, bring the cans upside down, smash them down, the trash would fall out, you’d take a step back, set the cans back up, and grab onto the truck before he takes off. Whole thing, three steps. Onto the next one. And all these black guys out there would be singing and sweating, talking shit, and you’re laughing and carrying on, and by 12.30 we’d be done, and sitting out under the trees. And I did that like for 7 years. It was a real no brain job. Then the job turned out to be so well paid, most of the whites are on it now. For years, my truck was always the first one in. Once you got back, they’d pay you $15 to go out again. And you could go and make $15 in an hour. You had to take it to the dump. They had machines where they’d push it in. big mounds of stuff, so you could get stuck. You had to know what to do to avoid a breakdown. And these guys respected that I never had a breakdown.

But then I got bored one day, called my younger brother to come by (he just died last year) and I says, ‘Gerry, here are the keys to the house, I’m leaving’. And then I went to Florida.

I used to play football and go diving and jogging, all the beach fun stuff. I was about 28. And I just met this Irish girl called Alyn who was living next door, with the weirdest, funniest, accent! And being a brother you talk all this kind of shit, like, ‘hey baby, what you doin’? And we used to sit out there and have fun. She and her boyfriend broke up and me and my friend Craig and Alyn became the three. And we’d just hang out. That was in 1979, and to this day we’ve never stopped hanging out together!

She was a pretty little delicate thing. And the most amazing thing is it’s all these years later, and it’s still the same. There’s nothing that I wouldn’t do for that little girl. And she’s not afraid of this big guy. So it’s like, OK. Whatever you wanna do, babe, it’s fine. We go everywhere together; everything’s still exciting to us. I watched her take up her first pencil, go to art school, get her arts degree, start the arts festival. I love watching her do it, just like I like watching my son do music, write and all that.

How did your relationship with a white girl go down with your family?

Well, the tolerance with black people is different. Blacks don’t have the same prejudices. Prejudices only happen to people who have something they don’t want to lose. And growing up in the north with people who had tolerance, it was no big deal. It wasn’t a big deal with me. But we met in Florida, in the south. So there, actually to be with someone with a different race, you were still looked at as though you were weird. We just passed it on by.

I’ve always had a pretty steady head. People do what they want to do. I don’t mind. I’m fine, just coping with the world.

As a black, you were classified as an animal in those days. But in the army you met people from all walks of life. It was a lot more open, because so many blacks joined up to get out of the ghetto. So there was a hell of a different shift in balance.

Later, you felt it, coming back from a combat zone and then not being able to get a cup of coffee because you’re the wrong colour.

Did you get into the civil rights movement?

No, I didn’t want to get into all that. People like Bill Hogan over here, he’s an ex American and he said they turned the dogs loose on him. I admire those guys. I wouldn’t have put my life on the line and gone to Alabama or Mississippi and ended up in some ditch. With mace or stun guns. It didn’t interest me. After the war there was no way I was getting into any kind of shit. You learn to walk away. I used to be great for confrontation. I’m still great for it, but verbally. I log it in properly and get it right before I take action now.

You’re a gardener now. How did you get into it?

Well, we were raised growing vegetables. It’s in my blood. But how it happened professionally was like this. We have a great redundancy policy in the States, so in the winter when you don’t work you get almost all your money. So there I was sitting at home in Philadelphia and earning this money, playing cards every day with my friends. I was happy! But then my wife came home one day and said to me, ‘I’ve found the perfect job for you. Teaching gardening to children.’ I said, ‘wow, how’d you get me that job?’ and she said, ‘I didn’t get you the job. It’s advertised in the paper. But it’s yours if you want it! You just have to go down there!’

So I got down to this interview and there were sixty people with degrees. I couldn’t spell horticulture if you asked me to! I didn’t realise what I was doing. So after the third interview I said to the people, ‘look this is not what I want, I don’t like driving down to the city, and if you did give me the job, I wouldn’t take it anyway, unless’n I could do it the way I wanted to.’ And they go, ‘well that’s why we called you down, we’re hiring you.’ So I said, ‘so what do you want me to do?’ and they go, ‘well you said if we hired you, we couldn’t tell you what to do. So, it’s your programme!’

So I started working with thirteen troubled kids. I ended up working with 300 kids. I was on TV, on the radio. I worked with the handicapped. And I was still done by 2pm! The way they approached it was administrative, administrative. I just went in there and got results. I go, ‘OK I’ll tell you what, I’ll bring you ten of the best shovels around, and ten kids to use them. ‘ And there’d be ten kids standing there, and we’d be doing the garden. I would go to neighbourhoods where the police had guns to guard the schools, where other people would never go. Didn’t make that much difference to me, because I was part of that kind of thing. I just grew up with the idea, ‘you talk nice to me, I’ll talk nice back to you.’ So that’s the way I did it. So I ended up teaching the teachers and the kids at the same time. So that was great.

So they had plans for me! And then Alyn’s mum died. And we came home here. I just walked, after four years.

How did you feel about coming to Ireland?

I wanted to come here. I mean, this is rural. I grew up in a rural place. When you ask people their impressions of the States, they think it’s one city. It’s fifty countries! And each one of them has a populated city, but mostly it’s rural. So I wanted to come here. And when I got here, I just grabbed my little bag, my seeds and my tools and my trays and I went into the schools. I taught at all the schools around, and at the college there, for two years. After the holidays, I went back, and the kids had all these tables, pumpkins, and all kinds of stuff.

And I said, ‘wow, where did all this come from? And they said, ‘You gave us the seeds!’ Usually you don’t expect kids to do that during their holidays! And it was in the paper here. One of the headlines read, ‘children gave up their chip money to buy seeds’!

I grow traditional. I grow things with the best knowledge and information that I’ve got. I don’t use chemicals per se, but I don’t necessarily use organic seeds. If something comes along and I want to try it, I try it. But I do everything with conscience, the Steiner method. Everything is planted to create a canopy. In the Steiner method, you create a garden of approximately 100 square feet, and in that space you should be able to raise enough food for a family of four. A canopy conserves the moisture, and there are very few weeds. You don’t pull the heads of the lettuce up. You just take what you need off of it. So I can pick two leaves off a few different heads, and it’s enough. And it never goes away.

I got here and I just wondered why there are no trees here. And they said to me, ‘they won’t grow here.’ ‘They won’t grow here?’ I said, ‘but the climate’s fine.’ And I found that you could grow trees here. People didn’t grow trees because they didn’t want trees! They just wanted grass for cows!

So I started growing trees. All of what you see here has been grown from seeds. A lot of the stuff I grow is new, so there aren’t pictures available. I take photos and put them on the computer, and sometimes on my website (www.thestandingstoneschull) and Alyn shares it with her paintings. There’s a lot of rare and different stuff here that takes a long time to grow. People come by who are plant collectors, and they all go crazy, because they will say, ‘would you have any kind of fruiting trees, and I’ll say, ‘ the cactus fruit, there’s pecans, walnuts, macadamias, hazelnuts, hickory nuts um…and they go,’ ‘What about fruit?’ And I go, ‘There’s cherries from Barbados, a wild peach from Africa…’ and then they say, ‘do you have anything that can make preserves, and I go, ‘Quince, cidona…’and it goes on! It’s like a plant collector’s dream.

But you ask me anything about a petunia or a rose, and I’m lost! All I know is what I grow.

Do your kids feel Irish or American?

They know they’re American, because they have both passports. But they live here, they grew up here, so their heart is here too. I’m hoping they’ll travel the world and then end up back here, ‘cause it’s a safe haven. I mean America, for all its faults is still a fantastic place, and they can come and go, as they want. And I think they should hang out there, do whatever they want. Shannon probably will do university there. As good as the education is here, it’s limited.

What other aspects of life here are different to life in the States?

In the States, Shannon for example if he was outside in the yard and I couldn’t see him, I would rush outside. That ‘s the difference between there and here. Here he could just do his thing. Liam now is into electronics. Cian is into tools. The rope. He’ll take it, hook it round his waist and drag it around. He has really learned how to use the beach. Here, the kids can play on their own, which is a really good thing to be able to do. There were eight of us, and mum would say be home before dark. And we would just get home in time to get something to eat. And that was it.

What do you think of the Irish?

I think they’re great. They don’t really have prejudice for black or for white, but for religion. I really like it here. They’re inquisitive but not too nosy, inventive, but not energetic! They’re like Jamaicans. They’ll pay you what they owe you…soon. In this part of the country they’re quite happy just to go with life. I went into Skibbereen to buy some wallboard and thought the price would be cheaper. It was €70 and I told him I’d pay it later. He just wrote it down.

I’m quite sure racism is coming though. And it won’t just be the arrival of foreigners; the Irish moving back here will bring it with them. The population is about to double here. People want to leave cities and move back from London to get away from the trouble and the crime and all that, and don’t realise that they’re the trouble. They’re going to bring all that stuff back here, their kids throwing rocks and all that. This is how countries are built. They just better watch out ‘cause what’s gonna happen is that those kids are going to go to their school and marry their sons and daughters and everyone’s going to be half Czech and half Irish, and half English and it’s gonna be beautiful! A black kid with an Irish passport speaking Czech!

What kind of reception did you get from the locals when you arrived?

Oh yeah, here’s a good one. Jimmy Reilly’s father used to have the coal shed down by the pier. I used to go down there. ‘Good morning,’ I’d say. He goes, ‘Hi, how are you?’ I go, ‘Fine.” He goes, ‘Are you here on holiday?’ I go, ‘No I live down at the standing stone, and he goes, ‘oh yeah, you’re Japanese!’ And he’s 80 something so we have the same conversation every day.

When I got here it was so nice. I’d go walking down by the pier. These guys go by in a boat and go, ‘hi. You visiting?’ And I go, ‘yeah’. And they go, ‘you want to come over to our place?’ And they took me off to Long Island. I go down the street and people open their doors and go, ‘come on in and have a cup of tea’. I’d just disappear all the time around here. I don’t distinguish between the doctor and the farmer. I’m liable to come home with muck all over me, or come riding home with the mayor, anybody. I talk rubbish to all of them. I’m quite comfortable here, and people have gotten used to me. This guy said to me the other day, we were at the pool, he said, ‘are you here on holiday?’ and this other guy goes, ‘can’t you see he’s Irish?’ People ask me, where are you from, and I go ‘Schull’.

So this is home to you?

Of course. Home is wherever you’re comfortable. It’s all the same lonely planet.

***

The Vietnam War, which lasted from 1959 to 1975, was the longest military conflict in U.S. history. The hostilities in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia claimed the lives of approximately 58,000 Americans. Another 304,000 were wounded. During the conflict, 3 to 4 million Vietnamese on both sides were killed, in addition to another 1.5 to 2 million Lao and Cambodians who were drawn into the war.

From 1946 until 1954, the Vietnamese had struggled for their independence from France during the First Indochina War. After this war, the country was divided into North and South. North Vietnam came under the control of the Vietnamese Communists who had opposed France, and who aimed to unify the entire country under communist rule.
The South was controlled by Vietnamese who had collaborated with the French. In 1965 the United States sent in troops to prevent the South Vietnamese government from collapsing. Ultimately, however, the United States failed to achieve its goal, and in 1975 Vietnam was reunified. In 1976 it officially became the Socialist Republic of Vietnam.

Source: VietnamWar.com

From Somalia to Solitude

2009-10-20T08:47:00.000-07:00

Rashid is a soft-spoken, slim, light-skinned Somalian. I met him on market day in Bantry. He was open and friendly, showing me his identity card, which gave his full name as Cadbi Rashid Sharif Xasan. He readily agreed to talk to me, and we met a week or so later in the hotel on the square, where they gave us the use of a quiet room. He was casually attired, wearing pressed jeans and a jersey. He had the whitest smile I’ve ever seen. His English is still very broken, but considering he didn’t speak a word before he arrived here eight months ago, it is some achievement.

I am from Somalia. I was born in capital city, in Mogadishu, on Indian Ocean. We lived near capital, in a village called Afgogoye. My family is still there. My mother. My brother. My wife is there too, with my two children.

Mogadishu is not very big, but modern. The population of Somalia is 8 million. In the city it is around 1 million. Before 1991 it was good. But then it collapsed. Civil war broke out. Elected new government, but war is continuing. Tribal war.

The bordering countries are Kenya, Djibouti, Indian Ocean, Ethiopia. Many Ethiopians come across the border. It’s not a problem. And we can go there.

So no problem with that tribe?

No problem.

Is Somalia multi-cultural?

Arabians, Europeans, different tribes, yes.

Somalia used to be a colony. North part was British. South part was Italian. It became independent in 1960. Now there is trouble everywhere in Somalia. Even before the war, people were leaving Somalia, but now everyone goes.

Is there a problem with AIDS in Somalia?

No. Not in Somalia. I never heard of AIDS until I came to Ireland.

The biggest problem in Somalia is the tribe fighting. My tribe is peaceful. Other tribe is fighting and they took your land. And property.

My religion is Muslim. So I was brought up with no drinking. We went to the mosque. Now we have Ramadan. We make a big pilgrimage to Mecca in Saudi Arabia at least once in our lifetime. We have Muslim belief, and also traditional spiritual beliefs.

Inflation is very high in Somalia. US$20 is 2 million Somali shillings. Typical food for us is maize, which we grind with a machine, and we have it with anjira*. Like porridge. We roll it. Also pasta.

Many people don’t go to school. But we go to mosque. We read Koran. We learn to read at the mosque. There are no girls in the mosque. They have their own place. They cover their hair.

Tell me about your day to day life in Somalia.

Wife, she look after children, and cooking. And for me, working outside, farming. Typical day I wake up at 7 o‘clock. I get dressed and go to work. There is a river near my farm. I can use the water for the crops, cut my trees. They are called Kora, I don’t know the English word. I work there. Then I come back at dinnertime. 3 o’clock. I eat a big meal. My wife is there. We have maize meal and meat. After dinner I go back to work, and come back then at 5 o’clock, We eat a small meal. Then I go out to see my friends. My wife stays with the children. Then I come back at 8 o’clock, and we go to sleep.

What did you do for a social life?

I go to my friends. We go to parties, to the cinema. It is like Ireland, but no pubs. I never drink, ever in my life.

After Ramadan we have to celebrate. People come and we visit each other, and eat food, and give gifts. It’s like Christmas. But I’ve never seen a Christmas.

Your children, do they go to school?

Yes, a nursery school. I’m not going to school. But I want them to go to school.

I never went to school. I was farming. I grew maize and vegetables. I did this all my life, from a small boy. My father was a farmer. I worked with him. Our village, Afgogoye, was about 30 kms from the city. All the wives had their piece of land.

All the wives?

My father had four wives. He had 13 children. We all lived in separate houses. My mother was the third wife. It was difficult for the wives when he died. He was killed by militia. Their brothers take care of them now.

Tell me what happened.

We had trouble in 1992. The militia came to my home and took everything. They took all our possessions. Then they killed my father. My father had a small gun. When the militia came to my house, my father tried to defend. But when they saw that my father had a gun, they shoot him. I was there. I very angry, so angry. But if I try to fight, they shoot me. Many people killed in village. So we ran. My brother, my mother and me. Many people in the minority tribe are killed by militia. The government is collapsed. The militia take over.

When they killed my father, I scared. Then they took everything in my house. When they gone, we come back, and the next day we bury him. My brother came back from Mogadishu. My brother-in-law too -I have only one.

Now my mother is age. She is in her 50s.

The militia are a different tribe. My tribe is Daroed. Other tribe is Hawiye. They are the majority tribe. The other wives were OK. My mother and father are same tribe. Other wives are other tribe.

I left and went to another country. I go for Djibouti, a country north of Somalia. East Africa. When I go to Djibouti my uncle send me money. He was working in Abu Dhabi as a night watchman. Before the war, he got job. He send me money to get agent. I went to Abu Dhabi. From there I went to Ireland. Good people. I don’t know nothing before. My agent chose the country, not me. When we travel from Abu Dhabi to a European country, I said, ‘what country is this?’ and they said, ‘this country is called Holland, but you are in transit only. You are going to another European country, called Ireland.’ I arrived here 2005, January, by plane. We landed in Dublin. I had a passport for Holland. When I arrived in Dublin, they took it. But they didn’t deport me.

So your passport was illegal. How much did it cost?

US$ 4 000. My uncle paid.

When I came here a Somalian interpreter took me to this office. I asked for asylum. I go to a Somalian restaurant in Dublin. They told me where to go to get asylum. So I go to that office. I had an interview. In the interview they talked about Somalia, about minority tribe. They ask how it is in Somalia. Asked how do you come to Ireland.

I waiting for answer now. They sent me to Cork. I lived there for seven months, in a hostel.

I don’t speak any English when I come. I try to learn English in Ireland. I go to school called Welcome School in Cork. In Somalia no writing. Just Somalian language. Local dialect.

I am hoping to stay in this country. When I get asylum, then my family can come. My elder is 10 my younger is 8. I am missing them.

My English is small, so I can’t tell big story.

Can you tell me a little story about something that happened in your life?

I can tell you about one time, I was 12 years old. My uncle and my father fought with each other. Boxing. My uncle is older, and stronger than my father. When they were my father fall down. I tried to defend my father. But when I go to punch my uncle, he catch my hand and threw me. Then we made friends.

Why did they fight?

My uncle had the land. My father bought some of the land. Then when my uncle finish the money, he tried to get the land back. So they fight.

Tell me about your wife.

My wife is from the same tribe as me. She is from the same town. I choose her. I pay the family money. Not much. She liked me. It was love. But I’m sorry that now I’m living in Ireland, I’ve no contact with my family. I have telephone, but I’ve lost the number. They live in a small village. I have contacted my uncle. He told me he would find information about my family.

Kadija is my wife’s name. She was 16 when we got married. I was older. We got engaged and then the local chief married us. She wore a special dress. White, with a veil. We give the ring. But it’s not special. Just the family came. Her family and mine, together. My father had a house for us.

My brother is also married. His wife is from another tribe.

So it’s not a problem to marry someone from a different tribe. But the Daroed tribe is a problem for the militia?

Yes. The militia are separate from the president. He can’t control them.

Did you get circumcised?

Yes. I was 12 years for my circumcision. They cut some skin. It was painful! It happened to all the boys. They teach us to be a man. For one month. Boys, not a problem. For girls, it’s a problem.

So there’s female circumcision in Somalia as well?

Yes. It’s a problem for girls. It’s for religion. It happened to my wife. She was 10. For woman it is painful. They cut because in my culture, they say it’s a problem for women not to do that.

Why?

They do it because of sexual frustration. Other people say, ‘don’t cut the girls.’ But the parents, the father and mother, they want to do that.

Even the mother?

Yes.

The girl has no choice. There is infection, bleeding. There are many problems. Takes time to heal.

Who circumcises the girls?

The nurse. Woman in village.

How do you find Ireland?

The weather is different! Before I come Ireland, I know difficult for weather. Cold. Windy. But I get used to it. I go to pubs. Everybody like drink. I don’t like. I drink coke, or something. I don’t have a problem with that. My problem is I don’t get a woman for eight months! I can marry again in my religion, but my wife won’t be happy. She will be upset, but what can she do?

But rules of Ireland, not allowed to marry. Muslims you are allowed. But I don’t know how it is here. It takes time to bring my wife here. Maybe three years. It’s a long time.

I don’t have any problems in Ireland. But sometimes I have trouble living in hostel with many people. When I come to Cork hostel, people were shouting. Not big problem, but frustration. We live four people in one room. Different countries: Somalia, Nigeria, Sudan, Kuwait. Now they send me to Bantry.

I go to English course, we do writing, listening, spelling.

Now we are three in my house. From Nigeria, Kuwait. But the one from Kuwait has no English. He can’t speak.

I can’t do course, only English. |I can’t work. I go twice a week to English lessons. But otherwise I am just waiting. It’s lonely, no English, can’t talk to people. I found a job, but I can’t work. It’s boring, with nothing to do. Not much money, so can’t buy in shops!

I exercise every day. Otherwise, nothing to do. I like Cork better. Big city, more to do. Now I am in Bantry. Too small. Nothing to do. I go to library in Cork.

In Bantry there is no mosque. Only in Cork. We go on Fridays. Different people, we pray. I have met other Muslims. The imam comes and preaches. Women are there, but separate. Outside we talk.

Have you experienced racism or any trouble?

No, no problems.

When I get to Ireland, I need to stay here, to work. I don’t have experience in more work, but I want to work in construction. Or in cleaning.

I’m getting a good life. But my family, I need to bring to Ireland.

Do you miss your home?

I miss my home every night. When I sleep, I dream every night about my family. My wife and children are still in Afgogoye. My mother is with them. My elder brother is in Mogadishu. He works in small shop.

But not safe in my country. If I go to other countries I will compare Ireland. But now, this is the only country I know.

I miss my country. The place I grew up. I miss my family, (voice breaks) my wife and two children. The weather. It’s hot in the rainy season. Dry in the winter. We have trees. We have two rivers in Somalia. My village is on one river.

I never go another place in my whole life. Only Mogadishu, 30 kms from my place. Until now. My wife wants so much to come. Now here I am, far away.

***

In August 1940, Italian troops invaded British Somalia, to take the colony from the United Kingdom. Britain launched a return attack in January 1942, and by February, most of Italian Somaliland had been recaptured. In March, British Somaliland was again retaken by a sea invasion.

In 1949, the UN gave Somalia as a protectorate to Italy. The Ogaden province of Somalia was given to the now repatriated Ethiopian government by the British Empire. The UK kept British Somaliland (or northern Somalia) under its protection rule. The French kept Djibouti under colonial administration, and Djibouti would not gain independence until 1977. Though Somalis and other Africans fought hard on the Allied side in World War 2, they were re-subjugated soon after the conflict. Somalia finally won its independence in 1960.

The goal of Somali nationalism was to liberate and unite the Somali lands divided and subjugated under colonialism. However, Somalis were being expelled from Ogaden province, and Somalia, already preparing for war since the failure of diplomacy, supported the Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF) and went to war with Ethiopia in 1977 and 1978. As Somalia had acted unilaterally without consulting the international community, which was generally opposed to redrawing colonial boundaries, they found no allies. Even the Soviet Union, a long-standing ally, refused to help, and instead backed Ethiopia, along with Cuban forces. The Somali Army was decimated. In 1978, as a result of many Somalis becoming disillusioned with life under military dictatorship, resistance movements sprang up all over the country, leading to civil war in 1991.

The civil war disrupted agriculture and food distribution in southern Somalia, resulting in famine. In reaction to the continued violence and humanitarian disaster, the United States organised a military coalition called Operation Restore Hope, which was successful in restoring order and alleviating the famine. In 1993, most US troops withdraw, leaving the United Nations operation in control, but the UN withdrew in March 1995, having suffered significant casualties. In the decade following the UN withdrawal Somalia has suffered ongoing conflict. The rule of government has not yet been restored.

Somalia was also one of the many countries affected by the tsunami which struck the Indian Ocean coast following the 2004 earthquake, destroying entire villages, and killing an estimated 300 people. In 2006, Somalia was deluged by torrential rains that struck the entire Horn of Africa, affecting 350 000 people.

A book called Emergency Sex (and Other Desperate Measures)* gives true accounts of the experiences of UN staff in war zones. In one account, a Somali woman is in labour. ‘At first,’ writes the author, ‘I think she’s been burned, her vulva has that running-wax appearance of burned flesh. But then I see it and I understand. There is no vulva. There’s nothing there, it’s all been sliced off and sewn shut. The doctors now have to reopen her so she can give birth to her child.’ In the course of my research for this book, I asked one woman if she has been circumcised. She was shocked to be asked. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Maybe when I was a baby. In our culture, we don’t talk about such things.’

Sources: Wikipedia.org
Emergency Sex (and Other Desperate Measures)

I come from the Cote d'Ivoire

2009-08-20T14:35:00.000-07:00

Thérése Guei (not her real name) is from the Republic of Cote d‘Ivoire. When I met her, she was sitting with an adorable three-year-old girl dressed in pink, ribbons tied in her plaited hair. Thérése escaped to Ireland to save her baby’s life. The father of her child wanted her to abort. As we chatted, Fabrice hopped off her mother’s knee to play with some toys, which she occasionally brought over to show to me. (The children’s names have also been changed.)

I come from the Cote d’Ivoire, from the west of the Ivory Coast. My village is Toulepleu. Guéré is my language. I did my primary school there, and my secondary school in Abidjan, the capital city. After that, my parents didn’t have enough money to pay for my course at college. So I got a shop, a boutique. I sold children’s clothes and women’s clothes. That’s what I did before I came here.

My father had three wives. He is not Muslim, but in my country, they like to take another wife when the first woman becomes old and can’t work. I am the first daughter of the first wife. We are five siblings, including me. My mother is 57 now. I am 44. So she was young when they married.

Was she angry or upset when he took another wife?

No, she was happy. She said, ‘first time you marry. Good.’

So he had girlfriends before that?

Yes. Marriage is better.

How many children did he have altogether?

The other wives have five altogether. So he has ten. My father did not have a job, but he had land. My mum sold fruit, and tomatoes in the market in Toulepleu, like the other wives. Our village was about 2 000 people. It’s inland, not near the sea. We had a happy life. There was no war. Life was beautiful. But after some years, in 2002, the war started. The rebels they don’t like the president. They want another president. Now the situation is, after much fighting, Ivory Coast is divided in two. The rebels, they are in the north, and the president and his supporters are in the south. They want to have elections, but the rebels don’t want the president to control the elections. They want new people to control the election. The rebels are a different tribe. My parents had to move because of the fighting. But then they moved back home later.

I am from the west. The people from the north came to the west to kill plenty of people. My mother and father moved to Abidjan. I don’t like politics. I don’t like to say my tribe. When you say one side, the other side come and fight you. So I say nothing.

My boutique was nice, really nice, but I had a family problem and I had to move. I separated from the father of my children. He’s from the east. We met, but our parents were not happy, and in the end we separated. We had three children by then.

Then when I got my boutique, I met another man and got pregnant. He was Muslim. He didn’t like it that I was pregnant. He was not happy, because he’s the first of his family. He says the mother of his child has to be Muslim. I told him that I don’t want to be Muslim. He says, ‘OK if you want to be like that, I don’t want you to have the child’. So he started to fight with me. He wanted me to have an abortion. I say, ‘I can’t have an abortion, I am already three months’ pregnant.’ He beat me, started to fight, fight, fight. He really didn’t want me to have his child.

He also wanted to take my boutique from me. He took some young men to go and smash it up and steal all the stock. I had to move. I went back to my village – this is before the war – and stayed there. He came there, said, ‘sorry, I won’t do that again’. So I went back with him.

Later there was more trouble, and I had to move again. Find somewhere to go. If I stayed in the country, he could get me; he could find out where I was. So, I came here. And I have my baby today.

How did you get here?

A man took some money from me. He gave me a passport. I don’t know if it belonged to his girlfriend or something like that. I think he was from Congo. He told me if the people ask, just show them the passport. They collected me and put me on a boat, and we travelled, and travelled. We come here, but I was not OK. Because I fought too much with the father of my child, so my stomach was not OK. I was five months pregnant, and the journey took fifteen days, I think. We stopped at other countries on the way, and stayed one or two days. I didn’t know which ones because I did not go outside. I stayed inside.

When I came here, I knew nothing about Ireland. I wanted to get out in France. But then I met this lady on the boat, and she said to me, ‘no, you know, France is too full. Ireland is not a big country, but it’s OK.’ She said her friend in Waterford told her that it’s good here. ‘France’, she said, ‘is a big country, and many, many people from our country, from Africa go there, and it’s not easy’. I said, ‘but they speak French, which is good’. She say, ‘but there are many difficulties. Let’s go to a small country. There’s more of a chance there’. So I said OK.

I knew nothing about Ireland, except what she said.

The lady said, ‘let’s go and see my friend in Waterford first, before we do immigration. We can learn how it works here.’ So we went to Waterford first, before we went to immigration. The second day, I don’t know if somebody told them where I was, the police came in the morning. We had to show the passports. The man took the passport and asked for documents. I don’t have any documents. I said, ’I’ve come to Ireland to be a refugee. I am an asylum seeker.’ They said OK, but they have to take me to prison.

I went to prison for one week, in my pregnant state. They brought me first for three days to the prison in Dublin; I don’t know the name. But after the three days, they brought me to Limerick prison for four days. When I went to prison, my stomach, my baby, was not easy. In prison, they gave me medicine. Someone came to me and gave me his name. He was a lawyer. And the lawyer said if I want to be free, I have to bring my ID from my country. So I said, ‘OK, I’ll call my friend.’ She can send a fax of my ID to my lawyer. I told him I want to be an asylum seeker. So I need to go to Dublin.

After that, I went to Dublin, to immigration. I registered. They sent me to a hostel, near the airport. They brought me there, and I stayed there for one month. We were three in the room. The other two were from Nigeria. It wasn’t too bad. They were very nice. The hostel was OK too. Then after one month, they brought me to Cork. They didn’t ask me, they just did their list, and they brought me here.

I asked for English lessons. I went to an English language school. I was looking for a house in Cork, but I couldn’t find one. So I went to Waterford. I found a house in Waterford, a holiday house near the sea. I stayed there six months, then after that I came back to Cork, because I like Cork! Now I’m in Douglas. I have my own house. I have my children and my husband.

Your husband?

I met Gerard (not his real name) here. He is from Togo. I met him at the Kinsale hostel. He was very sick. He had an infection. You know, the food in the hostel wasn’t good for him. So when I got my house, I cooked for him. Then we got married. He’s OK now, but not better. He is in pain sometimes. The doctor says maybe it’s cancer. They have to take blood, and do many tests. They are checking the stomach and liver. They are not sure yet. Now they check, check. We’re wait for the results.

How were you treated at the hospital?

One day we went to Emergency at the hospital. We had to wait, I don’t know how many hours. But it was OK, because when you are not in your own country, you don’t criticise too much. If they give you something to eat or something for your health, it’s good. Whatever you get, it’s good. That’s it.

How have your children adjusted to you having a new husband?

My first son is 17 years. He’s a big boy. Sometimes it’s difficult for him with another man, but well, it’s OK. The other two manage OK too.

My younger son is 12 year old. He is very good at football. Maybe one day he’ll play for Ireland! (Laughs). He’s going to be 13 in April. They are very happy. In Ivory Coast they were very good at football. He has his father’s surname, not my name. A woman can change her name if she wants, but I have kept mine. My youngest daughter has my name.

What differences have you noticed here?

I don’t see negative things about Ireland. I would say it’s not easy to accept somebody who is not from your country. In Ivory Coast you can do that too. They know you are not like them. They are like that. It’s not easy.

Here sometimes, they don’t like you, maybe because you are black, or something like that. The problem in Ivory Coast is religious, Muslim, Catholic, or sometimes if you don’t speak my language, something like that. So, it’s the same here, but now it’s because of colour also.

But here at least, they accept you, give you food to eat, a place to sleep. I think that is a big thing.

Have you experienced direct racism?

Not like that, but, well, it’s true, like, when I finished my course they ask me to go and get work experience. My friend in the school got a job in a shop in the city. Then after that she said she wanted to change, she wanted to get a job in another place. And she said to me, ‘OK Thérése, go there, because I have my new job. That’s the name of the manager, tell her that I’m not able to work there any more’.

When I went there, the woman said no she can’t take me for work experience. And before, she took my friend. But because it’s me now, she says she doesn’t take people for work experience. Maybe it was my colour. Maybe it was because my English is not good.

So you must be happy that you live somewhere, you can sleep, you eat. I think, it’s OK. Don’t expect more.

I thank God for everything, for people like you, like Nasc, where I volunteer now, because they don’t like discrimination, you know. But some people, they don’t accept black people.

My wish is just to find work, and to take care of my family.

The children are learning English; later, maybe they will Irish. I would like to learn Irish too. You know why? When you live somewhere, you have to adapt to everything. I am not in the Ivory Coast now, I am here. So I have to attach myself to this place, to everything here.

Do you have friends? A social life?

I remember last year, two years ago, a lady who worked for a charity for the Ivory Coast group, invited me to some meetings, and also Nasc invited me to a women’s group last year. I did some things with women’s groups in my school. So that is how I met people. Now I have this job. It’s good, because it’s difficult for me to get a job when I can’t speak English like you. Irish people cannot speak French like I speak French though! I am 44, so it is difficult, but I am trying. It’s not easy.

Are you happy to be living here?

Yes - we thank God there is no war here. There are no people to steal your wallet. There are no people to smash your boutique. I think it’s a better place. Because in the Ivory Coast you walk on the street like this (demonstrates) you talk on your mobile phone like this, and they come and take it like this. Or sometimes you have your necklace, and they come and break it off your neck, just take it. Or your bag, they push you, take your bag. Crime is very, very, very bad there.

The weather is very good there though. In the Ivory Coast, the weather is 35 degrees centigrade, 40, 31. And if it’s cold, it’s maybe 25! I travelled here in June, and arrived here in July, but it was still cold. It’s too cold here. I do miss the weather. And my Mum, and my daughter. I miss them too much. I have four children, but one is left in my country. She is 20. I would like to bring her here, but she is over 18, so it’s not possible to bring her here under the family reunification programme. I miss her too much. I have been here three years. First I came alone, and then three of my children came.

I don’t know what to do. It’s not easy. You have to get some money. She has to get a visa. It’s not easy for her.

Have the children settled into school OK?

Yes! They are very happy. Last year my son did drama. And he spoke French. And all the teachers when they saw me, said, ‘ah, you’re Michel’s mum! Ah, he is a good boy!’ He’s in Douglas Community School. They speak English more than me now. And Nathan is playing hurling and Gaelic football and soccer too. They don’t miss the Ivory Coast. Before, when they were not with me, they missed me, but now they are with me. They were two years without me. Then I sent for them. They flew here one year ago, in October.

My eldest daughter is going to college in the Ivory Coast. I don’t know the place. I need to bring her here. I miss her too much. Sometimes I can’t eat. Sometimes I sit down like this, 4 o’clock, 3 o’clock in the morning. We speak on the phone. (Cries.)

I don’t know how long we have to wait for the appeal.

Maybe she can apply as a separate individual?

Yes, maybe. I don’t know. If I can get her a student visa for St John’s College maybe.

What is your dream?

My first dream is my children’s future. To have my daughter here. For my children to go to school, get good jobs. That’s my first dream. If my children get that, for myself, I don’t really think I need anything. You know, you are old, maybe I will be lucky and get work, maybe later I will be able to see my Mum again, my family back home, then I will be happy.
***

Dominated by the French culture, and with a multinational population, Cote d’Ivoire is a mélange of the traditional African lifestyle with an overlay of modern Western influences. Located in West Africa, with a coastline along the North Atlantic Ocean, Cote d’Ivoire is flanked by Ghana and Liberia, other border countries including Burkina Faso, Liberia and Mali. Since independence in 1960, Cote d’Ivoire has maintained close ties with France, and that, together with cocoa production for export and foreign investment, made Cote d’Ivoire one of the most economically successful states in the region.

Unfortunately, the country has been destabilised by political turmoil. A military coup on 25 December 1999 overthrew the government, and the Junta leader blatantly rigged the subsequent elections in 2000, excluding the most prominent opposition leader. In 2002, rebel forces took over the northern part of the country. A peace accord was signed, granting the rebels ministerial positions in a unity government, but issues that sparked the civil war, such as land reform and grounds for nationality, remain unresolved and disputes continue.

One of the world’s largest producers of cocoa beans, coffee and palm oil, Cote d’Ivoire is vulnerable to the fluctuations in international prices for these products. Roughly 68% of the population are employed in agriculture, despite the government’s attempts to diversify, which also makes the country’s economy dependent on the weather,

A political crisis occurred when in November 2004. President Gbagbo’s troops attacked and killed nine French peacekeeping forces, which resulted in the UN imposing an arms embargo. Foreign investment shrivelled, businessmen fled and trafficking in weapons and diamonds increased. Ethnic fighting has driven out foreign cocoa workers, while the government has accused Burkina Faso and Liberia of supporting Ivorian rebels.

The population is over 17 million with almost 72 000 Liberian refugees documented. Since 2002, 500 000 people have been internally displaced, according to a 2004 census.

Source: CIA World Factbook

r

Tahira Rahman from Pakistan

2009-08-07T11:34:00.000-07:00

Tahira Rahman comes from Pakistan. I met her crossing the road in Bantry. She had two children with her, one in a pram. She wore a headscarf and distinctive dress, and on impulse I stopped to talk to her. She was very receptive and friendly, agreeing to meet me for an interview later in the week. A few days later, I met her at her house. That day, she wore her long black hair loose and uncovered. She is pretty, with strong, black eyebrows. Her left nostril is adorned with a gold and ruby stud. Not realising it was Ramadan (*Muslim fasting period, lasting approximately one cycle of the moon), I accepted her offer of tea and biscuits, and then felt bad, drinking in front of her when she couldn’t join me. From daybreak to sunset, not even a sip of water can pass her lips.

I come from a village in the North West of Pakistan, near Peshawar. But I was actually born in England. My parents were doctors there. When I was five, we returned to Pakistan. I got married there at the age of 22, to my cousin. It was arranged when I was 14. I knew him and liked him. But once we got engaged I stopped talking to him. That’s a tradition, like, you know. So sisters and mothers would be ringing on our behalf. I was so shy, I couldn’t talk. Even my father told me I should try to talk more. We don’t go for outings as you do. People in Islamabad and Karachi are more like that. They speak and go for outings. But this area you know, the North West province, which is on the border with Afghanistan – near the Khyber Pass – is very conservative.

That’s where the recent earthquake was?

It was a bit further north. Sunday it happened. But they are saying that the earth is trying to settle down, so there will be more earthquakes.

Is your family alright?

Yes, they’re fine, but they’re terrified. We ring them. They’re scared for their lives. Like especially in the night time when they go to sleep. They have bought all these tents and they are trying to avoid the buildings. Not going inside at all. So the little children are getting sick with pneumonia, because of the cold weather coming in, in November particularly. It’s not a good situation.

They wouldn’t think of evacuating?

They have come to different places like Islamabad and Pindi, but still there are people who don’t want to leave their own homes, their place, to be homeless. They don’t want to leave their roots. They know they live in the dangerous part now, with landslides coming in, and snow is there. People don’t know why they stay, why they don’t come to safer places.

When you were growing up, did you experience earthquakes?

Yes, I did. But not as big as this one. This is the first time there’s been a massive earthquake. It’s a terrible feeling when you’re there. I was different ages when it happened: 5, 7, 10, 15. It was small-scale. But the time it happened, it was terrifying. The earth is shaking and you just run for your life. You don’t care what you are wearing, where you are running. This time, there was no warning. It was all in seconds. I just imagined how those mothers were feeling. Getting their children. Whether they were ill, in bed. Whether they were pregnant. The earthquake lasted for about half an hour. Imagine that shaking, for so long.

Tell me about some of the customs in Pakistan.

We have many traditions in our culture. For example, our dress. What I’m wearing now is called a kamise, a traditional shirt. Sometimes it’s long, sometimes it’s shorter. Underneath, you wear a kind of trousers, called shalwar. You also cover your head with a scarf. We call it a butta. Especially when there are men, you have to cover your head. When I was a teenager, I used to wear it all the time. My religion is Islam, and in our religion, you have to keep covered. But if you’re at home, you can wear what you like. You can wear trousers even. But you have to follow the culture.

I have one brother. We were just two. I never spoke to other boys. In our culture, you just talk to relatives. When you reach puberty, parents restrict you. It’s automatically in your mind. It’s not that every time your mother or father is going to tell you what to do. You know it’s not good. And you don’t feel the urge. Why should I talk to them? And boys don’t come to your home, unless there is a father or brother. They don’t visit families when there are ladies in the home only.

When they come in, usually we are not allowed to answer the door. In the kitchen, we make food, and put it on the trays and the father takes the tray. And when they are going, the husband or brother, or father tells you to stay in that room, don’t come out. If someone forgets and walks out and a woman is standing there, she will feel awkward because she would always expect the brother or father to tell her that the man is coming, and to go into the next room. You would say to him, ‘I was standing here and the man came out and saw me like this. I wasn’t wearing my veil!’ I have seen so many men who, when they enter a home, they keep their eyes down. They’re not searching, because they know the culture. Of course, some men are not angels – men are men! – so sometimes it happens that they look.

Now there is co-education, and girls are going for jobs. They meet boys to a certain extent. If they want, they can go out. But it is a kind of fearful thing. What would your brother or family say if they saw you going with this guy? You have to first convince your family. Who is he, where does he come from? What are his intentions? Because people would start ribbing you. Even if you don’t do anything, people bring bad news to that girl or that boy.

I believe in the Muslim faith, a man can marry more than once?

Well, there are conditions. He can marry up to four women. But the conditions are he has to be able to keep the first wife to the same standard as the second wife. He can’t leave or divorce her, even if he is unhappy. Suppose he is in the office and he likes some secretary, and he falls in love and he wants to marry her, and that girl is interested. What happens is he has to convince his first wife, and you’d never get that consent from the first wife! If she did, then you have to have to provide clothes, money, all their expenses, for both, equally. So you can’t compromise that. But in love, it’s different. Say you are attracted maybe just to the second wife. That is something else, the relationship. But the deeds, you have to be kind, respect, take care of the children of both. If you can do that, fine, you can marry another one. But if you can’t do that, no. People don’t understand this, they are ignorant about Islam. Basically you have to treat them equally.

Do you know of any men who have married more than once?

Yes. My husband’s maternal uncle was 65 when he married a second wife. He was a grandfather actually. He had five daughters, no boy. He was looking for a son. This is a bad tradition in Pakistan. Many, many areas will have that. They say that the woman is responsible for the sex of the child. And it’s scientifically actually the man. It’s very harsh, and very rude to the woman.

So what happened, he waited all this time, and the daughters were grown up and married with their own children. And he married a girl aged 27, like that.
Of course, it wasn’t what he thought. Like, it’s from the godside. It’s in our religion that the god favours. It’s his choice to give a child. I felt very bad for the first wife. He married that woman and the first wife was shocked, annoyed, irritable. She said, ‘I want to kill my husband.’ And the daughters felt so bad. They didn’t want to talk to their father at all. But gradually, people came round. They saw there was no way out. He didn’t compromise her. He said to her, ‘OK, you are angry with me, but what will happen? I’m not letting you go anywhere.’

He made another section in the home, separate, a small kind of cottage, and he provided that to the second wife. He said to his first wife, ‘you can stay and you will enjoy the state, and I won’t leave you.’ So, still they are surviving. Also my feeling was for the second wife. Because whatever the first wife says, she will do that. She is controlling her. She is sitting in the same car. Basically it’s the first wife’s rules. So it’s difficult. For a man living with two wives, it’s difficult. He can try his best, but he can’t do equally. So that’s why the conditions are so strict. Sometimes I tease my husband and say, ‘oh, you’ll marry another one,’ and he says, ‘One wife is enough! I’m not going to ruin my life!’ You struggle enough.

How was your wedding day?

It was nice. I felt very, very nervous. When the day was approaching, all the time I was very anxious. Like you know, you don’t know that person. You haven’t talked to him. You’ve only seen him. You don’t know how you’ll manage. And actually we don’t have sex education. So girls usually come to know about that later, when they are in university faculties, you know. They don’t get it from their sisters or brothers, they just hear from their classmates. And then they are shocked. Is this going to happen to me? How will I manage? I’m not like that! And you know, all the time you are virgin. And you don’t feel that it’s going to happen with you. You are not happy with that.

If it is a love marriage, you will find it easy. But with an arranged marriage, no one likes that. Especially when the wedding day arrives, all the girls are very, very nervous. So what happens, they give us time, say two or three weeks. They don’t touch us at all, until we feel easy. But there are also men who are harsh and have to fulfil their desires, and they just go on. So this is a harsh reality to accept. You never know a man, and then suddenly he comes and lives in your life, like that. There’s no other way out, you can’t leave him. You know you are going to live with him all your life. But what I felt was, I was happy and at the same time I was nervous.

Tahira shows me her wedding album. There are many photographs of her wearing a fabulous red gown lavishly embroidered in gold thread. Her palms and the backs of her hands are hennaed ornately, and her make up is heavy, lips painted red. She is adorned with an abundance of gold jewellery. At the centre of her forehead rests a tika, a gold ornament. She sits on a platform, expression solemn. Compared to our virginal looking brides, (who are probably anything but,) it seems ironic to my western eyes that this bona fide virgin bride wears colours we would associate with a brothel.

After the wedding, we went on honeymoon, and it all happened there. We went to the northern area, where the earthquake happened. It was very hot that day. We went to his sister’s home. It’s all in ruins now. There’s nothing left there. It’s called Atakabar. His brother in law arranged a 4 x 4 vehicle for us to take to different places. We were there for about a week, maybe two. But it was good. We got to know each other.

He was a nice gentleman you know, but I was just scared. He was 26. Also a virgin.

Is it common for men to be virgins when they marry?

Most of the boys are virgins. Like my brother - he’s not married. He’s still a virgin. But there are men who have wives, and still they have extra-marital affairs. That type, I’m so angry with these people, why they are doing this. From the godside, it’s sinful, it’s adultery, and what about the wives? For me, it’s just unacceptable. But my brother is a virgin, and many people ask him, ‘What’s your plan?’ and he says, ‘I’m just waiting to go back to my country and marry a girl from there.’ He’s also living here, in Ireland. He’s 35 and still he has friends who are not married, who are going out and having relationships, at the same time having two, three, four, five girls. And he knows that. And they laugh at my brother, but he says, ‘No, I’m fine. I can’t be like an animal, going for my desires. I’ll wait and have a proper wedding. If I go for a girl, I’ll marry her.’

We told him for the past five or six years to get a wife, but he said, ‘No, I’m doing my exams. If I’m marrying a girl, I have to give her time.’ A doctor’s time is very busy. All these exams and time in hospital. And it is true. My husband, because he still has to do his exams, he can’t give me much time. He has to study, and I have to compromise. We can’t go on outings. He can’t give much time to the children. The doctor’s life is hard for the first few years.

But now my brother is looking for a bride and I’m going to go to Pakistan in November to help him. He is looking for a certain type of lady. He says, ‘I need really a housewife. Educated. She should have her Masters. Aged 23 or 24.’ He said he would like a nice lady, more feminine. Polite. There are people who are very harsh and rude. He doesn’t want that. He wants a humble kind of person. Not too much pretty. If you go for too much pretty, you have to compromise. The most pretty girls go into the medical profession!

Tell me a little about the history of Pakistan.

English ruled Pakistan and India. It was all one country, called the sub-continent. But in 1947, the English had ruled for 150 years, so after that they left, and separated the two countries. Kashmir was left. So the problem wasn’t solved. Kashmir is where the earthquake happened. One side is, which is called Free Kashmir, is ruled by the Pakistan government. Opposite side is ruled by the Indians. But those people all have the same culture, the food, everything is the same. It’s like Ireland and Northern Ireland. Irish and Irish! But one under the English government.

Historically, Muslims felt weak. There used to be a Mogul kingdom. Mogul was the king, and he had sons. One of these sons was called Akhbar. He brought some ideas from Hinduism and some from Islam and he mixed them together. And you can’t mix really. He was very much a womaniser. He was not a proper Muslim, just so-called. He was going all the wrong way. He enjoyed women. You can see his poetry in different restaurants.

So he had this state and enjoyed this state, and enemies were coming in, but he was all the time drinking. He wasn’t thinking, ‘What’s going on in my state?’ And the English people came in and they took over. They had this history of ruling. They ruled all over the world, Asia, Africa. So they discovered the sub-continent, and they thought, ‘we should go there.’ And they were making like tricks on the Hindus and Muslims, to turn them against each other. Before that they were at peace with each other. But then they started fighting each other, and fell apart.

The English brought many good things, like education and universities, architecture. I have no bad feelings against the English. That was history. There are many English still there. Convents and so on. I would say English people are very kind. Still there are flaws. But as humans, fine. They’re alright.

You grew up near the Afghan border? Were there many refugees from that country?

There are many Afghani women who have come to Pakistan. So many in school and at university. They were very, very poor people. When I go back to Pakistan I still have one Afghani lady who comes to me. She had a stillbirth. Then she got psychiatrically ill, and she also had an operation, and during that op the doctors mismanaged. They damaged the bladder, so she couldn’t control her urine. It just goes through the body. So that was a pity. Her husband is a heroin addict. And she is in a very bad condition. Before her operation, we used to help her with food and money, give her tea and comfort her. But now she’s very angry. She’s aggressive. She can hurt you. We can’t touch her. So we can’t help her. It’s like that. She’s not eager to go to the doctor. My father is a psychiatrist and said, ‘we’ll go,’ and she said no.

What did you study?

I studied psychology. I did Masters in my country. But here it’s only equivalent to a Bachelor’s. They say I have to go back to university and do two or three years. I tried one year and did a course in counselling, but they said this year the course is off the list. They don’t know when it’s going to happen. They say I have to go to Dublin. I did distance learning, but this course you have to do at university. I was going to do the two-year course, but unfortunately it didn’t happen.

When did you come to Ireland?

We moved to Ireland one year after we married, when I was 23. I’m 28 now. I was pregnant with my first daughter when we came, and I had her in Limerick hospital. My brother is a doctor, and came here for work. My husband is also a doctor. In Pakistan there are no opportunities for doctors and the wages are poor and we thought we can’t manage like that. And he needed to come for study. He wanted to do the MRCP * so he can become a consultant. You get it from the College of Physicians in Ireland. First you have to pass your English test. So he got that.Then he had to pass his Irish exam. As you do with the General Medical Council in England. It’s called PLAB in England, and Trask in Ireland. You have to be registered. Previously you used to pay for registration. Now there is a registration exam. It’s difficult, more difficult nowadays. So he did all this and passed. The Irish exam is valid for two years, and then it expires. So the post-grad is next. He’s trying his best.

I was keen to go to England because I had a British passport. But my brother was here, and he said it’s a good country and people are very loving. In England you have to struggle. ‘The Irish’, he said, ‘are quite simple. You will manage here. I am here, and I will support you. Your husband will be studying, and you will need help in every way. You’ll be all alone and there will be too much stress.’ So what he did was he found a flat and we came to Ennis, Co Clare first. We shared the rent. That time it was IR£475. We gave him half the money. So he helped us for 18 months while my husband did the exams. He passed all his exams in March/April, but he then had to wait for jobs to be advertised. The social welfare helped us. I was in maternity. Thank God to the Irish, they helped us in that way. Then he got a job and we let them know. They were saying, ‘Thank God you told us you can manage on your own. There are many people who carry on, even when they get a job’.

Latif got a job in Nenagh, Co Tipperary. We stayed there for ten months. Then he got another job in medicine in Co Monaghan. We stayed there for almost one and a half years. Then I was pregnant with my second baby and we came to Cork and he said, ‘OK, my next exams are coming up, I must study.’ So he took off work and stayed at home for six months to study. And it was hard, that exam. He didn’t go for a job. Latif found a place in Carrigaline. We stayed there for one and a half years, and Latif got a job working first at the Mercy, and then at the Infirmary.

After that, he got another job in Kilkenny. But this time I didn’t move, because I knew it was only for six months, and then what will happen? So I stayed in Cork. After six months, he got a job in Bantry hospital. And we came here. Now they are giving indications that he has been there for almost one year, so you must go. He is in GPT (General Practitioner Training). Moving around is alright now. It’s not new to us. But it’s hard for my kids. They have to move schools. And we don’t know where they will go. So it’s insecure. When we moved to Bantry, the children were in playgroup, it was fine. But now they are in schools. Now we will have to get new uniforms.

Why does Latif have to keep moving from job to job?

Because he is a junior doctor, they don’t treat them well. So we are living like travellers. Well, they live in caravans, it wouldn’t be nice, actually, but still like, it’s like that. He is doing an interview today in the radiation department in Cork. He will only get an answer in two or three weeks, or maybe a month.

We have plans to buy a house now. We are very insecure here, because you are renting and you know, my husband saying, my job is like that, but you can stay in one place. My brother has bought a house in Wilton, and he says it’s nice, owning your own home. You don’t know, God forbid, what will happen. God forbid something happens to your husband. At least with a home, you have a place.

Have you or Latif experienced racism?

Foreign doctors do experience different treatment. The best jobs are reserved for the Irish doctors. The leftovers go to the Indians, Africans, you know. Then there is the FPR, which is a fellowship, basically. They have given every FPR to the Irish, whether they are able or not. They have excluded all foreigners. If doctors want to become a consultant, they have to do this exam, but they are not going to be given to Pakistanis. They say, at the back, ‘Why should we give these seats to foreigners in our country? And anyway they will leave this country and the good will go back to their country. So we won’t waste our time. We’ll stick to our own.’ So there are very, very few consultancies going to outsiders.

Nurses in hospitals can also be racist. They will talk to Irish doctors politely, even if they are sometimes stressed. They know they can’t show a bad attitude, because the Irish doctors won’t take it from them. They will say, ‘Stop it, you can’t speak like that to me.’ But the doctors from India, Pakistan, Africa, even though they are registrars, they can’t reprimand the nurses, because they know the nurses will go and complain about them. So the nurses speak to them in a disrespectful way, and they have to take it. It’s humiliating for them.

In Monaghan they used to call me Romanian. And I used to feel bad and think why do they call me this. I’m not saying, God forbid, that Romanians aren’t good people, they are human after all. But I think here, there’s a more common perception here that Romanians do beg. And many Pakistani women say this, that Irish people mistake them for Romanians. Then I decided, ‘OK, I will leave my scarf, I won’t wear this.’ In that way, we would say, Irish people are not open-minded as the English. English people have seen a lot of cultures coming in. In Cork, you see people opening their minds. But in Bantry, in Monaghan, small places, this small-minded attitude happens more.

When I was in Monaghan, I was walking with my pram, and a 15-year-old boy was blocking my way. I said, ‘excuse me, please let me pass,’ and you know, he was with some schoolgirls, and he didn’t move. He just copied me. And made faces at me. And I felt bad. I said, “Look, I’m just asking you, excuse me. I have a pram.‘ When he didn’t stop, I rang the Gardaí, and he ran off. And the girls vanished too. The Gardaí came and comforted me and said, ‘Relax, what happened?’ I told them and said the boy was being racist towards me. The Garda went to investigate, then came back and said, ‘His parents will come to your home and apologise.’ But that never happened.

Mind you, when I talk about racism, you should come to my country. The problems between the Pashto and the Punjabi tribes. They are from the same country, just like people from Dublin and Cork. But these people are altogether different. Pashto people have a difficulty in the language Urdu, which the Punjabi people speak. A Pashto will speak Urdu, but he might use a masculine word instead of feminine, and the Urdu people will laugh at them. They are kind of cowardly and mean, not all, but you know, they won’t confront. But the Pashto people are hot headed. They will say, ‘Come!’ and it will be like that. So this is how it is. They react quickly, while the Punjabi tribe are a bit slowed down. Those people, like my husband, they are hot headed, but here, now, he has calmed down!

Has living in Ireland influenced the way your husband treats you?

Yes! We share decisions. We have a joint account. This is a big thing, a joint account. I ask him if I need to buy something. He says I don’t have to do this. I say, ‘but it’s your money.’ He says, ‘no, it’s our money.’ He says, ‘whatever you need, just do it. Don’t wait for me.’ That’s why he bought me a car. So I can be independent.

Here it’s good. You respect people. You say excuse me. There, they are lacking. When we go back, I think, ‘Oh my goodness, they are ignorant. They are harsh. They don’t have the idea that a woman can be hurt. They only listen to the priests in the mosque. Another very good thing is that in Cork we can go to the mosque. Men in one area, women in the other. It’s very nice that they allow us.

Women don’t go to the mosque in Pakistan?

No. They have no idea! They think it’s just for men. But here in Europe, it’s different. You can come together, to meet each other, learn who is who. Because no one has time to go to each other’s houses. So you can meet each other there. And it’s nice. We should do this too, in our country.

We do have many problems in our country. You know, in our society, you have heard of the honour killing of women. The men are so cruel. That is in our culture, in our society. And it happens in Punjab, in different areas. They just have to be a bit suspicious of their wives. They don’t need evidence or anything. And they can go and murder them. And the police can do nothing. The elders just say, ‘Don’t come and interfere in our system.’

Do women have extra marital affairs?

Generally no. But good and bad are there. My husband lived in Islamabad, and he said there were some men who had affairs with a married woman, and he was astonished. That happens in Islamabad. It’s less likely in Peshawar. But if the husbands know or suspect, the consequence is death. Even if the husband is doing the same thing, he will not be punished.

If the woman is not happy, you will see the behaviour. But you never see evidence of an affair like you do in movies, naked and in the bed. Never like that. You will see that she is sitting with someone, just talking to him. And people will talk about that. So that happens. It’s just in-laws saying, ‘What’s she doing with that guy?’ But she might just be asking him to do something for the home, anything. But there will be so many in-laws and so many people see you all the time. It’s crowded over there! You have to tell everyone you are going to the shop. It’s not like here.

What do you see as the negative factors about living in Ireland?

One thing is people don’t care about their neighbours as we do in Pakistan. They don’t know who lives next door, or how they are feeling. I went out and introduced myself to my new neighbours, when I came here. I said, ‘I am Tahira. My husband is working in the hospital. We have two children. We live here, next door to you.’ Then the people said, ‘OK.’ Otherwise they don’t feel the need to know who is who.

As a human, I think you should make contact. When we were moving from Cork, the next door neighbour saw us moving our stuff down the stairs, and he never said, ‘oh, are you leaving?’ Nothing. I thought, ‘Oh God. It’s like that.’ In Pakistan, if we have a new neighbour, we would send food to him. We would know that he is tired, so we would just leave the food. But he would know he is welcome. And we would help with unloading. No one just bothered, or said do you need help. This is one thing I felt very much, that it should be like that.

It is a drawback in Irish society, not looking out for your neighbour. Maybe they are alone. That’s why people become depressed, and commit suicide. I would say. Because they feel all alone. In Pakistan they will help you. They will give money to poorer relatives, you know. We don’t have a suicide problem in Pakistan.

How do you find the schooling?

School is very good. My five-year-old daughter is enjoying it. She would have so many books at this stage in Pakistan that she would be bent over with the books in her satchel. She would be reading and doing sums. And you get so stressed, and it’s no fun at all. Whereas here, in Junior Infants, it’s all play. I said to the teacher, ‘When are you going to give them one, two, three?’ and she said no, we’re just giving them drawings, and games and gradually we’ll start that.’

What is your dream?

To be a good mother, to have a happy family. To be a good woman. So on the Day of Judgment, when God asks us, ‘What did you do?’ I can say I have been trying to be kind to people, to help them, in whatever way I can. To reach them.

Are you happy you moved to Ireland?

Yes, we are. Ireland is a good place. Cork people especially are very welcoming. Nenagh is 50-50. But here, Cork people mix more quickly than others. I haven’t gone to Dublin that much so I don’t know how they are. But Cork people are nicer than any others I’ve met, and I’d like to stay here.
***

Pakistan, in south Asia, is the sixth most populated country in the world, and the second most populated country with a Muslim majority. Its territory was a part of the pre-partitioned British India, and has a long history of settlement and civilisation. Most of its current territory was conquered in the first millennium BCE by Persians and Greeks and ruled by them for a few centuries. The region was also part of various local dynasties. Later arrivals and conquests include those by the Arabs, Afghans, Turks, Baloch and Mongols. The territory was incorporated into British India in the nineteenth century.

Since its independence in August 1947, the country has experienced periods of considerable military and economic growth, as well as significant instability. The British partition of the Indian Empire along religious lines resulted in communal riots across India and Pakistan. Millions of Muslims moved to Pakistan and millions of Hindus and Sikhs moved to India. Disputes arose over princely states such as Jammu and Kashmir. The long running dispute with India over Kashmir resulted in full- fledged wars in 1947 and 1965. Civil war flared into the Bangladesh war of independence and the Indo-Pakistani war of 1971.

Pakistan conducted nuclear weapon tests in 1998 to counterbalance India’s nuclear explosions in1974 and 1998, becoming the only Muslim nuclear weapons state. The relations with India are steadily improving following peace initiatives in 2002. As well as political upheaval, the country has had to deal with natural disasters, such as the cyclone which caused 500 000 deaths in East Pakistan in 1970, and the earthquake in 2005, which cost the lives, homes and livelihoods of over a million.

Pakistan has accomplished many engineering feats such as construction of the world’s largest earth filled dam, Tarbela, the world’s twelfth largest dam, Mangla, as well as, in collaboration with its close ally China, the world’s highest international road: the Karakoram Highway.

Culture-crossing: the story of an Irish-born Indian

2009-07-31T07:09:00.000-07:00

Raj Singh (not his real name) is an Irish-born Indian, aged 22, who grew up in Limerick. Slight of stature, he has an engaging smile and speaks very rapidly and enthusiastically. He dresses like an artist and does not attempt to cover the slash marks on his forearms. As a second-generation immigrant, he was exposed to two cultures while growing up. A conflict of identity was part of the reason for his difficult adolescence.

I actually have two sets of parents. My biological Mum and Dad are both from Punjabi, in North India. It was an arranged marriage.* Their parents knew each other. But all my parents knew about each other before they met was that my mother had studied to be a chemistry teacher, and my father was a doctor. My father would have been in his late twenties, my mother in her early twenties.

My mother was living in Madras at the time, where she was studying. So, they met, and were married. But they weren’t compatible. By the time they realised this, my mother was pregnant, and she had to take a break from the home environment. So she came over to Ireland, where her bother and sister-in-law were living. Her brother and sister-in-law had recently eloped and got married. They come from different backgrounds. Her brother was very Hindu, and her sister-in-law was a Roman Catholic Anglo-Indian from the south of India. They were living in Sligo. My mother had me while she was staying with them.

Now, her sister-in-law, my aunt, had had a miscarriage, and had been praying a lot for a child. And when I was born, she became very attached to me. I was like, the first kid born into the house. They all sort of doted on me. Then my biological mother took me back to India. But I wasn’t doing so well over there. I wasn’t adapting well to the climate. I developed some health problems. So she sent me back over here to be looked after by my aunt. And I’ve been with them since, actually. I call them Mum and Dad. They have a child as well, who I call my sister, although she’d actually be, like, my first cousin. From my other parents in India, I have a brother in India as well. But I haven’t met him in years, like, you know?

Of course as a child, I found it very difficult to accept, you know, being a kid growing up here, while my actual parents and brother were in India. It affected me when I was a kid, like, but I’ve pretty much accepted it all now, you know? So I grew up with my aunt and uncle – I’ll call them Mum and Dad from now on – I grew up with them in Limerick, because that’s where they moved. I went to school at Árd Scoil Rís.

Jalaja, my stepmother (not her real name), was raised as an Anglo-Indian, with western values, you know. She grew up in a different culture, kind of like Ireland. They’d go to discos to meet guys. They’d go to church every Sunday. They’d drink. A lot of people would have become very anglicised during colonial times. They were descended from the Portuguese. Her maiden name is da Silva.

My stepfather, on the other hand, would have come from a Hindu family. They met, and it was a love match, but neither of the families would have agreed to it. It would have been frowned on, like. So my mother ran away from home – she was 21 – in the south of India, and my father came over to finish his degree in Queen’s University in Belfast. Then he wrote to her saying he’d got a job with Travnal laboratories in Castlebar, and she came over and they got married, first in a registry office and then in the church.

Both of the families disowned them because of this. So my mother began to write letters home to both the fathers. She wrote and she wrote and she wrote, over a period of a few months. And she finally got a letter back, from my father’s father. He said he was willing to talk. So they all met up and they were reconciled. They said, ‘you’ve chosen what you want to do. So let’s all move forward as a family.’

I’ve grown up Irish. But my parents are still Indian. They’ve got a couple of Indian friends around. It’d be lonely for them otherwise.

Did your biological mother leave your father?

No. She went back and lived with him, but they never had a happy marriage. It was a typical Indian marriage, where the wife is just a glorified servant, you know? Her job is to look after the house and her husband. It’s not so bad now. Thank God those ideas have changed over time, like, you know?

An arranged marriage is not quite the same now. It would be more like matching. Maybe in rural India it would still be like that, where they would marry before they’ve even met.

When I was growing up, I refused to have anything to do with India. I wanted to be as Irish as the Irish. But my family wouldn’t have that. They tried to bring me up with Indian values. But it wasn’t working.

What were Indian values?

Indian values would be you don’t go out, you don’t hang around with your friends, and you don’t have a girlfriend until you’re much older. Very strict moral values. Very careful about what you’d watch on TV. You know very controlling, even about the way you dress. And a very, very strong emphasis on achievement and education. I would have to be at the high end of everything. That would be most important. And actually when I was a kid, I was very gifted in terms of intelligence. I was beyond my years until the age of 14. But it was all pressure from home. In India it’s all about competition, it’s all about excelling.

What happened when you were 14?

Well, I stopped seeing the point! I thought what am I doing this for, like? What do I want to achieve anyway?

My stepfather had a high profile job. He was working with a company called Modus Media International, a software outsourcing company. He had a very good position with them, and we always had the best of everything, materially, at home. But he was never there. He was always away, travelling to America, Singapore, Australia. He would only come home every two weeks. We’d go on four holidays a year, to wherever he had offices. But there was an emptiness always there. There was some part of me that was never happy, like. I began to veer off in a different direction. I began to stop seeing the point of these very square ideals. By the age of 14 or 15, my eyes were getting opened to another way of life, like you know.

What were you absorbing about the Irish way of life at this point?

Just the general open-mindedness, and the freedom of it.

How were you treated at school?

Nobody looked at me strangely because I was a foreigner, although there was only a handful of foreigner families in Limerick back then. It’s not like it is now. But you know, it was different. Even though I have an Irish accent and all, I wasn’t into the same things as them, you know what I mean? I never used to go out, I used to just study.

But then I started messing in class, and hanging around. Actually the thing that made me change was music. I can’t remember when it was exactly. I think it was listening to The Doors. Something in my mind opened to a whole other world. The freedom, the recklessness of it. Especially the ‘sixties culture. I said to myself, ‘I’ve got this life here. But I could go off and have this whole other life.’ So that was that.

One of the things that got me through school was my love of literature, and back then my dream was to become a poet. And I began to write. I began to romanticise the lives of poets from the past. I also began to mess around too with alcohol and drugs, stuff like that. That was the beginning of a new era in my life. It was great at the time. Things were difficult at home; I was very suppressed and stifled with the situation at home. I did my Leaving Cert. when I was 17. And when we were filling out forms to go to college, my father actually filled out the forms for me, and wouldn’t let me choose what I wanted to do. He wanted me to do computers. I thought, sod that, I’m going to run away from home. And I did. I’d been saving up for ages. And on the day of my last Leaving Cert. exam, I never went home. My family went upstairs to find the letter that I wasn’t coming home.

I left to do a degree in theology and English in Mary I. It’s part of the University of Limerick, but it’s located in the city centre. That was a new venture. I was 17 then. But I dropped out of college after a while, and spent most of the time hanging round cafés and writing poetry, and taking drugs and drinking. And that was my life. But I felt stifled with the city as well, and thought there was something more I should be doing. So in June 2000 I hopped on a plane bound for India. I went over with very little money. First, I went to visit my biological family. I spent a few months studying Hindu scripture. I grew my hair long, beard, wore beads, bright colours, no shoes. I was travelling, bathing in the river Ganges; I was in bliss there.

Did you see your family in India much over the years?

I met them when I was 12, but refused to accept them into my life. But when I went over it was good. I had a great time. I’m still much closer to my stepmother than my biological mother though.

Did you notice a big difference there between you and Indian boys your own age?

Of course, yes. If I’d grown up in India, I would have seen a very much smaller world. Maybe I would have been a lot more content, you know, because I wouldn’t have seen a lot of things that distract me and cause me to want and desire more all the time. But at the same time, I don’t regret having come over here, like. It was a twist of fate, really.

My stepparents found it very hard to adjust to Ireland. My mother couldn’t go out, and my father was always working. It’s not in the Indian culture to go out. So they would have found it very lonely, like. In India you’d have family visiting you all the time. My stepmother grew up speaking English, but she always felt Indian. She was stuck between two cultures as well, like. It’s only now in the last few years that she’s adapted. She’s working away at Eason’s, and socialising quite a bit. More Indian families have moved over, so there’s a bit of an Indian community too.

But it was difficult for them, for years. They didn’t know how to raise us, with Indian values, or the values here, you know what I’m saying? My biological parents wanted me to have a Hindu upbringing, but my stepfamily is Catholic, so I was brought up with neither of the two!

The last few years, I’ve been searching for God, through many different faiths. Through living with a Catholic community, through living in India. A lot of other new age stuff.

Tell me about living with a Catholic community.

Well there’s this Italian community called the Community Cenacolo.** It was founded 22 years ago and they help people who’ve lost the meaning of life. You go there to work for free, and you get a roof over your head and food. I was there working on a farm, like, you know. And travelling a bit with them, like, in Italy. It’s a place where you go away to have a think about things, you know? You lead a very isolated, very detached life there. They don’t have a radio, no television, no newspapers, no girls, nothing. Just ten lads, living in a house. They have the Blessed Sacrament in the house as well, like. It’s a consecrated house. You wake up every morning and do adoration of the Blessed Sacrament. They have mass. You work very hard out in the fields. You fast regularly. Stuff like that. It’s basically a place to go away and think about things.

You wake at 6 every morning. If you’re working with the animals, you wake at 5 to milk the cow. Then you pray the rosary in the chapel. You have reading from the scripture, something like that. Somebody would read and you’d share in that. Sometimes you’d have group discussions about how you’ve been feeling over the last week. You eat breakfast from 7 to 7.30, then you go to work through the day, to 7 in the evening without sitting down, except to stop briefly at 12 for lunch. You don’t sit down at all during the workday, and it’s a lot of physical labour. There’s so much to be done, because it’s more or less self-contained. They have 14 acres of land around this bungalow.

How did you hear about it?

Well, I was in hospital. I’d suffered a loss in my life, you know? (A friend of his, from rehab, had died) and I had a nervous breakdown as a result. I met a woman there who’d been to Mejorgory, and she told me about this awakening that she’d had there, like. She told me about this community that she’d heard of, and something inside me just felt right about it. She gave me a contact number for a girl who used to be in one of their houses. So I got in contact with her. And I stayed for a couple of months, and then I left again. I couldn’t come to terms with it.

I went back at the end of 2003. And I stayed for 20 months. I found myself at the sink one day, crying. Sometimes the lads would do that. No one bothered you or gave you a hard time for it.

I’ve been out of it for two weeks, and I’ve come back to Galway. I used to live here – I was here for about two years.

My plan now is to get a place to live, set up a studio and paint. I used to paint. I had a couple of exhibitions around Ireland. I’ve started writing again. I used to sell poetry in the street. And I do readings as well. Of course I’ve been doing none of that for two years, so I’ve come back to Galway to start over again. I just want to live life. I’ve no long-term goals. I don’t have mad ambition. The only thing I want is peace of mind. I want to be creative. I want to be in a relationship. I’ve met this girl. She’s from Spain. We get on really well. She’s not like other girls I’ve been out with, more down to earth. We’ve spent an awful lot of time just talking about life. We kissed last night for the first time. It was beautiful, you know?

Before I would have had a lot of ambitions, and lived quite a reckless life in a lot of ways, maybe as a result of being young, but also from having been suppressed for so long in a lot of ways.

I’ve calmed down now, in a lot of ways. I don’t drink or do drugs any more. I’ve seen two sides of life now. And what I want now is to do simple things. I want to listen to jazz. I want to go for coffee in a café. I want to go down to the pier and sit in the sun. I want to paint. I want to play music. Very simple. Very short term. But I think I can be content with these things.

What part does India play in your life now?

I’m Indian. I still very much respect the culture, the values, beliefs, faith. I will go back there again.

It’s been a few years since I was there, and I don’t really hang around Indians, but I know if I were to travel over there right now, I’d fit in straight away, like. India’s my environment, you know.

I’ve noticed these scars all down the length of your arms. Were those cuts self-inflicted?

Yes. I led a very extreme life. I looked very different back then, had a lot of piercings. I hung around with crazy people. It seemed acceptable, what I was doing back then. Now I have to live with it. In the beginning, I used to do it when I was sad or in difficulties. Then it became a habit. I’d do it all the time, when I was with friends. It was the thing to do. It’s painful, but it’s a buzz in itself. A high. I hung out with girls who were into it as well. Sometimes you’d be so out of it, you wouldn’t realise what you were doing. But it’s been a couple of years, like. I’m not into all that any more.

I’ve also got loads of tattoos! I’m actually getting two of them removed by laser at the moment at this cosmetic surgery place in Dublin. This one (pointing) means ‘void’ in Sanskrit. I can’t tell you what that one says! It’s an Asian, Middle Eastern language. It’s from a cult. But that’ll be gone soon. That one is an esoteric symbol. A negative one. But it’s cost €3000 so far. Imagine how much it’s going to cost to get rid of them all. I’ve got one in the centre of my forehead. It’s an inverted cross. I got involved with all that when I was 19. But at the moment, I’m getting it removed. It’s taken ten treatments so far. Because it’s quite difficult living with tattoos, especially looking for work and that.

You were in hospital with a nervous breakdown?

I just couldn’t cope. I was actually in there a couple of times. The first time was when I’d left Galway after my friend passed away. I was at home, just lying there and my mother couldn’t do anything with me. So she contacted the doctor. And he sent me off to this place in Ennis. I was there for a bit. I was taking medication for depression. I don’t do that any more either. The second time, I’d just lost the ability to function, through depression.

Do you think depression is common among young guys these days?

It is, yeah. Ireland has a very high suicide rate among the young. And everyone is looking at the culture for the reason. There’s been a great increase in the drink and drug culture over the last 10 or 15 years, and a strong decrease in any faith or spirituality. But really, the doctors, the pills, they didn’t work for me, like. I had to turn to faith and it’s there that I found the answer, and I found peace. With myself, you know what I’m saying.

How are things with your family now?

The last few years have been very difficult with my family, but we’re reconciled now. My sister is at university. She is three years younger than me. She also felt repressed by our upbringing, but saw what happened to me, though, and went the other way.

If you were to compare the Irish with the Indians, what would you notice in particular?

I think the Irish are a really proud race, in a negative way. Look at their attitudes to the English. You can still feel it. You have the ceol agus craic. But it loses its value along the way, with these negative underlying attitudes waiting for a drink to bring them out.

People in India are a lot more down to earth. So are the Europeans. I really like them. From what I’ve seen, Irish people have lost all their values. They’re such a fast culture now at the moment. A lot of people are looking for something and not finding it. But you can’t blame them, really, can you. I think that’s what people have to do, lose their way a bit, then come back to earth.

***

Traditionally, dating or socialising between the sexes was not allowed in India (or, for that matter, in Pakistan) so the arranged marriage was the only form of marriage in society. Marriage between maternal cousins and sometimes, maternal nephews was also common, and still occurs today. This was known as rightful marriage alliance in some communities, and possibly originated to ensure that family wealth remained within the family.

As it was common for boys and girls to marry in their early teens, it was considered appropriate for their parents to make the choice. The parents typically considered educational and economic background as well as caste in making their selection.

Arranged marriages are quite common even today, although the criteria have slightly changed. The rigid caste system is somewhat diluted and marriages outside the sub-caste are considered; so are marriages outside one's own language or province.
Although age, caste and dowry still come into consideration, couples nowadays demand and get more of a say in the matchmaking decision, while love matches are becoming increasingly common.

***

** The Irish community, Cenacolo, based in Aughtaboy, Co Mayo, is a charitable organisation, which relies totally on voluntary donations. One of its main objectives is to help young people overcome addictions.

The Knock Cenacolo community house, which is situated on a 30-acre farm, can accommodate 16 people. The purpose is to teach the importance of accepting responsibility for one’s own behaviour. Pride in accomplishment and strength of character is encouraged through hard work, discipline and counselling.
There are no drugs, alcohol, cigarettes or television. The average time spent there is three years, and the success rate for those who complete the programme is high. Young people who have fallen into addiction, and find themselves desperate and homeless, learn to find peace and a sense of meaning in their lives.

Sources: Carlow National article
India’s Arranged Marriages, written by Vikas Kamat (website)

Escaping oppression in Iran

2009-06-21T06:52:00.000-07:00

Amin Sharifi comes from Iran. I met him at the opening of the new premises for Nasc, Cork’s support centre for immigrants. The first thing that struck me about him was his approachability, then his confidence, in spite of his halting English. He has a direct gaze and clear intelligence. He told me he was a lawyer in Iran, and had been imprisoned for three months, for taking photographs at a student demonstration. We met later that week at the Quay Co-op organic restaurant for a coffee.

There are informal, volunteer police in Iran. They hit and torture people on the street. You didn’t know them in the street, because they wore no uniform. Sometimes it happened one time per month, sometimes two times per month. The Islamic authorities used glass wool, you know fibreglass. It’s very dangerous if you get it on your hands. Well, if ladies wore make up in the streets, these police on their motorbikes or sometimes walking, would come with fibreglass and push it against your lips or eyes, and hands, and for men if they wore short-sleeved t shirts, which was also forbidden, they would push this glass wool against the hands and arms. It cut your skin. It was easy to use. On lips, it especially painful. You would get many shallow cuts, burning and bleeding for days. It happened to me.

My parents loved each other. I was very happy for them. My sister also married a man she loves. But it is different in Iran. In Iran, we have different groups of people: people at university, with education; people without access to third level education. In university, the ladies and gentlemen are allowed to sit together, to study. But before that, in schools, the young people are separated. They have separate schools. They don’t see each other. So before university it is difficult to find a lady to marry. Or if you don’t go to university, you have no way to meet them. But it is possible to see your family, and to marry your cousin. She is the only woman you know!

There are two types of marriage in Iran. You can marry a cousin. It is common in towns and villages. In the rural areas, they also marry four or five wives. The maximum is four in formal in Islamic law. But informally, you can have more! Mohammad himself married a lot of ladies. It is Islamic culture. But in the capital city and other cities, you see a lot of people with just one wife. You can’t find people with two or more wives. The young people don’t want it. They don’t like Islamic law. Even the men are happy with one wife.

17 million people live in the capital city and in other cities. So a few, maybe one million, marry a member of the family. But the young generation don’t want to marry a family member.

Teenagers are teenagers. And they will find a way. There are places. If you go to the mountains, you can go every week there, to walk, and have a nice time. There are police there too, but if you go higher, they are too lazy to go there, and it is possible to speak to ladies there. When I was 16, 17 years old, I went with my friend to the mountains. I climbed to the top. There were no police there. We tried to get other ladies to go to the mountain. We had a very nice time there. We had a small tape, and we played forbidden music, to dance. Six or seven of us at any time were looking out for police. We were just typical teenagers.

If you got caught, they tortured you and put you in prison. If they caught you with a walkman, they broke the cassette and beat you with a truncheon, and kicked you with steel-capped boots until you fell down. People would even get killed. It happened sometimes. They took you to prison. And no one knew which prison. And if something happened to you, they said it was accident.

I was three months in prison. I took pictures of a student demonstration in 2003. They tortured me so badly, so brutally. They kicked me, and beat me, and when I fell on the ground, they kicked me in the head. I still get headaches, and lose my concentration. Every year, there is a student demonstration in front of Teheran University. And they arrest them, torture and kill a lot of the students every year. If I am right it is every year since1999. It is a demonstration against the Islamic regime.

I am 37 at the moment. I have been in Ireland one year.

Amin said he would prefer it if I didn’t record how he escaped from Iran, for fear of reprisals for others attempting to leave by the same method. Suffice it to say that he escaped successfully, then found himself in Ireland.

In Dublin airport, it was confusing. I didn’t find myself feeling safe. I didn’t know what would happen to me here. What sort of country is this. What sort of people. How are the police. I didn’t know anything. I read in newspaper about Northern Ireland, and in historical books, but not so much information about Ireland. And it was difficult to know what would happen to me here. I hoped only to be safe. That is what I thought about. You have some information in Turkey. If you get a positive answer, you get refugee status. The smugglers give you information, but you don’t know exactly what will happen. Sometimes you hear stories but it’s hard to analyse it. My only thought was I am free of Iran. They can’t find me. And my hope was, I am in a country that is not Islamic. They have no contract to give back the people who escape. In Turkey, they have this contract. If a person from Iran is found, the Turkish government have to give that person back. So I was very happy to be in Ireland. But I hadn’t any concentration, and my English was very bad. I didn’t speak English. From school I could write, but speaking was very difficult for me. I saw two lines, for EU passports and for other passports. I was confused. I was going from one queue to the other. The woman asked me, ‘what are you doing?’ She kept asking me. But I didn’t know where to go.

When I got outside, I wanted to cross the street, and looked that way, and nearly got knocked down, because the cars were going on the wrong side of the road! This happened to me two or three times!

Then I went to immigration. I had to ask a lot of people. I was afraid to ask police. I saw them, but I asked other people. The taxi driver told me. I went to the refugee application commissioner office. After I was there a few hours, me and other people also asking for asylum, they took us by bus to a hostel for asylum seekers.

It took more than three months before I got an interview at the application office. There was a different understanding, I must say, between me and translator. It was very hard. The interpreter couldn’t understand. You know, maybe they were a long time in Ireland. And they don’t know the new words. Or they didn’t have the English translation. I told him if there is any word you don’t understand, just ask me. Because every year the language changes.

I had one interview. And I was refused because of the interpreter. I understood the problem, but when I got my papers, I saw I had got a negative. The problem was they gave my background to a Pashto interpreter who couldn’t understand. And when he wants to speak to me, I can’t understand, except for some words. And he couldn’t understand the Pharsi language. Maybe a little. But everything on the document was illegible to me. And unfortunately, the interviewer didn’t ask me why all the documents were illegible to me. If she wanted to ask me the problem, then I could tell her. Please ask my interpreter, he can read it. Everything is legible for him. But she didn’t do that. It was a document to show my name, education, my work before coming here.

I can’t say the name of where I worked, but I worked as a lawyer. I can’t name the office. It was a government office. We are afraid.

So they refused my application, and I appealed. I told them that I would refuse the same interpreter, because he can’t understand all the details of my case. So fortunately my solicitor had another interpreter. He was very good. Amir. We speak the same type of language, the same level of speaking and understanding. From speaking you can understand from which city, which area, which sort of family the person comes from. It is only one language, but we have different dialects. So the second application was successful. I explained everything about my documents, and what went wrong in my first interview. So I got my refugee status, and I was very happy. I am studying now. I have to improve my English. Then after that I would like to work.

First I have to study more. I am living in a flat. I had to wait three months after receiving my refugee status before getting a letter giving me permission to find my own place. So now I can find work. I am free.

What cultural differences have you noticed here?

The most different thing, I think, is the fact that you have freedom here. If you want to write an article in the newspaper, for example about a bridge being built. And you are critical of the bridge being built. It is OK. Nothing will happen to you if you express your opinion in the paper. It is not the same in Iran.

For example, in Iran there was this magazine called Harat. Harat was a scientific magazine. And one day I saw a cartoon in that magazine. It was someone playing with the globe. Holding it in his hand. And they said the editor was making a political statement in a 100% scientific magazine, which is all about inventions and discoveries. So on the evening after this issue, this cartoon came out, they attacked the magazine offices, they put all computers, all documents, all photographic negatives, they put out of the window onto the street. They beat all the people working there, they arrested them. The problem was, the man in the cartoon was wearing a turban. The turban looked like Khomeini’s turban. And they said that the cartoon was trying to show the people that Khomeini is playing with earth. So, every time you have to expect that something will happen to you.

Iranian people are not afraid though. For example, it is forbidden to have a party in your house. If you drink alcohol, and they smell alcohol on your breath, you get 80 lashes on your body. But you still see young people having parties, with music, girls and boys with their friends. They invite each other and gather in houses to dance and to drink alcohol. They know if the police – the Gardaí – know they are doing this, and drinking alcohol, they will be arrested, beaten, put in prison. But I think if something is forbidden, people are more curious to do that, more enthusiastic!

What do you think of the people you’ve met in Ireland?

I’ve met all kinds of people. I haven’t had any bad experiences. Fortunately I’ve met very kind and good people. But one problem I’ve noticed is that time is not important for people. They organise meetings, but then don’t turn up. They organise well, but they don’t organise 100%. First it’s good, and then not. You also see an excess of organising. It is not necessary. Sometimes I see promise, but no follow through. For example I say I will call you after a few days and invite you somewhere. But if they say they will call, I can wait one month, two months. It’s happened with more than one person. Two, three. But for me, if I make an appointment, I have to be there. This sort of thing could improve things in Ireland.

They are respectful though. They respect your opinions, even if they don’t agree. In my country I couldn’t say, ‘I don’t believe in God.’ Whereas I know here, 95% of people believe in God, but at any moment I could say, ‘I don’t believe in God,’ and they will respect that. They won’t have a bad reaction. And that is good for me. We have to respect all ideas, all ideologies, all religions of other people. You can say you’re a Catholic, I can say I’m an atheist, someone else can say I believe in Islam, but it’s not a sin to have different ideas. It’s good in Ireland that they accept that.

Any other negatives about Ireland, apart from the relaxed attitude to time?

No, just this problem with time. I was in hospital, and it took more than six hours before I could see a doctor. I ran into a tree and hit my nose! I just didn’t see the tree! My nose was not broken, but I had a torn ligament. It was very painful! But at emergency it took more than six hours.

But for all the rest, I am happy. For me, freedom is the best thing about Ireland.

So do you feel at home here?

Yes, now I do. Because for me, home is where I feel safe.

***

The 18th largest country in the world, Iran is about the size of the UK, France, Spain and Germany combined. It has a population of over seventy million people, and hosts the largest immigrant population in the world, about one million, mainly from Iraq and Afghanistan.

Iran borders Armenia, Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan to the north, Afghanistan and Pakistan to the east, and Turkey and Iraq to the west. It also borders the Persian Gulf, an important oil-producing area, Gulf of Oman, and the Caspian Sea. Its geographically significant central location gives it proximity to Europe, Africa, South and Central Asia.

Iran occupies an important position in international energy security and world economy due to its large reserves of petroleum and natural gas. The country is also known for its independent stances in the global arena.

The Iranian Revolution, (also known as the Islamic Revolution) which began in January 1978 and ended in February 1979, transformed Iran from a monarchy to an Islamic republic under an 80-year old, previously exiled religious scholar, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, with overwhelming support by Iranian citizens. Iran’s relations with the United States became deeply antagonistic during the revolution.

Iraqi leader, Saddam Hussein decided to take advantage of what he perceived to be disorder in the wake of the Iranian Revolution and its unpopularity with Western governments. He had ambitions to position himself as the new strong man of the Middle East. His objective was to expand Iraq’s access to the Persian Gulf and to acquire more oil fields. On September 22 1980, his forces invaded Iran, precipitating the Iran-Iraq War. The attack took Iran completely by surprise, but by 1982 they had managed to push the Iraqi forces back into Iraq. The war continued for six more years, until 1988, when Khomeini, in his words, ‘drank the cup of poison’ and accepted a truce mediated by the United Nations.

Iraq used chemical weapons as part of its war strategy. Iranian casualties of the war were estimated to be between 500 000 and 1 000 000. Iraq was financially backed by Egypt, the Arab countries of the Persian Gulf, the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact states, the United States, France, the UK, Germany, Brazil and the People’s Republic of China (which also sold weapons to Iran.) All relevant international agencies unanimously confirmed that Iran never used chemical weapons during the war.

Twenty years on from Islamic Revolution, however, the human rights situation in Iran remains poor. The Government restricts the right of citizens to change their government, manipulates the electoral system and represses political dissidents. Systematic abuses include extrajudicial killings and summary executions; disappearances; widespread use of torture and other degrading treatment; harsh prison conditions; arbitrary arrest and detention; lack of due process; unfair trials; infringement on citizens' privacy; and restrictions on freedom of speech, press, assembly, association, religion, and movement. Religious minorities, in particular Baha'is, have come under increasing repression by conservative elements of the judiciary and security establishment. The Government restricts the work of human rights groups. Women face legal and social discrimination, and violence against women occurs.

Sources: Wikipedia.org and US State Department

Suleiman's magic carpets

2009-06-07T13:30:00.000-07:00

Suleiman Aydiner is a charming Turkish guy in his early thirties, living in Kinsale. Somehow, he blends right in here, and most people take him for an Irishman in spite of his accent. It’s his manner, which is very relaxed. His brown hair is often hidden under a cap, and green eyes twinkle from under it. He’s been here seven years, has his own business, and is about to become an Irish citizen. As I was passing his carpet shop, he smiled at me, and I walked right in. We sat down, right there on one of his beautiful carpets, and soon enough he was telling me his story.

I was born in Turkey in the East, in Ismir. My mother is from Fethiye, on the Mediterranean side, between Bodrum and Antalya. I have a brother. My parents were divorced when I was 14. I was happy for my mother. My father wasn’t a very good man. He had a drink problem and he caused us a lot of difficulties when we were young. So I was very happy to live with my mother’s brothers after that. We moved in with her family and lived there until, I was 19.

Then we moved to Fethiye, my mother’s town, and we set up a business there. I finished technical school and accountancy at college. I also have a degree in English. In Fethiye, we rented a shop. Fethiye is a growing town, and will become a city. It already has over 100 000 people. When all the hotels and B & Bs, reach full capacity, it increases by
30 000 to 40 000 people. Tourists are mostly British. Some British people live there too.

Now the house prices are rising, although compared to Ireland it’s still cheap. What British people do is they come to retire there, or they set up a B & B. Do business. Live very happily. Fethiye is a resort town, on the sea. We have got two beaches one on the north side and one on the south side. The north side is very popular. It’s Oludaniz, quite big. The other side is Calis. So we live right in the middle. I used to work in the bazaars. I travelled around the coast. I’d go away for a week. You buy a stall, and pay either every month or every year, like a lease. They give you a licence, so you can travel wherever the markets are. So that was my job.

How was life growing up as a teenager?

I was very active. I did quite a lot of sport when I was young. So I was away from the family problems. I played basketball mainly, football, volleyball. After school we’d just leave our bags, meet up with the team and just play in the playground. I was quite free. My family couldn’t say anything to me. I was studying and getting good marks in school.

My brother was pretty sick when he was young. He had a problem with his kidneys. He spent a lot of time in the hospital, and he has to make sure he never gets cold. We can never take chances. What the doctor said was that it’s going to take till he’s 18. He’s perfect now. But then he was so weak. Whereas I was never sick. I was very strong. My father and mother are strong. My mother has asthma now, but that came later. I think it was stress from the relationship with my father. I’m 31. My mother is almost 50 now. At that time, you couldn’t leave if you had a child. I mean, what you gonna do?

Life in Turkey is very modern. My family never pushed me during religion festivals to go to the mosque. My mother never covered her face. When you’re in the mosque, you will cover the head. Also, when you’re in the street, in 45 degrees, you need to cover your head. They wear light colours, not dark colours. But it’s for protection, not religion. My grandmother just prayed at home.

It is still common in the extended families to live in the same room. Even though we had a very big house – five bedrooms – we only used four bedrooms. Things are changing in Turkey now, but in the villages, this is still common for the families to live together, especially the ladies. You have to be with your families until you are married. You normally live at home till you’re about 18. At a certain age, you go to university.

Was your parents’ marriage an arranged one?

Well, my father met my mother first, and he told his father and mother. He asked their permission. Then they visited my mother’s side and asked permission and there you go.

Is there a dowry tradition?

It depends on where you were born. It’s different in the north, south, east and west. But say, the bride brings all the furniture, the fridge, the television etc to the marriage, and the man comes with something different. They will not get married with empty hands. They bring half half. Before they get married, of course, they should find all the equipment for house, so it is all set up before they move in. We also give the Turkish bride a present. Gold is very popular. Almost everybody, whoever is invited, gives the bride a present of jewellery. It’s kind of an investment. If you need money later on, you can exchange the gold for money. With the economy, you couldn’t really survive as a single person.

What is the average age of a bride getting married?

In villages it could be 16, 17. It would be considered young though. It is still traditional to be a virgin, but it’s changing now. It’s more modern. The majority are still virgins, though, of course.

Do young people go to the mosque?

I don’t think so. Not really. At school you’ve got religion lessons every week. ‘Your Christian is like this, your Protestant like that, your Sunni, and so on.’ All I believed was that there is one God, and it looks after all of us. I don’t believe that there is a black or white god. Just one, it looks after us all. That’s all that matters for me. That’s what I believe, God forgive me. I can still pray in Arabic, but I can’t speak Arabic. I don’t want to know what the Koran says. I don’t want to know what the bible says.

What languages do you learn at school?

Turkish, German, English, French. You can learn Arabic as well, but not at school, at the mosque. They have hoca, (which you call priests here). And you can get lessons. Most of my friends did it. They didn’t push it. In fact they prefer that, if you’re not willing to do it, just don’t do it at all. I didn’t do it. As I said, my family never pushed me. My friends did have family pressure. They didn’t want to do it, but, you know…

What is the current situation in Turkey now?

It’s a democracy. I was in Turkey when the election was on, four years ago. For as long as I remember, there was always a coalition. Economy-wise Turkey is a poor country. We could go faster if there was only one party. Now it’s like a partnership, so much negotiation and discussion, not enough action. There are also other problems, terror-wise. With our neighbours we have problems as well. I mean, look at our neighbours, Greece, Iraq, Iran, Russia.

What do the Turkish people want?

Turkish people want to be safe and economically secure. They want to live comfortably. It wasn’t that comfortable there, because when we hear the news, we hear: ‘Istanbul bomb attack’, ‘attack in the east.’ People are afraid. It’s all to do with the Kurdish problem.

Is there military service?

Yes, there is. I did military service.

What do you think of military service?

I think every man should do it. My brother did it. I did it, all my uncles. Women can do it as well. It’s optional for them, Usually they pick the air force. It’s normally for 18 months. I did it for 16 months because I went to the east of Turkey. As soon as your name is on the computer, you give them the OK, and they tell you where you are going to do your training. It could be anywhere. They train you to get fit, to use weapons. You feel strong. You learn self-discipline. You say, ‘I’ve done my job for Turkey.’

They shave you completely, give you clothes and off you go. ‘Here’s where you sleep. See you at breakfast at 6am.’ You wait for 20 minutes in the cold. The officer comes up and says, ‘good morning’, then takes you off to the training base. After the first three months you go home for 15 days. It’s compulsory. They look at your education as
well, so after three months you are told where you will go for the next 15 months. I was sent to the east, where the fighting was. My mother was pretty upset. But I wanted to go, to see with my own eyes what was going on there. I used an MG3 automatic. I think it’s American. It takes 30 bullets.

I went to Diyarbakir, which was 60 miles outside the city, Hini. We protected civilians. Bullets holes were everywhere, in all the buildings. It was scary, to be honest. I was 22. This was after university. I was cavurs (2 strike) a team leader. They asked me to stay on after my military service but I said no.

The Kurds fight for what they believe. They want their own independence, language, TV etc. But Turkey is one country. We should all live as brothers and sisters.

I could be a Kurd. I don’t know. I don’t know my bloodline. I could be French. (I have blue eyes.) We could have Italian blood. A lot of history comes through Turkey so we don’t know. Kurdish people have a Turkish passport. They speak Kurdish and Turkish. Kurdish is not taught at school. I don’t know what percentage of the population is Kurdish. Maybe 15 million people.

People who have never been to Turkey have no idea what it’s like there. They see what they read, and judge from that.

Have you ever been married?

Yes.
Next door to our shop was a restaurant owned by an English lady who was married to my friend, who was Turkish. Her name was Samantha. We know each other probably two years. She said to me one day, ‘my friend’s coming over from England. Would you look after her?’ So that’s how I met my wife. She arrived, and we went from there.

We got married when I was 20 and Joanna was 28. My mother was surprised, because I was so young. I was completely in love. It wasn’t like a summer love. I knew her for a
year and a half before we married. She came over and went back to England, and came back four times. We just had a quick marriage. My brother was the witness. She got a Turkish passport. It’s no problem to get a Turkish passport. There you go! But by then I already had my army papers.

We were together for two years, living in Turkey. Then I decided to do my call-up. I said, ‘I will do the army now. It’s going to take me 18 months. If you’re willing to wait, that’s fine. If you’re not, again, fine by me. Until I do the army, I’m not free. After that, I can just travel whenever I like. So I can get on with my life. It’s kind of huge. Sooner or later you have to do it.’ I decided to get it over and done with.

She went back to England to stay with her family. She was from Cornwall. But after a while, she moved to Ireland. They have friends in Kenmare. She got a job in a hotel there. She worked there until I finished the army. When I finished it, she came to Turkey, and said, ‘would you be interested in Kenmare?’ I spent six or seven weeks with my family after the army, did the paperwork, got the work permit. The ticket was bought, and I found myself in Ireland in 1997.

What did you know about Ireland?

Nothing. I knew the language, where it was, and that it was a small country. I knew the accent was going to be hard!

We separated after two years here. Things weren’t going right. Maybe it was me. Probably it was just too soon for me, after the army, to go to a strange country. I needed to spend more time at home to get back to real life after the army. It was hard for me. Sometimes you just don’t know where you are. I kept thinking, ‘I should be in Turkey
with my friends.’ I mean, when we got married, I was ready. She was ready as well. Everything was OK at that time. But I didn’t give myself enough time to adjust to life again after the army. I should have spent more time alone. Sometimes I thought I was still single, still in the army.

I was working in the bar in the hotel. We didn’t get on well. So I said after 2 years working in the same place, ‘enough’. I went back to Turkey for a while. Did a diving course. I was always planning to do it anyway, so I did that until I could figure out if I’d change my mind. But I didn’t. So I went back, and we split up.

Why did you choose to stay in Ireland after splitting up?

When I was in Turkey, after three months, I thought, ‘I’m going to give it a shot again.
I’m going to save money and do something in Ireland.’ Which is what I’m doing now.

I did feel tempted to stay in Turkey. But I thought I mightn’t get this chance again. Age-wise and everything. To get a visa is very hard. So I gave it a chance to see how it would go.

I went to Killarney and was working in the bar in a hotel there. I was doing everything and they really liked me. After awhile, I said, ‘okay, I’ve had enough of Killarney’. I was talking to a friend of mine about four places: Connemara, Tramore, Kinsale and Clonakilty. He said to me, ‘Kinsale is the best place to live.’ I looked on the computer. There was a job there. I called, got an interview, met and started the job. It was in the Armada pub.

That was my first job. Mary was the boss. She is a great person. I had a great time. Then an opportunity came up to run the hostel in Castlepark in Kinsale. I was doing my dive master course and they asked me to run the hostel for them. So I told Mary. She supported me. I said, ‘I’ll be back when they close for the winter.” And I did that. Went back to Armada for a while.

Then Castlepark got planning permission to build apartments and they closed the hostel and I had to move out. So I got work at another pub. But there were problems there. It was to do with bad management. I was unfairly dismissed. I called the Revenue people and said, ‘tell me where I stand.’ I got help. It turned out I wasn’t on the books. I explained to the Revenue department, that Andy had faxed my PRSI number to the accountant and I thought everything was square. So they said to me, ‘here’s the information office number they will help you’.

The meeting came up. I didn’t talk. They said, ‘okay you can come back to the job’. I said, ‘thanks, but I don’t think I’ll go back. I don’t think it’s going to work under this management’.

Do you think she had a problem with you because you’re Turkish?

No. She was negative towards everyone. As far as I know, from what I hear. I have never had a hassle with anyone because I’m Turkish. No one has ever given me a problem for being Turkish, ever. I was dealing with people, drinking with them. Well, only once, but he wasn’t Irish. He was American actually.

Do you think the Irish feel threatened by immigrants coming in to the country?

Well, they’re friendly to me anyway!

I don’t know, to be honest. You get different stories. You go north, you hear different stories, you go east, you hear different stories. But I’ve had no hassle. I’m going to get my Irish citizenship soon, because I’ve been here seven years.

What happened after you left that second pub?

After that, I decided, it’s risky wherever you work. So I’m going to take the plunge and set up my own business. It’s a win-win situation for me. There is no
guarantee, wherever you go, but… thanks to a friend of mine, I got the lease. And the Credit Union helped me. And friends. We have the business in Turkey, so I don’t have a problem getting the stuff here. I just tell them what colours I want, what patterns, and they send over what they have, and everything is fantastic for me.

My family sells kilims (carpets) as well as loads of other stuff. But I’m quite limited with my space here, so I just sell kilims, some small crafts and jewellery and cushions and so on. The stuff in Istanbul is incredible, you couldn’t imagine. If the business is good, I will probably come up with a different business plan in two years. We have a lease for four years, so we’ll see how it goes.

I have a girlfriend from Poland. We met here. She’s working in a nursing home near
Kinsale. She’s very happy there, and people are happy with her. She helps me out during the summer. We’ve got a good relationship. It’ll be one year on the 26 February.

After your last marriage, would you consider remarrying?

I will marry again. I’d like children. I think the time’s coming up now. I’m working on it!

How do you find Irish people in general?

Very friendly. When they’re not drunk! When you work in a pub, you see everything. You see the bright side and the dark side of a person in four hours! But usually they’re very friendly and hospitable.

What’s your opinion of Irish drinking habits?

In Turkey, we drink a lot, but we don’t hurry, we don’t say, ‘oh the pub is closing soon, I have to have five or six drinks so I can get drunk before then’. We go to places where there is live music. We talk to friends. We can go on till 5 in the morning, still not drunk.

I don’t think later closing times in Ireland would change drink habits though. The culture would have to change completely. They might go up later, if the pub closed at 4am, but
still drink the same way. They think a good night out means to get very drunk. They drink too fast.

I find Ireland and Turkey similar. If you take Ireland 30 or 40 years ago, it would be similar to living in Turkey. Turkey is a little bit behind Europe, but it’s catching up fast. Being in Europe has helped Ireland a lot. We can see how the culture has changed in Ireland. Turkey, whether we want it or not, will also change. We don’t know what’s going to happen

Do you think joining the EU would be good for Turkey?

It would be. I would like to see Europeans all living under the same roof. I would like to see new Turkish generations visiting other countries. You can go on holidays, see other cultures, receive hospitality wherever you go. And offer it too.

I think mixing cultures is good. It brings people together. I have no problem about where I raise my kids, whether it’s here, or Turkey, or Poland. I would like to raise my children here. But I would raise them my way, so it doesn’t really matter where they are, or what passport they have. It’s all good experience for them. Europe is one place. Here I feel completely safe, completely at home. In the long term, I will stay in Ireland. If we have money later, maybe we’ll buy a house in Turkey or Poland. Rather than putting money into a car (because insurance here is so expensive) we plan to save as much as possible, get a good relationship with the bank, definitely buy a house here (rather than pay rent). These are our plans.

How is your business going?

Business is not bad. This is our first year. But it could be better. Hopefully in the coming year, it’ll be better, because people are getting to know what we have. Almost all the houses these days need something cheap, colourful, practical. I’ve never had complaints about my prices. They start, for a handmade kilim (carpet), at €50 for the smallest size, to €600 for the biggest. People think it might be cheaper in Turkey, but it’s not cheap
there, at all. I have my normal expenses, of shipping, VAT, overheads here, of course. But still, it’s hard to deal with people in Turkey, unless you’re connected. So it’s good for Irish people that I can pay less for the kilims than someone else importing them. The cheaper they are to buy, the cheaper you can sell them. If you’ve done business in Turkey you know what’s going on and you can do the deals.

What is your dream?

My dream is a boat. It’s a wooden boat. I would like to do private charters for birthday or wedding parties. But insurance is a nightmare here. I have to win the Lotto first, probably, to make my dream come true!

What are the pros and cons of living in Ireland compared to, say, England?

Well I’ve spent time in England, but it wasn’t my cup of tea. Ireland is more natural. The people are more hospitable than British people. The quality of life is high.

Ireland is expensive though. If you look at your weekly or monthly wages coming in and at the outgoings, there’s no chance of saving. You will probably go into debt. But Ireland is the safest country you could ever live in. There is no trouble whatsoever. Well of course there is trouble in Limerick and Cork, in the cities. They are shooting and dying. But it’s not like in Turkey or Spain. There’s no bomb attack. So in that way, I can say it’s the safest country. I would say it’s a really class country.

Since my conversation with Suleiman, he has sold his shop, married his Polish girlfriend, and moved to Blarney, where he has opened up a café with an Irish partner.

***

Turkey has been wooing Europe since 1959, with the intention of being accepted as a European state. Finally, official talks with the EU have begun, and there is an acceptance that Turkey will be considered as a new member from 2014. The 2007-1013 budget, which is currently under negotiation, is not taking into account the heavy costs of incorporating Turkey as a member, however, and accession may well be delayed until 2020. As well as consideration of the financial costs, Turkey must also have adopted
80 000 pages of EU law by the entry date. All 25 of the current member states must ratify the treaty before Turkey is permitted to join.

A major argument in favour of accepting Turkey as a member is that it will help to forge closer ties between the West and the Muslim world, and facilitate Turkey in stabilising the volatile region beyond its eastern and southern borders. For the Kurds, who make up 20% of the Turkish population, EU membership will also be a safeguard against discrimination.

Source: BBC World website

Erica from Ghana

2009-05-21T06:28:00.000-07:00

Erica Birch-Abban is a strikingly beautiful, light-skinned woman with long dreads. She was born in Ghana in 1973. Her mother was a trader in the markets, selling whatever fruits and vegetables were in season. It was a hard life for her, and Erica frequently felt concerned about her mother, who always seemed exhausted. Erica’s mother did subsequently marry the father of her three boys, whom she had after Erica, but he didn’t live with her, which is quite common in Africa. So Erica always thought of her as a single mother, alone and without support. Erica didn’t want me to record the initial part of the interview, and she became quite emotional in telling parts of her story. So the beginning is reported in the third person. Later, when Erica had recovered, she allowed me to record the rest.

Erica’s mother’s family was from the north, where female circumcision is practised, so to protect her daughter, she fled to the south. For a time, Erica lived with a friend of her mother’s, working in the market to help pay for her school fees and for her keep. At school, girls from the north would be sent back there, and when they returned, they would be emotionally traumatised, unrecognisable. She didn’t understand then, but understands now, that they had been circumcised. Some girls never returned, but would be married off. Girls are circumcised from about the age of six.

So, life was hard, and Erica’s one escape was school, which she loved. She was very intelligent and always top of the class, along with another boy. She had some Italian friends, and she picked up the language. She also speaks her home tribal language, and English, which is the official language of Ghana. She says there is a democracy there now, but in the past there were many coups and she was very afraid in those days. But now it’s a multi-racial society. She worked with Australians and she loved them. When she was very young, she used to be afraid of people with white skin, and she would run from them. But as she got older, she became attracted to them, and she grew up with the notion that white people were somehow superior (a legacy from colonial days) and she wanted to be with them.

Her father, whom she has never met, is German. She thinks her mother was a virgin when she had a relationship with this man, and when he found out she was pregnant, he said he was going away for a holiday, but would be back. He never came back. Erica doesn’t even know his surname, so she can’t find out who he is. Her mother is now dead. She did try the embassy, but the embassy said without a surname, they couldn’t track him. She is also afraid to find him, in case he’s not a very nice man.

Erica’s own first encounter with a boy was when she was 15. He was a family friend, aged about 22, whose sister was her best friend. They used to go to each other’s houses. He would put his arm around her and be affectionate towards her. She really liked that, but didn’t want to go any further. So he forced himself on her. She became so angry about it that she refused to see him for two years after that. She feels he didn’t actually penetrate her because she didn’t bleed. But the encounter left her feeling emotionally scarred and angry.

She went on to do her ‘O’ Levels, which she did in three years as opposed to the usual four, because she had such an excellent academic record. She went on to a Polytechnic College where she did her ‘A’ Levels and Business Studies. It was during this time that she met her husband. They went out for two years, then married and had two boys. Erica was working in a company with some Australians at the time. Her husband was a teacher. He was from the south. He didn’t know that she came from the north. She has a tribal mark on her left cheek, but she never told him where her roots were. She never told anyone. You would be afraid to tell anyone of your origins, she says, because tradition is very strong in that part of the world and people might betray you. But obviously it got out that she had slipped through the net, and she discovered that people from her own tribe were hunting for her. So she suddenly had to leave. She found an agency, and they organised papers for her. She didn’t know where they were taking her, only that she had to get out.

Erica begins her own narrative with how she got to Ireland:

I had not travelled outside the country before. I just needed help, and I got help. Whether it was legal or illegal, I didn’t care. I think it was illegal…I didn’t want to know. We flew through Paris, then to Dublin. We went through the checkpoint, got into town. He got a taxi, gave me the address of where I was going, told me the things I should say if I was asked how I got here. I was so scared. Then he just left me. I was alone with my two children, seven months pregnant. It sounds stupid, it sounds ridiculous, but it is a reality. I know people say all these women come here, pregnant. But I was worried about my life, I was worried about the lives of my children and I had to go away. And thank God I could, because if I couldn’t, then that’s another story. So many people are going through hell, and they don’t get help. I got help. That was the most important thing.

I didn’t even know that I was coming here, or that I’d be considered an asylum seeker. I didn’t know what an asylum seeker was. I didn’t want to know. I was living my life, my normal life in Ghana. My childhood was very difficult but I got off OK. I finished my education, went to college, met my husband. We did well. We had our home, our car, our family. I was working on a part time basis as a personal assistant. I also did voluntary work at a radio station. I loved that work. I did it for about three years. So I was doing very well. I didn’t want to come here at that stage. But I had to.

So there I was, in Ireland. I got to the Refugee Applications Commission offices where the taxi took me. It was there that I realised, ‘oh, I’m here as a refugee!’ And I didn’t like it at all. For my first six months in Ireland, I cried every day. My kids used to cry seeing me cry. It was such a terrible time in my life. I will never forget it.

How did the officials respond to you when you arrived here?

They were fantastic. I think they realised it was maybe not just because I was here but also the impact of what had happened to me before I got here. I think I was feeling the impact of that, after the relief of arriving here on safer ground.

Also, being seven months pregnant when I arrived, the tiredness, the frustration of taking care of two children all by yourself, in that state, you know, in a foreign land as well. It was a lot to deal with.

How did the kids cope?

Kids adapt to situations so easily. But for me it wasn’t as easy as that. I remember my first child, Sem getting very sick, I think he got the winter virus, and I remember the ambulance taking him to the hospital in the middle of the night and we had to spend so much time in the hospital, all of us, myself and the two children. And I remember he couldn’t sleep, he was vomiting, he lost so much weight, and I felt like…it was such a terrible time for me. You know that kind of anxiety and fear. I was so afraid I was going to lose my son, because he never caught anything like that before. We don’t have anything like the winter bug at home. Sem was almost six then. It was very difficult for me. Everywhere I went I was crying. I would go to the canteen, I would be crying. I met some Ghanaian girls at the hostel, but I couldn’t even discuss anything, because just by speaking, I was crying. I’d be crying through my talking. Oh God, I’d hate anybody to go through what I did. It’s such a terrible thing to go through. And it wasn’t because anybody was hostile to me. It was just because I was feeling uncomfortable. I was living in a hostel. It felt like I was living in a prison yard! They put restrictions in place not to have any problems, which of course they have to do, because they don’t want anything bad to happen to you. So there were times you could go out and times you had to be back. But I couldn’t go out, not in that state, not with my son so sick. So I had that feeling of everything closing up on you, there was no space. It felt like suffocation. It was terrible, in the aftermath of everything.

Once you had time to take stock of being in this new country, what did you find most difficult to adapt to?

The cold was like an explosion! I thought I was going to freeze. My hands were shaking. I’d heard from people that Europe was cold, but I never expected anything like that. I mean, back home, we have summer all year round. We have the rainy seasons as well, but you don’t have cold, you don’t have winter. So it was a shock. That was one.

Then, two, I was working with Australians in Ghana all right, and it was difficult dealing with the accent. But I got used to it. Then I came here and it was a different accent altogether, and I thought, ‘hey! What’s going on here? What are they saying? Please can you repeat that!’ So the accent was another thing.

Then occasionally you meet people with, what I call, evil eyes! I’m not saying evil as in evil, but I’m saying they make you feel bad, and you know they don’t want you here, you know? I mean, it’s everywhere, and I understand it perfectly. But when you’re not needed somewhere, you can sense it.

Did anyone ever say anything racist to you?

Not really. But the questions were always, ‘what are you doing here? Why did you come to Ireland?’ and they kept asking questions and I kept answering questions after questions, and it’s not nice, you know, feeling interrogated. Occasionally you will meet someone who is mean to you. You ask them a question and they just look away. That is rude. It happens, but I’m not bothered by it. As I said to someone, it’s like technology. A few years ago we didn’t have mobile phones and palm organisers and touch pads and whatever. It just wasn’t there. So you don’t want to ask a 50 or 60 year old to go out and
use a touch pad or whatever. What are they going to do with it? Even mobile phones, they find it difficult to text and so on. It’s just like that. A few years ago no black people were here. Then all of a sudden, they come flocking in, and I mean, ‘who are these people?’ And the mere fact that they seem to be taking over your place, take what belongs to you, it’s natural to feel this way. Take the animal kingdom. Every animal
protects their own territory. So it’s just like that. Protecting your own territory. It’s not racism in itself, it’s like, ‘I’d better protect what I have before someone takes it away from me.’ But you also find lovely people. I have lovely friends. I go to the Letterkenny Women’s Centre where there is a good support system.

You started off in Dublin. How did you end up in Donegal?

I was in this hostel and then one day I went out. I had to go out. I couldn’t stand being indoors anymore. So I just walked around the streets. Then I met this lady. It’s very interesting. We’re all black. But when you see a Ghanaian, you know it’s a Ghanaian. When you see a Nigerian, you know it’s a Nigerian. It ‘s the features. So I approached this lady because I knew by her features that she was a Ghanaian. And she was. And I said, ‘where do you live?’ and she said Letterkenny. Then I said, ’Well, I’m new here. I’m in a hostel.’ Apparently when you go to the hostel they give you a slip to go out and look for accommodation anywhere. But I didn’t know any place. So she said, ‘When they give you the slip of paper, write ‘Letterkenny’ on it. There are so many accommodations there, you will find a place.’ So I thought Letterkenny was somewhere around Dublin, like a suburb. I didn’t ask her how far away or whatever. She gave me a house agent’s number, and that was it. When I got back to the hostel, I found I had to look for accommodation. So, I got on the bus with my kids, because she said you have to take a bus, and they showed me, and I got on the bus. And the bus kept going, kept going, kept going, one hour, two hours, three hours, four hours! Jesus! And my kids kept saying, ‘Mummy where are we going? Mummy it’s so far away!’ And I was so tired. And my feet got swollen from sitting down so long. And I thought, ‘Where the hell is this?’

I got stranded at the bus stop here. And I just stood there, crying. Then this woman came by, and I thank her so much. I still don’t know where she lives. All she did was to take us to her house, to spend the night there. Then I fell sick. I have this problem of feeling lousy with travel sickness, vomiting after a long journey, you know. I had to go to the hospital the next day. She couldn’t keep us again, so I had to go with my kids and they had to organise accommodation for me. So, oh gosh, I went through hell! I had to go to this hostel. It was a Friday, so from Friday to Wednesday I had to stay there. Then I went to see the Community Welfare Officer to ask for the go ahead to look for accommodation. So that’s how I got to Letterkenny. I’ve been here since.

Are you glad you came here?

It’s been good here. And people are very good, you know. It has not been easy always. It never is when you go to a new area. But I think it’s a very good area to live in,

I told you I was working on radio back home. So one day, I was listening to the radio. You know, you never hear anything about Africa on the radio, or hear African music. If they speak about Africa, they are speaking about elections that are happening, or drought and famine or whatever. And I thought, ‘they don’t know anything about the real Africa, its music, the cultures, nothing. When people talk about Africa, they always talk about the bad things, not the rich cultures, the resources that we have, the development that we have, all the leisure activities. So I said, ‘it’s about time that people got to know more about Africa and not just paint it black because we are black. So I asked a friend of mine from the women’s centre about the local radio station, and she said, ‘I’ll give you the number of the producer there. So I called Highland Radio and asked to speak to Lisa Burkitt, and when they put her on to me, I said, ‘I am an African, I’m an asylum seeker and I listen to your station. I have a proposal. ‘And she said, ‘What?’ and I said, ‘I want to play African music and talk about African culture – I want to bring cultural diversity to your station.’ She said, ‘that sounds interesting.’ So they asked me for a demo and I presented some music, and they loved it, and that was it! So that’s when I started doing a monthly slot.

The first one was for 30 minutes only. But then people started calling and saying, ‘ you have to do it more than that,’ and they extended it to an hour.

I have programmes every Bank Holiday Monday, so usually once a month. But not all months have a Bank Holiday Monday, so I skip some months. I’m hoping to have more slots soon. I know that people do listen to me. And, from what I hear, they love the programme.

Have your children started school?

Yes, and they’re doing very well. They have adapted very well, just go on with their lives. The eldest is Sem, which means a great, or blessed person. My second is Zabdiel, which means God has given. My third child is Virgil, the flag bearer, or vigil keeper.

Is your husband going to join you?

My husband is hoping to come and see the children. But he can’t come and stay now because of the process. I am hoping to get my status very soon. You know, they’ve decided to give it to the parents of Irish-born children. So I am going to be given the status hopefully. But he still won’t be able to come because there is this clause that once you get your status, you can’t bring any relations in. It’s very sad, because I think the children have every right, as any other child, to live with their father as well as their mother.

Now settled, Erica is doing Women’s Studies at the Letterkenny Institute of Technology. She never gets to go out because she has three children, and realises that child minding is a big issue that needs to be addressed. She finds life difficult here, and very lonely. She misses everything about Ghana, the food, the community, everything to do with being home. But she does feel that in time she’ll feel at home in this peaceful country. She says there are about 500 African families in Donegal. She goes to church with women from the Letterkenny Women’s Group and has met lovely, friendly, Irish people.
She is afraid to go back, but is also afraid that she and the children will lose their roots. Another factor Erica feels very strongly about is her husband being allowed to join them. She hopes that once her application goes through, compassion will prevail, and the authorities will allow him to move here.
************

Ghana was the first sub-Saharan landing point for Europeans arriving to trade - first in gold, later in slaves. It was also the first black African nation in the region to achieve independence from a colonial power, in this instance Britain.

Despite being rich in mineral resources, and endowed with a good education system and efficient civil service, Ghana fell victim to corruption and mismanagement soon after independence in 1957.

In 1966 its first president and pan-African hero, Kwame Nkrumah, was deposed in a coup, heralding years of mostly-military rule. In 1981 Flight Lieutenant Jerry Rawlings staged his second coup. The country began to move towards economic stability and democracy.

A well-administered country by regional standards, Ghana is often seen as a model for political and economic reform in Africa. Cocoa exports are an essential part of the economy; Ghana is the world's second-largest producer.

Ghana has a high-profile peacekeeping role; troops have been deployed in Ivory Coast, Liberia, Sierra Leone and DR Congo.

Although Ghana has largely escaped the civil strife that has plagued other West African countries, in 1994-95 land disputes in the north erupted into ethnic violence, resulting in the deaths of 1,000 people and the displacement of a further 150,000.

The discovery of major offshore oil reserves was announced in June 2007, encouraging expectations of a major economic boost. However, oil is not expected to flow for some years.

Female circumcision is a traditional practice still common in about 28 African countries, and in some parts of Asia, involving the unnecessary cutting and stitching up of genital parts. Its origins are unknown. It is estimated that about 130 million worldwide have undergone female circumcision, with an additional two million girls and women undergoing the procedure. The ritual can take place as young as in infancy. Short-term complications include severe pain and haemorrhaging, which can lead to shock and death. There is also a high risk of infection, tetanus and gangrene. Long-term complications include urine retention and infections, obstruction of menstrual flow, reproductive tract infections, infertility, and prolonged and obstructed labour. In addition, there are the inevitable prolonged psychological and sexual traumas. Many African countries, including Ghana - in 1994 - have now criminalised the practice, after international pressure, but this has not eradicated its occurrence.

Sources: BBC World (website)
Female Genital Mutilation – a Guide to Laws and Policies Worldwide (co authors: Centre for Reproductive Rights and Rainbo)

An Englishwoman abroad

2009-04-29T14:33:00.001-07:00

Penny Rae was, until recently, the artistic director at the Triskel Arts Centre in Cork. Born in England and widely travelled, she feels most at home in Ireland, but feels the house prices are exorbitant and that might well chase her away. A warm person, Penny has the quality of a fragile English rose, with pale blonde hair, fair skin and green eyes. As she is a very busy woman, I was grateful to get half an hour in her tiny office with her.

I was born in East Yorkshire, one of eight children, the 3rd youngest. There was quite a lot of economic hardship, and illness with two of my siblings. So it was always important that we didn’t cause any more problems than were already there. My father was from London, but they moved to Bridlington because of my brother’s ill health. There’s a history of cystic fibrosis in the family. It’s a mucus covering of the lungs, a genetic disorder, which means the pancreas doesn’t work properly. So fresh air is very important.

My grandmother, who lived next door to us as I was growing up, was originally from West Cork, I think. When she was a baby they moved to West Yorkshire where her father worked in the mills.

My parents separated when I was 10, which was quite unusual. Both my parents were schoolteachers. My mother had a small private school. It was the ground floor of our house. We all lived above it. My father was a teacher at the local secondary school and he also did quite a lot of broadcasting and theatre work.

He died a year after they separated. So really, my mother brought us up. She did really well. She’s an incredibly strong woman, even now at the age of 83. She’s quite extraordinary really. Most of us got scholarships at private schools. We never felt deprived. And of course if you’re in a family of 8 children, everybody wants to come to your house! Whereas we always wanted to go and make best friends with people who were only children or only had one brother or sister! We particularly had a lot of girls coming round, with four brothers in the house! So it was a fairly tempestuous, chaotic, happy house, but with a lot of trauma too. My brother died when I was 16. He developed diabetes on top of the cystic fibrosis, which often happens.

My youth and early teenage years were spent doing classical ballet, which was an outlet for me.

We’ve all ended up living away from our roots. My eldest brother is in the north east of England, my elder sister’s in France. I have one brother in Edinburgh, a sister in London. We’ve all travelled and lived in different places. We kind of gravitate back to some part of Britain, but we tend to travel as well. For example my younger brother is the motor racing correspondent for the Sunday Times and travels all the time. And my elder brother is the director of a theatre workshop in Edinburgh and also travels regularly. My younger sister works for the BBC as a researcher. Again, she’s travelling. So we’ve all chosen work that will enable us to travel, and we’ve found ourselves spending time in different countries. My mother hasn’t travelled much but has always encouraged us to do so. We were living in this fairly small town, and she was determined that none of us would end up there.

So when I left school I lived in Spain for a year, and then I went to university in Leeds, in Yorkshire.

When I started dancing professionally, I was 21. I realised very quickly I didn’t like performing. I used to feel very nervous, and I didn’t like working with the choreographers. When I was growing up, dancing was a real freedom, a way of escape. In many areas of my life, I didn’t have any control, except this physical control of my body. But I decided I didn’t need that outlet anymore and I’d prefer to teach dance instead, and I really enjoyed that. I was asked to teach at the university, and that’s when I started organising community arts projects and it was my way of entering into arts management.

From there I went to live in the north east of England, in Newcastle. I was working on a project in the North East - looking at the role of dance and community arts activities, particularly for young West Indian boys in the inner city area of Leeds called Chapeltown, which was experiencing race riots at the time. I was working with my partner, a West Indian dancer and choreographer, and someone from the Ford Foundation came to see us. They were very interested in replicating this kind of work in Zimbabwe, and so off we went, with two babies!

We spent four years there. That was an incredible experience, culturally, and from every point of view. The landscape was one thing. Then the extraordinarily close relationships with the people and dancers we worked with, all of whom had difficult personal backgrounds and histories.

The National Ballet had started an outreach programme, particularly through a woman called Dawn Saunders, who was a classical ballet teacher and did pioneering work, going to high density areas and starting dance workshops with young black Zimbabweans.

So, just as I had done in Leeds, I began doing outreach work. These young people, both physically, in terms of athleticism, and in spirit and focus, could give so much. And you could make beautiful dancers out of them very quickly. My partner started the Tambuka Dance Company, which quickly became internationally recognised.

How did you attract potential dancers? Ballet is probably considered uncool by young male adolescents. Did you go to high density areas and say, ‘right, who’d like to learn to dance?’

In Africa, there isn’t that sense that dance isn’t OK to do. I mean these kids were being given a salary, and offered the chance to go tour abroad. And Neville was a very charismatic artistic director and choreographer. I think they were very excited and inspired by him. Before he went to Zimbabwe, he ran this company called Phoenix, which is the only all-black dance company in Britain, even though he doesn’t deal with colour or ethnicity, just dancers. He just wanted the best dancers, and the best dancers happened to be black. I think it was quite unusual in Zimbabwe at the time. He had a kind of apolitical naivity, but it obviously became quite political, seen incorrectly as an affirmative action thing.

Do you have any particular memories of Zimbabwe?

I remember going out to teach a class in one of the high-density areas. It was dark and there are no lights in high-density areas. And my car broke down. I was in this street with absolutely no lighting at all, and all these little houses all around me. Suddenly I felt the car being lifted up. It was incredibly frightening. And then all I could see was a sea of white teeth. About 10 men had quickly seen what had happened to me, come over and picked it up, taken it off to the sidewalk, shaken it around a bit, fiddled with the engine and got it going again. And at the same time, four of them jumped into the back and asked for a lift to town! There were lots of experiences like that. My children’s first day at school - I remember them in their sun hats and overalls on their first day. All kinds of kids from everywhere. I remember the first Tambuka performance at the Seven Arts Theatre. Packed. People standing outside. Tambuka is Shona for to blossom.

There was Bahrain who went to England. He came from nothing. And he got asked to guest with an English company and now tours the world. They were completely raw, about 15 or 16 at the start. It was so gratifying to give them that chance to make something of themselves.

It was a very idyllic lifestyle, especially for the children. We were living in a lovely cottage in Emerald Hill in Harare, with a swimming pool and beautiful grounds. We stayed there for four years, from ’90 to ’94 with our children, a daughter, Scarlet, and a little boy whom we adopted, called Mark, who is also West Indian.

Then our marriage broke up, and I came back with the children and he stayed.

What went wrong?

We were moving in different directions. Tambuka had become very big and kind of important and was doing international touring, and that was all great. But I didn’t have any release for my creativity and the writing that I had been doing, and the projects. So it was time, for all kinds of reasons, professional and personal, to leave.

What writing were you doing?

Well, I’ve always written. I’ve had small things, usually articles, published in magazines. And I’d done a few projects, working with different artists, providing text for exhibitions, testimonial work, artistic work, and I was beginning to get very interested in that.

When I came back to Glasgow, it was with the intention of developing that kind of work. I was thinking I had to support two children. So I took a job as the artistic director at the Centre for Contemporary Arts in Glasgow. I had close friends in Glasgow and I saw the job advertised, so I thought, why not?

I also began a relationship with someone I had known from a long time ago, whom I used to work with. He was behind the cultural revolution of what was happening in Glasgow. When Glasgow became the European City of Culture in 1990, he was the director of that. It had been this city of grime and dirt, ship-building, depressed industries. When the City of Culture scheme started it was all about Paris and Rome and Berlin, suddenly it was Glasgow, and it opened up a whole load of possibilities.

I applied for and got this job as artistic director of the City of Culture. After Zimbabwe I wanted to go for a much more socially-based programme. It was hard to come back and see British artists complaining about not getting enough when I had seen how responsive the Zimbabwean artists were to the slightest input. Those Shona sculptors would be earning considerable sums in Britain. It was a culture shock for me. To go to a big, established organisation was difficult. I felt frustrated. I was running the Centre for Contemporary Arts, with its huge gallery spaces, bookshop, café and all that, but my day-to-day contact with the artists was minimal. My job was more to do with management, pulling the whole thing together, whereas I wanted to be more hands-on.

So Glasgow was a three-year-phase that was OK and it meant I could give the kids security and stability, but it was a kind of barren period, creatively speaking. Although it doesn’t sound like that, when you’re the director of the largest Contemporary Arts Centre in Britain!

Then I went to Brussels, because my partner had been offered a job and because I was ready to leave. I thought it would be really exciting for the children to go to a French school and to have experience of living in another country. They were 9 and 11 then. My partner had two kids too, but they were older. We were all living together, very happily in Glasgow, up to the time they were ready to leave home.

When we went to Brussels my idea was to start writing again. But I was approached by the British Council, who had supported some of our work while we were in Zimbabwe and who had heard I was in Brussels.

Brussels was becoming the City of Culture for the year 2000 and they asked me if I would do something for it. They normally do a British programme each time, whichever European city it is. A Turner exhibition, or national theatre, conventional British large scale stuff. But they asked me to come up with a programme that was participatory and quirky, showing a contemporary Britain that wasn’t about landscapes. I came up with a concept called The Spaces in Between, which was looking at artists working with refugees, in prisons, public arts in the city and so on, and they said, ‘yes, can you do it?’

I did those projects for the next three years really. The most important one was in a place called Le Petit Chateau, which is Europe’s largest centre for asylum seekers. It had a unit within it, called a Cadet, which was a centre for adolescents in exile. I’d been doing lots of projects for artists in there.

One day, I was stopped by a 17-year old from Sierra Leone, who had been a child soldier, and who was now seeking asylum in Belgium. I’d got friendly with him and he’d been working on the projects with me. Then two Kosovan girls, Donna and Lisa came along and we got talking, and I was saying, you know, in a very middle class, liberal kind of way, ‘it’s terrible that you’ve been denied your voice twice, once in your
own country, when there was no choice about whether there was a war or not, and now in your new country, where you’re not allowed to say whether you want to stay or go’. And they said, ‘well, you know, maybe you’re denying it to us a third time, because you just give us these artists to work with. Maybe we’d like to develop our own projects.’

So about five of us sat down and devised a project according to the way they wanted it. It was called New Young Europeans. It was about them as young people, not specifically as refugees. For every young refugee represented, they wanted to involve a young person who had always had the security and status of their home country. They wanted to choose where they would be photographed, what they wanted to say. They didn’t want to talk about the trauma of their past, they wanted to talk about their dreams for the future.

So I did the interviews and testimonies, and we worked with a French photographer. The opening took place on the first night of Brussels as the City of Culture. Then lots of other cities got involved, and we ended up taking it to 10 European cities. It went everywhere, from the metro station in Madrid to a school in Rome, to the English Market in Cork, outside the post office and outside the Gate cinema. We always did it in public places, in non-gallery places. And in every city, we interviewed five young asylum seekers and five young local people talking about their hopes and dreams. Of the five asylum seekers we interviewed here in Cork, three have been sent back and two have been referred to Dublin.

So that’s how I came to Cork, with this project. The British Council in Dublin came to see the project in one city and asked us to do it in Cork for 2005. So my introduction to Cork was through five young asylum seekers and our contact here, Tom McCarthy, a wonderful poet. It was really interesting, an amazing introduction to a city.

Then as this project was coming to an end, I saw a job advertised for artistic director here (at the Triskel Arts Centre). I realised that it was small enough for me to develop my own projects, which would keep my own creativity going and also give me the chance to develop a strategic policy as artistic director. So the board accepted that.

I also had this sense of coming back to the place of my grandmother’s roots. I felt that Cork was small enough and Ireland was gentle enough. Before I came, I had had my first round of breast cancer and I knew that I didn’t want to go into a big stressful situation. Cork didn’t frighten me. People, when I came, were incredibly hospitable and kind and generous, and I felt I could do a good job here.

Since I came here, I’ve had another round of breast cancer. I’ve only been back at work a month. The first time it was just a lumpectomy, then chemo and radiotherapy, but this time I had to have both breasts and my ovaries removed. So it was a big one.

How are you now?

OK, I’m good, I mean I have lots of energy again, and I’m coping very well with the new drugs. It’s still in the lymph system, so they’re trying to get rid of it. But they’re holding back on the chemo at the moment. They want to see what happens. But in the meantime, Ireland is a very gentle, warm place to be if you’re in a stressful, traumatic situation.

My children have always travelled round with me. They’ve spent term times with me, and holidays with their father. So they’ve been all over, because he’s been travelling as well. But when I got my first round, Scarlet, my daughter, was particularly frightened, and she asked if she could go and do her GCSEs in England with her father, get to know him a bit more. So that was really hard. Mark’s 19 now and is working as a sous chef and he has a girlfriend and they have an apartment, so he’s already on his own really. He’s also in the north of England. He went to see his father and got a job there. So now they spend holidays with me and term times with their father.

Also, as I’ve had my ovaries removed, and know that I can’t have children, even though I wouldn’t want to, it’s hard. It’s also hard to think of new relationships…yeah, it’s very difficult. So there’s a double loss, a sense of bereavement. It’s another reason why I came here. I couldn’t continue to live in our big house in Brussels without the children. I felt their absence too much.

I’ve always been very healthy, always eaten well, exercised and danced. But I’m also on a vegan diet now and don’t drink any alcohol. It’s all about compromise and trying to hang on to the big picture. When you’re faced with your own mortality, things become simple. Now I aim for happiness and peace, and working, especially on things that are important to me. I’ve resigned from lots of boards and that and get huge pleasure now from small moments that I might have missed earlier. The kids and I have re-established a close relationship. I’ve let them go, really, but get great enjoyment out of the time I have with them.

Tell me how you find living in Ireland in view of your health situation.

I’ve had absolutely no contact with the Irish health system. Everybody told me to stay in the Belgian health system, especially with my medical history. I do know in Belgium I’ve had fantastic care while a friend in Ireland with the same problem waited much longer for treatment. She also had less access to consultants. In Belgium there is a team approach, and consultations between specialists happen with you present, so it feels empowering. You are part of the process.

I’ve had second opinions and gone into the area of alternative medicine as well. But you never feel safe really, especially once it’s come back and got into the lymph system.
I’ve had reconstruction and will go back in a few months to have further work done. My plastic surgeon was a beautiful 35 year old, glamorous woman, and that was really encouraging! Not an old grey haired man!

So although I haven’t experienced the medical system here, I have seen indirectly that I was treated better in Belgium than my friend was here.

Do you see any other downsides to living in Ireland?

It’s still a mono-cultural society. There’s a sense of ignorance in terms of other cultures. I don’t think the government is doing enough to prepare people for new influences. The country is also impossibly expensive! I think it’s a dangerous problem. I can’t imagine buying a house in Ireland, because I couldn’t get anything that would give me any quality of life, and I think that, in the end, is what might send me away much sooner. I’m still renting a house. I will feel a need for permanence, so I’m much more likely to go to Italy or France, or somewhere I could afford a house, where I can get a decent quality of life.

And the positive aspects of life here?

Openness, gentleness, hospitality, kindness, wonderful humour. That’s quite a lot! That’ll keep me going for a while…

***
England has been a major influence in the world throughout history, and remains a forceful presence in the EU today. The UK economy is stable, and one of the strongest in Europe, based on low rates of inflation, interest and unemployment. As a result of good economic performance, the government has come against public resistance to joining the European Economic and Monetary Union (EMU), with British opinion polls showing more faith in sterling than in the euro.

While most former British colonies (one of which was Zimbabwe) are now independent, many have chosen to remain within the Commonwealth. Certain islands remain under British control. These include the following:
Anguilla, Bermuda, British Indian Ocean Territory, British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Falkland Islands, Gibraltar, Guernsey, Jersey, Isle of Man, Montserrat, Pitcairn Islands, Saint Helena and Ascension, South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, Turks and Caicos Islands.

The union between England and Wales was formalized in 1536, with an Act of Union. In a later Act of Union, in 1707, England and Scotland agreed to join, renamed as Great Britain. In 1801 came the legislative union of Great Britain and Ireland, with the adoption of the name the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. After the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921, Ireland was partitioned, the six northern counties remaining with Britain, and in 1927 the UK was formally renamed as the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

(Source: CIA World Factbook.)

One of the Palestinian diaspora - a long journey

2009-04-24T08:57:00.000-07:00

Mahmoud Saladam was born in Palestine and grew up in Saudi Arabia. He is working as an engineer at the County Hall in Cork city, where we met in a private conference room for this interview. On the phone he had a rich, authoritative voice and I was expecting a dominant, headstrong person, but in fact, he’s very warm. He is a big, broad man with an appealing smile, which appears fleetingly from time to time.

I was born in the Gaza Strip. My father had to leave school at 14. His parents both died when he was 10 or 12, and his eldest sister took charge of the family. There were five girls and two boys. Although the girls worked in the fields, for very little food and grain, the work was really for men. So, being the eldest, he had to leave school, while my uncle, his younger brother, stayed on to finish his education. The Gaza Strip was under the British protectorate at the time. It was around 1948.

It was very hard at the time. We’re talking about the late ‘forties, early ‘fifties. Ben Saoud was just in his last few years, and obviously we lost what we were promised, a home, Palestine. Instead it became the state of Israel after rejections by a lot of Arab countries. We said no we want our country back. But we were left with Gaza Strip – it was called a pocket, at the time - to keep the refugees in. And that’s it. I think that’s what made it worse, the massive influx of refugees that suddenly came from all over the place, and Gaza has limited resources, and it really did put so much pressure on the economy, which was already bad anyway. We were living in Gaza, the old Palestine. As a result of the war, they all had to leave their homes, and go to Gaza and the West Bank.

By the time he was 18 or 19, my father had heard how well people were doing in other countries. So he moved to western Saudi Arabia. He found a way to get some money, to get to Egypt, to the Suez from Gaza. It was a train route. And from there he caught a ship. It was the only means of transport at the time. From there he got to Jeddah. Obviously life at that time meant there was a lot of migration, so it was likely that at the new place, there was someone who could help you and guide you. He met with some of his cousins who arrived before him, and they started a business, a carpentry shop, mainly for windows and doors.

I think he did well in Saudi. Some Palestinians went to Lebanon, in the north. Some went to Syria. Now we have 400 000 Palestinians living in Syria. They couldn’t believe they would lose their homes. Some left their fathers behind in Gaza. But the army, or the ordinary gangs at the time, were very clever. They’d come in to a small village, take the men out, kill them, shoot them somewhere, and once the family has lost the man, they’d feel very insecure. My current wife’s father was taken away, with all the men in the village, and they were never seen again. And the remaining family had to flee. Now they’re still living in a refugee status in Gaza strip. Some have left, and found jobs elsewhere.

I think at the time, there were 150 or 200 000 in Gaza, and suddenly, the population doubled. People from the UN and aid agencies brought in food and would feed them, but they still had to find work, schools. So some left, because it was too hard in Gaza.

My father did very well, because it was at the start of the oil boom in Saudi Arabia. It spilled over to the benefit of the country as a whole. It wasn’t seen and felt effectively until the 1973 change in oil prices. I think they cut the supply to the west, and suddenly it went from $4 a barrel to $12 a barrel. And out of the blue there was so much money around that everyone was wealthy.

My father was single until 1954. By then he was earning good money abroad. He was 21 at the time. But the average lifespan then was only 45, I was told, so at 21, he was already half way through his life! He went back to Gaza for a visit and his uncle suggested that he shouldn’t go back without getting married. So he married his cousin. It was an arranged marriage. By then Gaza was under Egyptian protection. After he got married, he left again, leaving my mother behind. She was pregnant with me. In those days, it was very difficult to travel. This is how things have changed. She had me in April ‘55, and a few months later he came back to arrange for a visa for her to join him. I think it was ‘56, just after the Suez Canal war, with Egypt on one side, France, Britain and Israel on the other side. Egypt had decided to nationalise the Suez Canal, which was in the control of the British. So it was a hard time as well, just going from bad to worse, because you had the army going through Suez again, after the ‘48 war.

I think the fact that my mother found a visa at the time was a miracle, so she was very happy to grab me and rush onto the first train she could get to take her to Suez. From there she jumped onto a ship.

So I was brought up in an Arabic, Muslim culture, but not really my own. I went through schooling in Saudi, where we were made to feel like refugees, made to feel like we didn’t belong, but were just there as guests, all the time. Even on our ID, we used to be called “guest worker, son of…’ This is the system they have adopted. Nobody could claim citizenship. Everybody is sponsored by somebody who works for him. And I am the son of someone who’s been sponsored to do a certain job. You have to be in that exact occupation. And you have to pay taxes. They’re obviously not like the taxes you pay in the west, but they have to be paid. The locals never pay taxes. According to Islam, you don’t pay taxes. There’s no such thing.

How do they raise money to build roads and so on?

They obviously manage to raise the money to build roads through the number of immigrants who pay taxes, and also trading, the wealth, the oil prices, and the amount being pumped out. I think in the seventies, they pumped four or four and a half million barrels a day. Now they pump out 11 million a day, as I speak. It shows you what a huge reservoir there is.

My father did well. Not many people had a carpentry business. There were only a few. But we still lived in a small two-bedroomed house. After me, there were four more boys to follow, and five girls. We lost one girl, and a boy, so there were four of each then. There was always a fatality, in every family, because a woman can’t cope with ten. So we lost two, and had eight left. They were a few months old. This was purely due to the type of life. My mother was having to breastfeed some and cook for some and make sure the husband comes home and has his dinner. That meant that some got less, and they were usually the weakest. So it was a matter of survival of the fittest. So, in every family, it was not uncommon to hear, ‘oh, so-and-so has lost a baby.’

In the ‘sixties they brought in contraception. And as it was with the Church in Rome, there was a dispute, but finally they allowed it to be taken between births. It is still used that way now, just as a rest between births. It’s not allowed to stop production altogether!

So I did my schooling there, then left in 1972. I got a good result in my GCSEs. In the early ‘seventies, it was impossible to find a seat in a university in Saudi Arabia, although we had two universities. There were just enough places for the Saudis, never mind the guest workers’ sons. So people used to fly to Cairo. But Cairo was top of the class at the time, and if you happened to be a Palestinian with a seat in Cairo or Syria, you were considered to be very, very lucky. But your father would have to take you there to apply. And my father wasn’t really going for it. He wasn’t pro-active about it. It wasn’t easy at the time.

So I decided to follow the footsteps of a friend of mine in my class who was going to the States. I suggested it to my father, and he said, ‘there’s a bad tradition among Palestinians who to go the States for education – they tend never to come back. So no chance.’ So that was out. He believed that the UK would be a better option. So we approached the British consulate. He’s semi-illiterate my father. He can read, but he can’t write very well. But he said, ‘I’ll go and find you something’.

The man at the consulate put us on to a very expensive boarding school, to do ‘A’ levels. It was very difficult the first few months, going from a hot country, and a home environment. I was only 16. I’m very much a homely person. I was never much outside the home, didn’t really have friends. My mother and father, and our extended family formed very much the core of my life. So when I went to this school, I was thrown in at the deep end. It was a difficult time for me. It wasn’t the norm, flying at the time. So that was a big deal. And then the weather! I couldn’t believe that you wouldn’t see the sun for a few days at a time!

I remember arriving on the 6th October at Heathrow. The school was supposed to send me a driver. They didn’t. But the school was not at all what we thought it was. I remember my father saying, ‘I have enough money to get you through the first two years. You have to prove yourself.’ He thought I was going straight into medical school! He had no idea about ‘A’ levels, acceptance etc. He was so naïve at the time. The man at the consulate said, ‘oh, he’ll need a bit of English, obviously, and once he gets that he’ll go straight into university.’

So as soon as I got to this very expensive school in Cheltenham, the principal started asking for more money, although we had already paid the full fees for the first year. At the time, £300 for a term was like £3 000 now. It was the ‘seventies. And he said he wanted another £50 for laundry. We didn’t have a phone at home till ‘76, so to contact home, I had to send a telex from the post office. So it wasn’t easy. I took action myself, encouraged by my Belgian friend from Iran. He was in a similar situation. He said ‘look, let’s go to London. I’ll go to my embassy, you go to yours.’ I wasn’t saying anything at the time about my birthplace. If people asked where I came from, I said, ‘Saudi Arabia.’ Which was true really, but I wasn’t Saudi. In spite of this, I have to give them credit. They did have the time for me at the embassy. They said, ‘look, this isn’t a real school; it’s just a tutorial college. What happened was, at the British consulate in Saudi, they got the schools mixed up. It was Cheltenham Tutorial College. They gave my father the list, and he sent the fees to the wrong school. It was for grinds, for people who were failing at school. But by now, he had sent a lot of money to the school.

The school managed to get three of us from outside the country. There were no inspectors checking on them. The embassy said, ‘we struck that school off our list a long time ago. What are you doing there?’ They wrote the principal a letter, saying, ‘You cannot charge him more money, and you have to keep him for the year, because he has paid.’ My friend got the same letter from the Iranian embassy.

Needless to say, our life was made hell at the school. So we both decided to pack our bags and disappear and never go back. We made our way back to London. My father sent me more money, although he had lost the other money. I was 17 by then, and just beginning to open my eyes to what people have and don’t have. I was meeting my own kind of people. Palestinians from Kuwait, Palestinians from Jordan, Palestinians from Lebanon. And I found that people didn’t go back home for the holidays. They all worked. There was no restriction on working, earning money. But before I could say anything, my father sent me a ticket to return home for the summer holidays. I didn’t have a choice. I had to follow orders, and go.

I was 22 stone, really, really big, when I went to England. And when I went back to Saudi, I was 13 stone. So that was excellent progress. It was because there was no mother’s food! Our food is very rich. We eat a lot of bread, and rice. So I was feeling very good to be going back so much lighter, and it was good to see the sun. But after the holidays, I was also glad to go back to England.

I’d started enjoying the freedom in the west. I had a girlfriend for the first time. I started drinking. Not as you drink here. Just a lager. But it was a taboo for us. My money was also being spread to include going out over the weekends. So it wasn’t all books and study. But it’s very sad that I failed all my exams. So for three years, now, my father had supported me and I had nothing to show for it.

And now I couldn’t even go back to Saudi, because after six months of exit and re-entry you can’t go back as the son of a foreign worker. Well, you could, but it would take a lot of trouble and money. So he said, ‘what are you going to do?’ By then I was 19. I said, ‘Leave me to my own devices.’ By then I had worked out that there were engineering courses, which took only three years. So I applied for Pure and Applied Maths, and for Physics, which was what I needed to get into the Engineering course. I went to a local Polytechnic, got three Cs, and through those results, five acceptances. It was a good result at the time. I did this on my own, by getting a local education grant, and working part time.

I chose Sussex University, because my girlfriend at the time happened to be going there too. I also discovered another part of me while I was there. There was a Palestinian society there, and I joined, and got so involved. I became a statist. The Irish influence also started on me. All my friends belonged to a movement called Troops Out Now. It was Republican, anti-British, and they were all from the North. We worked together, canvassed together. I don’t like to blame my failure at university on this, or on the fact that my own tutor was a Jew, which I didn’t know, and the head of the Jewish society in the university. But it didn’t help, I’m sure! I didn’t want to be studying, studying all the time, I wanted to educate myself left, right and centre. For me, that’s what being at university was all about. It was more exciting to be out there. I had lost my girlfriend by then. But it wasn’t such a blow, because I was politically involved. I wanted the world to know we were stateless, we’d lost our home. And we’d get together and cook Palestinian food. For the first time in my life, I belonged.

I failed two subjects and had to repeat them in autumn. I carried them over, and passed the second time. But by Christmas, the course was becoming very nitty gritty, and complex. Also I wasn’t paying much attention. And my tutor said, ‘I can’t really justify your being here any more.’ I think by then, the fourth semester, it was too late to catch up.

I got a job in a restaurant in Weymouth. I’d lost my grant so had to earn the money. The problem was, with catering, you always have drink around. I’d work hard till 11, then go out drinking till 2 in the morning. In September I saw a new engineering course offered at a Polytechnic college. So I called them – it was a college in Oxford. I was accepted. I’d saved a lot of money by then, so I could manage. I knew it would kill my father if I asked him for more money. By then I’d had a love affair, and a break-up, and I’d toughened up. The years had done their job. Nothing was going to make me feel sorry for my father for having a son who was not going to be a doctor. I was beginning to think about what I wanted, not what he wanted. That was very good. I thought,’ yeah! He doesn’t know how it is for me here.’ So I stopped being afraid of my father, an Eastern thing.

There is a thing about being educated in the west. I have friends who have graduated from Moscow University, from Bucharest. In the east, they really are being led like a donkey. I wouldn’t trust my friend who graduated as a doctor from Bucharest University. Whereas in the west, you get a degree though hard work. That’s it.

I had a girlfriend in the summer, who later became my wife. She was from Weymouth. That was also another step away from my culture. She’s British. So that was another wish of my father’s blown out of the window. He didn’t have a son who was a doctor, and he didn’t have a son who came to him to ask permission to marry. I didn’t tell anyone. I was living in Oxford studying for a degree that would be of interest to me. But I was intending to seek work in Saudi, so it wasn’t all bad!

It was very hard, because at the end of first year, my girlfriend got pregnant accidentally. I was 23. She was very proud and didn’t believe in the welfare system, so there was also added pressure to earn money. She’d been working as a legal secretary up to then. I had a flat, with two rooms. I think she was in a hurry to leave home. She was 19. She didn’t really have a good home environment, everyone was busy; the Mum was always out working. So it was a matter of getting a man, because that was the only way she knew to get a home of her own.

Then I got a job in Saudi through a friend. Katrina was shocked with the culture change. It was completely different. Our little boy was one year old when we went out. My parents weren’t over the moon, but they weren’t horrible. In fact they were proud that I called my son Javr, after my father. It’s an old-fashioned name. You wouldn’t name your child that now.

When we got to Saudi, I discovered I’d been given bachelor accommodation, because I’d only just graduated, and it wouldn’t be right for me to get superior accommodation to other employees who had been there much longer than me. But Katrina went to the managing director, who had Irish roots, like herself, and said, ‘look I’m living with my in-laws in the city, and believe you me…you can’t leave me there!’ So he gave us really good accommodation, so we were the envy of all the employees, who knew we’d got the accommodation through my Western wife.

Then the company went bankrupt. It was a multimillion-dollar conglomerate, which was eaten away from the inside. The employees from Europe and America had to pack up and go home. Katrina wanted to do that, but I wanted to stay. I knew I wouldn’t find a job in the UK, not without experience there. But she insisted. She was homesick for her country, her culture, not really for her family. She wasn’t at home in Saudi, whereas I could adjust. So I thought, (by ’85, we had a little girl as well) we could manage if Katrina was prepared to take a job. But she didn’t want to do that.

And I didn’t find a job in engineering, although I could get one in catering, because I had experience in that. I wanted to set up a B and B, or a restaurant, but Katrina wasn’t interested in that. She wanted to stay home. She’d hated here own mother coming home tired, asking for tea, and she wanted to be a stay-at-home mother. But I wasn’t earning there so finally, I had to go back and get work in Saudi. She stayed in England, but it was very hard. After the first eight months, she started getting depressed. She had a severe depression. She couldn’t wait to see me, but when I was there, she didn’t want me. She couldn’t stand doing things every day without me, although she knew the money had to come from somewhere. At the same time, my family was pressuring me to stay back there in Saudi. So it was causing friction between my wife and my family. But she couldn’t stick it. She was offered a job in kindergarten, although she wasn’t qualified, because she was English and could reflect the ethos of the school, bring customers in. But she didn’t take it.

We survived the first contract, till July ‘86. We spent that summer in France. I saw the kids in January of that year, and now it was July. I knew we couldn’t go on like that, so I said I’d look for a job in the UK.

But I was so engaged in Saudi practice by then, I couldn’t show them in England what I could do. When the big boys asked me what salary I wanted, I said, ‘I don’t mind. Whatever God sends me!’ You would say that in the Middle East, but you wouldn’t say it in Europe!

So by November of that year, I went back to Saudi. I found a very good job with the brother of Osama bin Laden. His father still owned the company, but the brothers were running it. In April ‘87, we were building in Mecca. By August I was told I’d have a job for life. I informed my wife, I said, ‘sell everything and come’. I must admit, this was one of my mistakes in life. But you live and learn, until you go to the grave.

She sent her brother over to speak to me. I said, ‘no, I couldn’t find a job there, I let everybody down, I’ll never find a job in the UK; this is where I have work. The wife and kids must come.’ She said, what about schooling? She was very good at responding, I must admit. Later in the year, she said, ‘I wish I’d listened to everything you said.’ But a lot of things just happened. She did manage to get there, book them into a private school. I was hoping I could afford it, or the company would help me, or my father could. But nobody could. They arrived in November. We had to return in the end, because of the schooling. 40% of my salary would have gone on school fees, so it was really not on.

So I got a job as a freelance, doing contracts in England. I didn’t have English experience, so the agency was giving me a chance, through short contracts, to prove myself. Then I found myself a job with the local authority. By March ‘89 I was offered a fulltime position. I accepted it, and I was on the local council by July.

So we bought a house in Southampton and I was working in Gosford. The reason we bought in Southampton was it was a city. We would be bound to find ethnic minorities for us to share our life with. But the minorities in the UK at that time were usually Indians and Pakistanis, really very different cultures from ours. You can’t mix the two. I did try to mix, and at work I mixed with English colleagues. But that was it. After work it was back home to the family, and there was nothing to do in Southampton. Then I got talking to somebody in a shop, and he told me about a mosque and soon after that I found myself in an old-speaking mosque, where they spoke in Urdu. A Muslim community. I’m not practising anymore, and really I only went there because of Ramadan. But it was nice, even though before that I got along on one or two prayers a week. I took the kids off school to join me at the mosque. Katrina was Church of England, but she wasn’t religious at all. In fact, she wanted them to be brought up as Muslim, even though I never said they had to be.

Did you and your wife experience any difficulties because of cultural conflict?

Yes, so much so, that we got divorced. As we grew older, we grew more apart, because of the culture clash. She wanted to stick to her English way of life. She was grown up now, 34 or 35. I was 38 or 39. When you get to that stage, God becomes more important in your way of thinking. I was giving the kids an Arabic lesson every Sunday at home. And after that I’d teach them one prayer, just one, to show them what the words mean. So when they grew up they wouldn’t say, ‘oh you never taught us anything.’ The two boys are now working with the Hampshire police, as constables. When they are asked what religion they are, they say, ‘Muslim.’ But they do feel very English.

They live in Southampton, although their mother left; she got married and went away. I see them every six, eight, nine months.

Did you ever go back to your birthplace?

Yes - in ‘83, I got an invitation to visit my relatives in Gaza. So we went there, and they showed me the room I was born in, the cot. The mattress was made out of straw. The type of accommodation was very nice. So it gave me an attachment to the place.

I am a very strong supporter of integration. You may not find many who would take my view. I wouldn’t like to politicise Islam or put politics with religion. To me, religion is a way to be brought up. If you’re brought up in a Catholic way, or Jewish, or Muslim, or Buddhist way, or Hindu, they all bring some kind of spiritual satisfaction. I respect all of them. But I also expect people to respect me for my beliefs. Providing that you don’t ride a bloody aeroplane and bump it into a tower. No religion on earth can be justified to be used this way. Integration is possible I think, if people respect each other’s differences.

What about integrating in Ireland? Have you made any changes to your lifestyle here?

In certain ways, yes. For example, we have greyhound racing tonight. This is something new for me. Everyone from work is going. It will be good, as long as nobody tries to force me to have a drink. I haven’t had a drink since I was in my thirties. That’s my choice.

On the other hand, as we live in this country, I’ve decided that we should eat what is available. I don’t believe in travelling all the way to Waterford to buy chicken slaughtered by our methods. I eat the meat that’s available, the only exception being pork. But some people have a different view and travel to buy their meat. Before I gave up drinking, we used to be very social, we’d go out, we’d have beers in the fridge. We’d celebrate Christmas, Boxing Day.

How did you come to be in Ireland?

To be honest with you, it was because I worked with some Irish people in Saudi, and I thought they were really nice. I thought all Irish people would be the same! That’s why I applied for this job. Although all the Irish people I mixed with were from the North, and from Donegal, and this job was in Cork. But I thought, ‘why not?’ I also liked the idea of rural Ireland. They also offered me more money than I was getting in England. It was £10 000 more than the other job

You mentioned a Palestinian wife?

Yes, my second wife, Manan, is Palestinian. She joined me here in 2003. We have two children, and she has one from a previous marriage in Saudi Arabia.

How did you meet?

My sister went out intentionally to look for someone that might be suitable for me. I went and did the talking and meeting and thinking and going away. I don’t know if it would be classified as an arranged marriage. I suppose you could say it was more like matchmaking. We both had a choice. With an arranged marriage you don’t really have a choice. But in our case, no one was forced. I think it works, you could say.

Ireland is a challenge though, for a Muslim woman. It definitely is not an easy place to live in. My wife grew up in Saudi Arabia. She covers her head. So it is a bit tough for her. When we meet other people socially, people are expecting you to be freer. These scarves, some people think it is the man who forces the woman to wear them. So when people see her wearing the scarves, they say, ‘what do you want to wear those bloody things for?’ You think, don’t be vicious. Just take it easy. Make your own choices, let other people make theirs. Also, when you offer someone a drink, and they say, ‘I’m alright with this coke,’ just take it; don’t try to push them to have a drink.

I thought I would come here, and find people like the ones I met in England or Saudi, very politicised. But I find people are so materialised here, only interested in making money. I met some Irish women at university, and they were more religious. They wouldn’t have sex before marriage. I thought, ’so, this is how Catholicism is. ‘ I came here expecting religion to be on top of everything. Unfortunately, and I mean unfortunately, it wasn’t the case. This society is living without religion.

In spite of the drawbacks, do you feel settled here?

I do feel an outsider, but I think so, yes.

The kids were born in the UK. They are 8 and 6. They are having trouble with the Irish language, but I’m amazed at how quickly they picked up English. I speak to them in English; my wife speaks to them in Arabic. So they are very much bi-lingual. My first children became English; they feel at home in England. I hope my younger children will become Irish, will feel at home here.

***

The lands known as Israel and Palestine have endured centuries of upheaval, violence, suicide bombings and tension, while borders have been drawn and redrawn after each war. The situation has been affected by every major event in history, most recently including the Holocaust, September 11, the death of Yasser Arafat, and the invasion of Iraq by US, British and Australian forces. Americans began to view terrorist activity in a new light when Palestinian organisations such as Hamas and Hizbulla came to be associated with Bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda. As a result, a blind eye was turned when Israeli forces stepped up atrocities in their control of the territories.

Then the Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah came up with a dramatic proposal to end the long Arab war against Israel in return for Israeli withdrawal from Palestinian territories as well as appropriate arrangements regarding Jerusalem and refugees.

The proposal was adopted at a meeting of the Arab League, with a few amendments concerning refugee issues. In March 12, 2002, the UN Security Council passed Resolution 1397, calling for the creation of a Palestinian State alongside Israel, and on the 15th August, Israeli evacuation of Gaza settlements and four West Bank settlements began. By September 11, the last Israeli soldiers had left Gaza and on the 12th, control of the settlements was officially restored to the Palestinians. It remains to be seen how the repatriation of refugees will work out.

Source: World Almanac

A boy from Togo and a girl from Mayo share common traditions

2009-04-24T08:46:00.000-07:00

Afo comes from Togo. He has been living in Galway since 2000, and has an Irish-speaking girlfriend from Mayo. We met at a pavement café, and as we chatted, he was constantly being greeted by acquaintances passing by.

Myself I have 32 brothers and sisters. In my country, you have to have many wives. At that time, children were like cattle. The more kids, the better. Now things have changed.

I have many mothers. They live in different houses. I stayed in my stepmother’s place. I didn’t stay with my mother. Every kid stays anywhere. We lived in the middle of the country, in a village called Sokode.

Tell me about the customs, the culture.

When you are eighteen, you have to start to make a farm yourself. You have to grow maize. You have to work hard, not be lazy. To be responsible for yourself: sleep properly, stay warm, not waste the education given by your parents.

Some people are fishermen. But whatever you choose, you have to know a skill. They have to be able to fix a boat. Your father will teach you. ‘Now take this boat, go fish,’ he will say. Every time you get a fish, you make your money. You can get a wife, feed your woman, make love with your woman. Make some children. That’s what it’s all about.

Are the scars on your face tribal?

Yes, it’s my tribe. So people know where you come from, who your mother is. They know who you are. If somebody dies, if your mother has one or two babies, they know straight away.

You said there are 32 children in your family. Did you feel close to your siblings?

Every time, you have one close to you. The mothers make food, they put it in a big dish in the middle of the room. Then everybody eats. If you are ten to 15, you have one bowl. From 5 to 10 you have one bowl. You eat together. Some people think if you eat together, the little ones, they get an appetite. Some people don’t like to eat alone. But when you eat together you get an appetite.

What did your father do?

He was a farmer. My father died more than 20 years ago.

Did you farm?

No - I went to school and then to college.

What did you study at college?

Languages and geography. I was a teacher. I was teaching, in the dialect of my pupils. I taught from ‘97 to 2000. It was good.

I speak my own language, and also French, German, now English too.

Tell me about Togo.

Togo was a German colony. The whole country was divided after the Second World War. The English took one side, Ghana, the French took the other side, Togo. Now we have independence. But we are not independent. We have a dictatorship.

The country has a strong European influence. From France they bring tomatoes, potatoes. Manufacturers come to Africa and sell European products, produced by foreign companies. We go to our shops. In the shops, everything is imported, and the prices are cheaper than our local prices. We can’t compete with imported prices. In Europe they give subsidies to their farmers so they can sell cheaper. We cannot export our products to France. It’s the system of oppression, an economic scandal.

What is the weather like?

We have a humid climate, like Durban in South Africa.

Do people practise religion?

We have many religions. We have in our culture, our own religion. Then we also have Christian, Islam, many religions.

What are the people like?

The people in Togo are very welcoming. It doesn’t matter if you are a foreigner. You are invited to eat with them. Vegetables, rice, they make for you, they make you welcome. You have a beer with them. They give freely, even when they have so little.

We have 35 tribes but the problem is not the tribes. After the Second World War the people tried to change: if it is like that in those countries, why can’t we change our country, our system? Create our own resources. Develop our country. We can look there, to America or France or England. So we tried to do something about the situation in our country in 1990. People wanted their voices to be heard.

What happened in 1990?

90% of the people went into the streets, making demonstrations. We tried to organise a political party. The PPR. The army used weapons given to them by the French to kill demonstrators. We were talking about how we can change the system, do better. In communist times there was war. Now it’s not communist, but it’s still not our country.

In Togo we have oil, we have a lot of things. We have iron, manganese. We have resources. But it doesn’t help us! We live with nothing, while the French own everything.
It’s still a colony.

Togo is our country. The French come, but they don’t pay tax, they don’t need a visa to stay there. It’s like a French country. But we need visas to go to France.

I was there, organising meetings. I was arrested during the demonstrations. 90% of the military and the cops they’re from one tribe. Gabyé tribe. My tribe is Eogose
The government doesn’t like educated people. You know too much. You can talk to people, educate them, show them what’s wrong with the government. It’s very dangerous. I was dangerous for them, so it was dangerous for me to stay there. I had to leave.

How did you come to be in Ireland?

Mary Robinson was talking about Africa suffering. She compared Africa’s suffering to Ireland suffering. You would hear about her. Every time you would see her on the African news. She was in South Africa at the time, talking to Mandela. She said Irish people are welcoming. They are so friendly in Ireland. She talked about how Ireland has suffered. So they understand suffering.

Mary Robinson made me want to come here.

What did you know about Ireland?

I knew about Dublin, Belfast. I read about Ireland, about Celtic problems. It was exciting. You see Irish people in the movies, you see the writers. I think African music is like Irish music.

What happened when you came to Ireland?

When I came here, I went to Dublin, but then they sent me straight here to Galway. I couldn’t speak English. There were a lot of people from other countries, and like me, they couldn’t speak English. But I got the opportunity to start learning.

What have the biggest challenges been?

Adapting to the differences in culture. You try to understand the country, how the structure is. People have opportunities. It’s a fantastic country. The government builds houses for people, uses money to create jobs. I can see a lot of opportunity here. They set things up, and then the people work, and then the government get this money back, through taxes.
Do you have a job?

I sometimes go and work. Sometimes you don’t have work. I am still trying to work in my field. But the system is different. They prefer to take the French. I say, ‘I speak French.’ Sometimes they ask me, ‘How do you speak French?’ I say, ‘Same like you speak English!’

I see sometimes people think we in Africa don’t go to school. But we are educated.

If you are Irish, and you want to teach English in England, it’s very, very complicated. It’s the same for us Africans who speak French. They have more French people. They get the jobs.

Now I do work I never did before. I work in construction. I work with CDs, with internet, satellite dishes. I can do work for Arab countries or Sweden or French countries. The work is easy. I can get office jobs. People have work for me. I’m happy. I am busy.

How do you see the Irish?

The Irish aren’t bad. People from Africa have been coming only in the last 10 years. The Irish are curious why people come here. ‘Will they take our jobs?’ People in America said Irish people are taking our jobs. The same is happening here. ‘Every time you open the door, a foreigner comes to take our job,’ they say.

It’s a normal reaction. If economy is bad, they look to the foreigner. ‘It is their fault’, they say.

Many Irish go to other countries to work. People think they are IRA. Foreigners make people afraid. They don’t know these people. Look what is happening in England. It’s like hot water together with cold water. If you are wise you can make warm water. You have to accept.

I live here now. It’s more peaceful than my country. Here, you can say what you like. You have a lot of newspapers. I read them. The law is fair. You can do this, do that. It’s different from my country.

What else is good about Ireland?

My country is dry. We don’t have so much water. People have to go to church to pray for rain. We don’t have water. Here, every time. You have plenty. You go to church, but not to pray for rain! Maybe for less rain! In my county you might have to walk more than 50km to get water.

So you don’t mind the rain?

I don’t mind, because we have plenty of water!

Do you see any similarities in the cultures?

Yes – like us, the Irish don’t forget their history. They are very good to their families. In Ireland, they feel strong with the family. It doesn’t matter where their families are, north, south, Connemara, they want to go there to see them.

It‘s the same in Togo, but people have to walk. Also, they don’t have jobs. So they are on the alcohol, they are on the drugs, they are desperate. They’ve got nobody to buy milk for them. Sometimes the children have no milk for two months. I see a lot of things.

In Togo, people will do anything for work. They have to come to the city. They have no house. Nobody can buy their meals. But everywhere you see bananas. With bananas you don’t go hungry. They cost 2c. People are working too hard, thinking about their family. They send money home to the village.

The Irish have the same tradition. Everybody in Ireland has somebody in America. Many Irish went to America for work. Most of them they were doing something illegal there, but people knew! Nobody said anything. And then after five years, they can get their green card. So the Irish understand how hard it is for immigrants.

What do you miss about Togo?

What do I miss about Togo? I miss my parents. I miss the wood fires. We make a fire outside in my village. We don’t have lights in my village. Here you have light. We don’t have lights, except in the city. So we make a big fire outside the village. We chat, we talk about the people, we recite poesie (poetry). We tell stories. I miss my language. Not French or English or German. I want to speak my language. I miss all that. When you speak a different language, you become a different man. You have to find different words. We have some jokes in our language, like, which cannot translate into English jokes. Sometimes, I just feel like seeing my people.

In the village, people all know one another. They say, ‘hello, how are you! You are welcome.’ It means I don’t need to go home, I can stay with my friends. I can stay here, there, everywhere. Then you go back, you know.

We used to eat rice, potato, yams; we ate beans. We have some exotic foods, like Chinese, Vietnamese, Mexican, South American. Now we have shops here, with some of our foods. The majority are for people from South Africa, Kenya, Nigeria, but our food is similar. Here in Ireland, we just all mix together. We are all African.

Afo is engaged to an Irish-speaking girl from Mayo. While he goes to the bathroom I ask her how they met.

In the pub. I went up and asked him to dance, and he refused me. Then he came back and we danced. After that, we kept meeting each other.

I brought him home to meet my family, and I remember my mother saying to him, ‘it’s not what’s on the outside, it’s what’s on the inside that counts’. Two of my sisters have married English guys. The others have married Polish, Thai and Dutch men.
I don’t know how that happened, how they all married foreigners. Now I’m marrying a guy from Togo!

I resume my conversation with Afo on his return, and ask if he’s happy living in Galway.

I’m very happy here. I have my fiancée, her family. I have good friends. They make me feel welcome.

Do you think you’ll return to Togo?

One day I will go to visit. I would love my woman to see Togo. I want my people to know how we live in Ireland.

Can you tell me a memory of the village?

In my country, it’s like here when somebody dies. They talk about him. Then they play some games, make some imitation about his life. What he loved to do, how he chatted, how he loved to make jokes. They do this for the family, and to remember him. Then people cry, but they are also laughing at the same time. People give songs. We do this for three days. They come, they sing. People they have tea, say everybody look, here is my family, we have someone who has died, you know. We have voodoo, bad voodoo, good voodoo, you have statues, and everything. You eat, you put maybe one grain, on the ground for your ancestral spirits. You have a drink, you put some on the ground for them.

His fiancée tells me that Irish rural customs are similar, and instead of the local brew, they pour Guinness on the ground.

I ask Afo if he plans to have more than one wife, as is the custom in his country.

Only one wife!

Not like my father, five! Because of war, many wars, women numbered more than men. Some men only have one wife. Some women maybe they are widows. They have to stay alone. Some think for such a woman to get a man is not easy. So you have one, you get a second one so she is not alone. She is happy. She can have a child.

And the first wife?

It’s tradition. They understand. They live with that kind of thing. Some men don’t marry, they want to stay alone. Or maybe they don’t have money. You need money to marry. You pay in cows for a bride. How do you pay here?

Afo leaves to buy a round, and I ask Bríd her age.

I am 43, he’s two or three years younger. I think he’s 40.

Did he have a wife before?

You’ll have to ask him! A lot of the things he was saying there, especially with funerals, we do that as well, where I come from. I come from South-West Mayo, an Irish-speaking area. Where the Rockford Five come from. My village is Cartagh.. You know, I remember sitting round the fire, storytelling, chatting, going into houses, eating, etc. Our cultures are not so different.

My father died. My mother’s still alive. But I always speak to her in Irish. It would be weird speaking to her in English. I only started learning English when I went to secondary school.

There were ten in our family. It’s not really so different.

What age were you when you came to Galway?

I was 35 – I came here in 2000.

Afo returns and I ask him if he had a family of his own in Togo.

I used to have a wife and children. It was a political match. She is from a different party. We tried to unite two minority parties. I have one child aged 20 years. I have another one aged 14. They haven’t been here. We have contact, but they don’t need to come here. No one has come here. Life in Togo is not easy, but I think they are happy to stay there.

Do you feel displaced?

I didn’t come here to stay. I came here with the plan to go back. It’s normal. Your home is your home.

Do you have any criticisms of Ireland?

They don’t speak their language. They learn it, but they don’t speak it. They don’t care about reading their language in the media. They’ve lost their culture. In Belgium they have Flemish. In Denmark, they speak Danish. In Norway, they speak Norwegian. But in Ireland, why don’t they speak their language? When I go home and they ask me what is it like in Ireland? What is their language? What is their culture? I don’t have a word to say. I’m learning Irish with my girlfriend. But most people don’t speak it. Many Africans and Arabs have noticed this. Why don’t they speak their language? I learned English here! Why don’t they learn Irish? I was in Bantry, and I saw some people speaking Irish. Why don’t the government do more about this? If my father sees me not speaking my language, he would have something to say about that!

The North is another thing. It’s very important to have peace. Now they must use the opportunity to bring Ireland together. All the politicians must work very hard to bring North and South Ireland together. It’s very important for them. I met one Irish guy in the north, he tells me it’s like apartheid in South Africa up there!

And one more thing: Irish people don’t know their own country. I know my own country, my neighbouring countries well. Irish people just want to go to Spain, to other countries, but they don’t know their own country. I’m very sorry for them. Some people will tell you, ‘I’m Irish’. But their own geography, they don’t know. They know America, a lot of things. They don’t know the geography of Africa either, the different countries. They think it’s all the same country! I don’t know if they like to learn. They know all about New York, Washington. They just don’t want to know about Africa.

People here come from Libya, Niger, Egypt. They have to learn more about these countries. They have to try to understand why people are coming here. Which problems bring them here.
They come here, because Irish people have also been under colonialists.

It’s very important for immigrants to see that the Irish people understand their problems. There are big problems in France, in England. They don’t want to go there. They come here to learn. Here they can survive. Why not? Irish people talk about the war, about the famine. Irish people can say, ‘We had the same thing 150 years ago’. This means a lot to us.

My idea is to involve Irish politicians in Africa: to build up tourism; to be curious, to see why it doesn’t work in the African countries; to try and help us. If Togo wants to buy fuel they should be able to get it cheaply, next door, from Nigeria. But Nigeria has to sell fuel to the British. The British sell to France, France sells it to Togo. The fuel is as near as from me to you, but the Nigerians can’t sell to us. And the money doesn’t stay in Nigeria, even though they have the assets. That is the problem. The system creates this problem.

Rich countries are still taking money from Africa – they must return the money. Africa is powerful because of the resources. The people must learn this. Africa is not an independent continent. Why not? We must learn from the west. Become independent. Trade equally, fairly.

I think Ireland gives us the opportunity to learn their language, opens doors for us. At the moment, I think, the door is not too much open. The door is stuck. We are waiting.

***

A narrow strip of land on Africa's west coast, the former French colony Togo has for years been the target of criticism over its human rights record and political governance.

Togo formed part of the Slave Coast, from where captives were shipped abroad by European slavers during the 17th century. In 1884 it became the German protectorate of Togoland. It was seized by Britain and France at the start of World War I, divided and administered under League of Nations mandates. The British-ruled western part was later incorporated into what is now Ghana.

France granted independence in 1960 and Togo's first president, Sylvanus Olympio, was assassinated in a military coup three years later. Head of the armed forces Gnassingbe Eyadema seized power in a 1967 coup and dissolved all political parties.

Although political parties were legalised in 1991 and a democratic constitution was adopted in 1992, the leadership was accused of suppressing opposition and of cheating in elections.

A joint UN-Organisation of African Unity investigation into claims that hundreds of people were killed after controversial elections in 1998 concluded that there had been systematic human rights violations.

Veteran leader Gnassingbe Eyadema died in early 2005 after 38 years in power. The military's immediate but short-lived installation of his son, Faure Gnassingbe, as president, provoked widespread international condemnation. Mr Faure stood down and called presidential elections, which he won two months later, with 60% of the votes. The opposition declared the elections to be rigged, while political violence surrounding the presidential poll prompted around 40,000 Togolese to flee to neighbouring countries.

The developments of 2005 led to renewed questions about a commitment to democracy made by Togo in 2004 in a bid to renew ties with the EU, which cut off aid in 1993 over the country's human rights record.

Source: World Almanac

Brazilian princess finds her Irish prince

2009-04-16T07:54:00.000-07:00

Rita Keane was christened Rita de Cassia Valeris Vicomedes. She is a tall, buxom, smiling woman ready to take on the world. When she talks, she effervesces. We met at a social gathering, and a few days later she arrived with her younger sister to talk to me. Her sister has very little English, and is here to learn the language. We settled down with coffee in the Nasc centre in Cork, where a room was provided for us to talk undisturbed.

I was born in Belo Horizonte, the capital of Minas Gerais province in Brazil. I have eight siblings, four sisters and four brothers.

My father was a lorry driver. He died 15 years ago, when I was 25. My mother was a housewife. She died when she was 42, of a heart attack. All the members of my family die from heart attacks. My youngest sister, when my mother died, was six months. I was still a teenager, and suddenly the kids were all my responsibility. My little sister was two years old, another brother four years, another one seven, another 12, another 14. It was very sad, but thank Jesus, I had good support from my neighbours.

In Brazil there are 200 million people. Actually 12 million people are unemployed. The government is corrupt. If you work for two years, and you lose your job, you will be supported by social welfare for six months. After, you will have no support from the government. There are various religions. Christian, Muslim, half and half.

I found life very hard. I was walking along the street one day, and I was crying. I met this woman, and she said, ‘I know someone who can help you.’ She introduced me to the church. Then I converted to Jesus. I used to pray, ‘God help me, because I don’t know what way to take.’ The people helped me a lot.

I had a job, and I went to school at night. I would get up at 5.30, make coffee for my siblings, who went to school then. I worked in the school. I was studying to be a teacher. At 5.30 as soon as my school was finished, I raced back home to make food to feed my brothers and sisters. When my sister got older, she helped me as well.

Then I left that job, because I had my diploma. I had a problem, because I discovered I had no patience for teaching! I had lots of children at home. I had lots of difficulties in my head. So now I needed to find another job. I was afraid someone would try to separate us, because my mother, when she was dying, said, ‘never separate, even if you have problems.’ I promised. My family is very close. My aunt wanted to take one of my sisters. She was a forceful lady. She wanted to make her work for her. I said, ‘No, I have made a pledge to my mother.’

So I used to go to the church to pray, pray, pray for help. I met a woman there who said, ‘my family has a small shop. If you want I can get a job for you there.‘ God had a plan for me. I started working at that shop. I spoke to my boss about my life. They helped me. Five years later, I became a manager in that shop. I worked hard. The shop sold sports equipment. I know everything about sports. But I hate sports! Everybody became my friend, my clients as well. Financially, it was good, because I could take care of my siblings very well.

But then the rent on our home became very expensive. I couldn’t pay. I prayed to God, and my boss helped me as well. I managed to buy two apartments. I got a loan from the bank, and I paid for fifteen years. I was 30 then. Five years later, I bought my second apartment. I left it with my family.

Now I can say thanks to God, because my family grew up very fast. My brother became a manager in a bank; another sister is a teacher. My family likes to study! One sister got a diploma for journalism last year. I have another sister here in Ireland. She is an executive secretary.

When I lost my father, my life became harder. A friend of my sister’s moved to Ireland, and invited her over for a holiday. My sister came, because every Brazilian dreams of coming to Europe! My sister came, enjoyed, enjoyed, said, I don’t want to go back to my country! She wrote me a letter, ‘sorry, I can’t go back!’ I was very sad, because Brazilian families are very close. She couldn’t speak English. We just speak Portuguese. But she got support from African people here. She found a job in a plastics factory in Blackpool, in Cork. Then somebody put a fire in that factory. That factory closed down. Then the police looked for her, asked her about her job. The Gardaí looked for her because she was illegal.

Thank God the African people gave support to her. They introduced her to my boss – he’s my boss as well, now - and he gave her a job. Irish people are very good. She started as a secretary. But after that she did such a good job, her boss was very pleased, and he liked her. He made her the first executive secretary in Ireland. He has his own company, Sean Mulvihill & Co. He gave support to many illegal refugees. When she told him her problem, he went to Immigration and said, ‘now this woman works for me.’ Now she’s been here for five years, she has got citizenship. Two and a half years after she got here, she wrote to me and said, ‘would you like to come for a holiday?’

I came here for a three month holiday. I resigned from my job, after working there for 20 years. I came here. I couldn’t speak English. Then one week before I was due to go back home, I went to a shop, I saw beautiful clothes. I thought, ‘oh very cheap.’ I was in Enable – a charity shop. I put on a beautiful coat, where I found €1 in the pocket. They gave me the €1. They said it would give me luck. I put that €1 with my documents. Then when I got home, I decided to wash the coat, because it was second-hand and I wanted to make sure it was clean. I put it in the washing machine, then said, ‘oh God, what’s happening!’ All my documents were inside! Everything was gone.

I got a new passport, but my ticket back I couldn’t replace. There’s no office to get a refund for a ticket to Brazil. So I stayed here. My boss said, ‘God wants you to stay here!’ So I stay here, even though I only planned to be here for three months. I got legal. But I was very sad, because I left my family.

All my life, everything I do, everything I dream, I always ask God to help me. ‘You are a Brazilian God, but I think you are an Irish God as well!’ I was very depressed. My hair fell out. I had no job. I had no friends because I couldn’t speak English.

Then things changed. I was crossing the road on the 20 December 2003. I prayed to God to solve my problem. And the next weekend a friend of mine from Brazil said, ‘Rita, let’s go to the pub.’ I said, ‘I don’t drink.’ She said, ‘ah, just to enjoy.’ Her husband said, ‘Tonight we’ll find a boyfriend for you.’ I said, ‘I don’t speak English!’ He said, ‘You don’t need English to find a boyfriend!’ So I was there for a few hours, and about 2 am I saw a beautiful, huge man sitting with his friends. I said to my friend, ‘That’s my prince.’ Before, I had said, ‘Please God, give me my prince, I want a beautiful man!’

Next thing, he turned around, looked at me. ‘Hello!’ he said. ‘How are you?’ ‘Fine’. I said. ‘Would you like a drink?’ ‘No,’ I said, ‘I’m very cold’. He went (makes babble noises.)
I said, ‘Please, I don’t speak English’. I got very nervous. I was shy. Then he said, ‘Water?’ I said OK. He gave me water, but I couldn’t speak. My friend was translating for me. I said to him, ‘I’m sorry I don’t speak English.’ He said, ‘No problem, my brother speaks Spanish.’ I said, ‘I don’t speak Spanish!’ He asked me for my mobile number. I was afraid, so I said, ‘I have no number. ‘ He said, ‘Well, this is my number, if you want, call me, OK?’

That was Saturday. On Tuesday, I texted him. ‘Hi, this is Rita. This is my telephone number.’ He texted back, ‘Yee haa! Would you like a cup of coffee? Take care.’ I thought, ‘My God!’ In our country, means watch out. Like Mafia. But I accepted his invitation. I met him at Bodega’s. We couldn’t talk, so he said, ‘Please, I don’t understand. Just give me a kiss!’ (Laughs). So we started our relationship.

One year later, he asked me what my legal situation was. I was afraid, I said, ‘Next month, I will find out.’ He got down on his knee and he asked me to marry him. He’s very romantic. I cried! I said, ‘Of course!’ So we got married on the 24th July. It was an incredible wedding. I walked up the hill crying, crying. God gave me my prince.

My sister came over for the wedding, and after that, she went back. I had a beautiful party. He treated me like a princess. At the party, he fixed a computer so all my family in Brazil could see my wedding. All my family was crying. I will never forget that day. Beautiful, beautiful. So far, every day, he is very kind. Now, because I am married, I applied for residence, and the government said, ‘OK, now you must wait for 14 months.’ But they gave me a medical card. They pay for my school. I study English. Because now I can speak more. My English is not good yet. I have difficulty with prepositions. But I’m happy, because the people at the school are very good.

The people in Ireland are so kind. I never suffered from racism in this country. Wherever I go, the people treat you very well. I like this weather, because the sun itches my skin a lot. I also have a problem with my eyes in the sun. I got sick. My husband paid for surgery for my eyes. I had skin over my eyes. I don’t like so much the doctor, the GP, because one year ago, the doctor said, ‘I sent the letter to say you are on the list for surgery.’ So far, I never got the surgery. Then my husband said, ‘I will pay for it.’

Do you ever get homesick?

I am homesick. I miss my family, some friends, the food. The fruit is so big and sweet. Brazil is a country rich in resources, minerals, diamonds, gold, precious minerals. The coffee is wonderful! Oranges. Rice. Beans. It’s a rich country.

Tell me about your husband.

My husband is Finbarr Keane. He’s a teacher. He teaches Maths. Our relationship is wonderful.

I had no time for relationships before, only short relationships. Three months, four months. All the time I had to work, or to take care of my family. I had no time. But when I came here, I fell in love, and everything became good. Now I have Irish friends, because my English is getting better. At my school, I found friends. Also through my husband, I found friends as well.

What did you expect when you came here?

I just wanted to find my prince! I think every woman dreams of finding a good man. When I came, I had this plan. I came on holiday, but with the dream of finding my prince. My sister has got her husband as well. He’s a doctor from Liberia, but he lived in Russia. He studied medicine in Cork. In Russia, he was a doctor.

Have you experienced any cultural conflicts with Finbarr?

Yes, a lot. I think the people drink too much in this culture. In Brazil people drink, of course, everybody around the world drinks. But they would only go to the pub at the weekend. Friday night, Saturday. But people here go to the pub every day. I had this difficulty with my husband, but now I give a holiday to him on Friday! Because now he’s married. But it was difficult. He says, ‘But in Ireland, business is made in pubs!’ I said, ‘No, this is stupid, we’ll be poor forever! Anyone doing business in pubs is poor!’

Now thank God, I don’t have this problem any more.

Have you noticed any other cultural differences?

Yes. In Brazil, when you get married, you invite everybody to the party. Here, you have people for the meal, and people for the afters. In Brazil, if you do that, they think, she’s a snob to me. I won’t go.

The people have different priorities for theatre, travelling, holidays, cinema. In Brazil, it is difficult to go to the theatre because you have no money. It’s for rich people. My husband plays golf. It’s for rich people. Everything that is common in Ireland is difficult for Brazilian people. My husband said, ‘You must go to the cinema every week, it’s good for your English.’ He was very right, because I learned faster.

The people give priority to different things. For example, here, you live in at home for eighteen years, then you leave, you have your life outside, your job, your university. In Brazil, no. You can live at home for forty years. You only leave the house when you get married. If you get married!

The parents, when all the children leave and get married, they start the life again, with the grandchildren! In Ireland, if you are forty, you are old. If you are 40 in Brazil, you can find a 20-year-old boyfriend! I am 40.

(I tell her she looks very young.)

In Brazil, if you feel you have a wrinkle, you can go to the doctor in the morning and ask him to take it off.

Have you done that?

No, never.

Is it expensive?

No. If you have a belly, you go to Brazil. In Brazil, if you have €300, you can go to the doctor in the morning, and have liposuction. Afternoon, you can go back home. How beautiful! I said to my husband, ‘Let’s go to Brazil, I want to lift my breasts.’ He said, ‘Baby, no! God wants you to be like that!’ I said, ‘I don’t like big breasts.’

In Brazil, everything you don’t like, you can change. My sister, her breasts were very big. She wasn’t secure. She went to Brazil, changed her breasts, and now she’s feeling confident. Here €10 000, there, €1 000. Then you feel confident with yourself. I would say, 40% of people do this. You can be poor, but you can save your money. Go to the doctor,

But I like it better here. The men in Cork are more thoughtful. In Brazil, if you get married, when you are 20, when you are 40, your husband can leave you, change you for another woman. All your life, your beauty falls down. That’s why Brazilian women get surgery. Always, they feel pressure. Men as well. Sometimes the women leave the men. There are no old people in Brazil, in general! Many people get plastic surgery.

In Ireland, if the man says, I am going to the pub, I feel secure. He will go to the pub and talk to his friends. In Brazil, no. If he goes to the pub without his wife, it’s to find another girlfriend. The men give more respect here than in my country. I prefer this culture. But drinking in the pub every day is not good for your health, for your pocket, or for security at home.

How was it when you met Finbarr’s family?

It was love at first sight! I met his brother and his sisters before. And my mother-in-law…I can’t say she’s my mother in law, because she’s like my mother! After this interview, I’m meeting her. I meet her once a week in town and we go for a cup of coffee. She’s a lady. She’s like my mother. ‘Mother-in-law’ has bad connotations! She’s very beautiful and kind. (Shows me a photo.) His father as well. I have a new family here.

I am confident myself now, because I have a family. I have my husband now.
Finbarr is 43. He was married twice before, once to an American, the other time to an English woman. He’s divorced. But he said, I got married for business. You are the first woman I married for love. When I met him he said, ‘You are my present from God, because I met you on my birthday’.

Is he also religious?

No! But I always say, ‘God, God, God,’ so he also talks about God! It’s very funny. Every single Sunday. He doesn’t like to go to church, but he says, ‘Baby get up, Jesus wants to talk to you. Say hello from me!’ (Laughs.) He likes that I go to church.

Does he ever go with you?

No. Maybe two times. He has no religion.

What’s your dream?

I want to work in a call centre. Many Brazilian people work there. But I must get better at my English first.

I can’t leave for 14 months. When I get depressed sometimes, my husband takes me on trips. To Limerick, Kilkenny, Killarney, Blarney to lots of places. I know everywhere. I like Cork. My husband laughs at me, because every day I must go Patrick Street. I must know the price of everything. It is expensive here. Your money is two times bigger than my money. The cost of living. If you had €1 000 here, in Brazil you have €3 000. We have our own house now.

I have another sister who wants to come here next year, to learn English. My other sister got her residence. My brothers are all married. They don’t like travelling. My sisters are all single. They all want to find their prince! I already found my prince. I asked him to organise a taxi to take me to the registry office. He said, ‘don’t’ you worry, baby, don’t you worry.’ Then I heard ‘hoot hoot!’ and looked out the window, and there was this big, black, shiny limousine, with his father!

My dress was champagne and lavender. We drove to the Metropole hotel. Champagne, red carpet. We pulled up in front of the hotel. There was a girl who thought I was famous. She asked if she could take my photo! It was a beautiful, beautiful day. It was the most beautiful day of my life.

(Rita showed me a picture of her wedding day, featured on the front page of the Irish Examiner. The headline of the article, which was written by Dan McCarthy, read, ‘Togher boy ties the knot with Brazilian beauty’.)

Do you have any criticisms of Ireland?

I think the medicine should be more advanced. When you go to the hospital, you can find doctors from Pakistan, Egypt. But I don’t trust them because I’ve been there three times and they gave me Paracetamol for haemorrhoids!

But school is very good, because here in Ireland the priority is education. In Brazil, the people used Ireland as a model. They said that Ireland became rich because the government invested in education. Culture, education, you have support here at school.

In Brazil, no. If you want a good, cultural education, you must pay. And many people don’t have the money. In Brazil, it’s difficult for black people to go to university. Maybe 5%. And the population is 70% black. There are Portuguese people, Italian people, they mixed with black people. But racism is more in Brazil than in Ireland. I never felt racism here. I have more white friends than black here. I am happy in this country.

***

Brazil covers nearly half of South America and is the continent's largest nation. It borders every nation on the continent except Chile and Ecuador. Over a third of Brazil is drained by the Amazon and its more than 200 tributaries.

Brazil is the only Latin American nation that derives its language and culture from Portugal. The native inhabitants mostly consisted of the nomadic Tupí-Guaraní Indians. The early explorers brought back a wood that produced a red dye, pau-brasil, from which the land received its name. Portugal began colonization in 1532 and made the area a royal colony in 1549. Independence was declared in 1822.

In 1889, following a military revolt, a republic was proclaimed, Brazil was ruled by military dictatorships until a revolt permitted a gradual return to stability under civilian presidents.

After a military coup in 1964, Brazil had a series of military governments. In 1999, the Asian economic crisis spread to Brazil. The situation worsened dramatically when the government opted to let the currency float, and the economy plummeted. In view of neighbouring Argentina’s economic crisis, which could also adversely affect Brazil, the IMF agreed to lend Brazil a phenomenal $30 billion over fifteen months.

In 2003, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, a former trade union leader and factory worker widely known by the name Lula, became Brazil's first working-class president. The president's first major legislative success was to reform the country's debt-ridden pension system, which operated under an annual $20 billion deficit. Civil servants staged massive strikes opposing this and other reforms. Although public debt and inflation remained a problem in 2004, Brazil's economy showed signs of growth and unemployment was down. Lula combined his conservative fiscal policies with ambitious antipoverty programs, raising the country's minimum wage by 25% and introducing an social welfare programme, Bolsa Familia, which has pulled 36 million people (20% of the population) out of deep poverty.

Source: World Almanac.

Sahr from Sierra Leone

2009-04-16T07:46:00.000-07:00

Sahr Yambasu is a Methodist minister from Sierra Leone. He met his Irish wife at Queen’s University, and in 1995, when the family had to flee the civil war in his home country, they returned to settle in Galway. When I met him at his home, I expected to greet a formally dressed minister in clerical garb. Instead, I met a chunky man wearing boxer shorts and T shirt, with a beaming smile and contagious, rich laugh. As I arrived, his blonde, slim wife was racing out the door. Sahr had just come back from jogging, and invited me to join him in having a cold drink. We sat down in the conservatively furnished front room, complete with family photos on top of the piano. Three teenagers, two boys and a beautiful girl, smiled from one family portrait.

I come from the east border of Sierra Leone, from a village called Lalehun. The population was maybe 500 people.

My father was a court messenger. That was a very important position. He had four wives. He was a very lucky man! My mum was the youngest, and the last one he married before he died. In our system, we don’t have a social welfare system, but we do have the extended family system. My father’s nephews, quite a few of them, came to live with him, in the same home. They also did most of the farm work. He was the overseer really.

In Sierra Leone, everybody has a piece of land to grow their food. The main activity of the village was farming. With farming in Africa, a lot of the work would be done by hand. Each area would be about one acre. Each one of the wives would have a little plot to grow their own food.

My father lived in one house, and the wives all lived in another house. They were altogether with their children. The house was a round house, big, and my mother’s bed was here, and her cooking place was here, and the other wives’ beds were there, and so on. They all cooked separately. My mother had seven children; the others had one or two children each. I am the first son, and the second child.

My father would go with a few of his nephews to bring the produce to sell in the nearest place, about 24 miles north of our village. So, for 24 miles, they had to walk, carrying everything on their heads. It could take 3, 4, 5 days before they would return to the village. It was on one of those trips that my father came in contact with a Methodist missionary from England. He attended one of the services, which was open to the community. Maybe the service would be held in somebody’s sitting room. In the kind of culture in which we were growing up, nobody was afraid of anybody, so all the doors were always open. People never worried that somebody was going to come in and steal something. So that’s how he came to know something about Christianity. Every time he was away, he made sure he went to one of the services.

When he came back to our village after one of these visits, he told our elders about this newfound faith and asked permission to start it in the village. They interviewed him, and said, ‘well, if it’s not about doing any harm to anybody, you can start.’ So, he started in his own house. His wives and nephews and nieces and children were the first members of his congregation. He would have had about 12 children of his own. I was very young at that time. So we all gathered every time he wanted us to gather. He would say a few prayers, and repeat the sermon that he had heard from the missionary. Because he was illiterate, he couldn’t read or write, which meant he couldn’t read the bible for himself. So he would listen to the missionary, and when he came back, he would relate that message to us.

As time went on, other people in the village became curious and they wanted to know what this was all about. They would come and stand by the window and listen. They would do that a couple of times, then they would come and sit down with us. So it started to grow.

My father was quite charismatic. So his church grew and grew and grew, and there was soon no room in the house. Finally they all decided they should build a communal house. So that was the first church. When the church was built, he went back to the missionary and told him that he’d started a church in our village, and invited him to come and see it. The missionary came and saw it, and was very happy.

To make things easier for him to be visiting the area, maybe once every three months or so, he suggested that they construct a road. So the chiefs organised it. By that time, a road between a closer village and the mission had already been constructed. So all our village had to do was construct a seven-mile road.

Eventually the missionaries started requesting a primary school. Of course the missionaries had a real problem with my father. They were in a fix. I mean, how could this man with four wives become a Christian?! In a way, they made do with him because he’d invited them to the community. But at the same time he was living this life that they did not accept. He could not become, strictly speaking, the leader in the church either. But they put up with him anyway. As they found they had to put up with so many others in Africa! They had no choice. Otherwise they would have had everybody leaving. There would be nobody in the church!

So your father brought the church to your village on his own initiative! No formal training? He wasn’t ordained?

No formal training.

What was the general belief system before that?

Traditional religion, with rituals and ceremonies to honour the ancestral spirits. Every year, for example in the village, even after Christianity, there would be a ceremony of veneration of all the people in the village who had died. No one would go to the farm that day. Everybody would stay in the village. Goats, chickens are killed, they cook the food, offer it up to the spirits, and then the rest of the food we would eat. Sometimes they would go to the riverside and they would offer the same kind of ceremony to appease the spirits so that if people were bathing in the river, if they were trying to cross to the other side, if they were fishing, that there would be no accidents. And apart from the general public rituals, there were also the private household rituals. Every household had their own spirits, their own ancestry, and they have to appease them all, to venerate them all every year. That was something the missionaries never knew about.

But when they came to take a service, almost the whole village went to the church, and the missionaries thought this was wonderful! So everybody was becoming a Christian. What they didn’t know, of course, was that back at their homes, and during certain times of the year, they still had their rituals, which were not acceptable to Christianity. And they would go back to their headquarters in England and tell them that the kingdom of Christ was being extended in Africa!

So then the Methodist school started in my village. I went to that school. And three years later, my father died. I was in grade three. About eight years old.

Teachers came from outside to teach there. Then later, people from the village would go for training, and then come back to teach. But initially they had to bring teachers in. In Africa, loads of people offer their services for free, and that’s how it started.

What about social or other cultural rituals?

Boys and girls would have circumcision. At that time, they would join a society, usually called secret societies by missionaries. But they were only secret to missionaries, not to anyone else in the village! Everyone eventually becomes a member of that society. Because if you come to my village and you are not a member of that society, either the women’s or the men’s, it doesn’t matter how old you are, you are still considered a child.

There were many things that you were taught in that society, about expectations and responsibilities etc. You are taught the history of how we came to be there, about the taboos, all that. How to cultivate land, how to climb the palm tree and get palm leaves which are normally used for covering the house, or to get palm oil, the main oil used in cooking; how to set different kinds of traps, to hunt animals. These are skills you need to have in order to live in that society. You go into the bush, into the forest. And you stay there until you are taught all those skills. Then you come back into the community. For girls too.

So girls are circumcised too?

Yes.

What about the trauma of this experience, not to mention the unnecessary loss of pleasure in sex?

I think they do still have pleasure, definitely, yes. Otherwise they wouldn’t have affairs, which many of them do! But with circumcision, yes, there are a lot of risks, and trauma as well, having the fear of sex because of what happens. But the reason I say they do enjoy sex, I mean, why would they not? I am seeing they do enjoy sex. They get married. OK, you might argue from the point of view that in our society they are expected to get married, so they have to. But they would still have extra-marital relationships. So there must be a sense of enjoyment there, in order for you to do that. If it was forced upon you, it goes without saying you’d stay where you are, without looking for more. So there must be some pleasure. I’m not saying it’s good. I’m just saying there must be some pleasure.

Why do they circumcise women? What’s the point?

I think the point is that men think if women are not circumcised that they are never satisfied sexually.

Why do they think that?

I don’t know. I think men say that out of ignorance.

Are girls prepared for it? Or do they resist it?

In the cities, because of all the human rights things and people being exposed to these ideas, they might be opposed to it. But if you go to my village, I would actually say that 80 to 85% of women are circumcised. They would be taught all the things that women in society are expected to do.

And what are they expected to do?

(Whispers) To keep their husbands satisfied!

(Laughs)

Are they allowed boyfriends?

Oh yes. It would happen that way, or marriages might be arranged. But parents would consult their sons or daughters first. Because they found that if they put pressure on their sons or daughters, the marriage never lasts for long because there will always be problems.

When do people get married?

Well, people can actually get married when they are still in the womb. They are engaged.

Before they know if the baby to be born is a boy or a girl!

What happens is that, say there’s a family next door and you are very close to them. And you have a son, when the lady next door is pregnant, you and your husband go next door and offer a gift and say if your child is a girl, we are engaging that girl for our son. If the child is a son, then the next time there is a daughter, it is understood that she will be engaged to your son.

That could be called an arranged marriage. Then other times they might approach another girl in another family later, not long before the marriage ceremony. And they approach the family and say we want your daughter to be married to our son. And if the family if OK with that idea, they will expect you to pay all the expenses.

So the groom’s family pays the bride’s family?

Yes. What you are able to give. Sometimes it is prescribed. A lot of the time it depends on how much they like the family.

What about love matches?

Very unlikely.

What about you and your wife? Did you love her?

My wife and I? Well that’s different because I…well, I don’t consider myself as being from my village. They only time I spent there continuously was in primary school. After that, I went on to secondary school far away from my village, in a place called Segbwema also in the eastern part of my country. But when I went to school then, I never went home until the end of term. I had to take care of my own feeding, make sure that I studied myself. My parents weren’t there. My parents had never been in that town at all.

My uncle thought it was a good school, a Methodist secondary school, and he knew someone in the town I could stay with. And staying there literally meant I had a bed. They weren’t responsible for anything else. So from eleven, I had to do all that. After my ‘O’ Levels, I went to another town and looked for a job as a pupil teacher (a pupil teacher is a teacher who has no training) so I went and did that, and during that time, I decided to become a Methodist minister. I told you earlier that when my father died, I was in grade three. Then Mum got married to one of my father’s nephews. They were a similar age, because my father would have been a lot older than my mum. So when he died, and my mum got married to my step dad, I realised because of the financial situation they were not going to be able to pay for my secondary school at all. Primary school was OK, not very expensive, but secondary was very expensive. So, when I passed my 11+ examinations my parents were overjoyed for about an hour or so. Then it dawned on them that they were not going to be able to pay for my secondary education. So from laughing, they started crying. That was at the beginning of the summer holidays. I remember walking behind my mum, going to the farm. My mum was crying. I never liked to see her crying. So I started praying quietly to myself, that if God helped me to get a secondary education, that I would give my life to serving him. And the only way I knew to do that was through the church, because that was what my dad had brought to the village.

So, one month of the vacation went by, two months went by. And we were still nowhere near finding a solution. Then in the third month, as we were heading for the farm one morning a messenger came from where the missionary was staying, seven miles from my village. A letter saying he wanted to see me, to go back with the messenger. So we went together, and when I got there, he took out another letter, gave it to me. The letter was from his brother in Darlington in England. He had known I was to go to secondary school, but that I wouldn’t be able to pay. So he had actually written to his brother, and told them about us. We didn’t know anything about it. He asked him if he’d be willing to pay for my education. And his brother and his brother’s wife said yes.

So I could go to school. So now it was all smiles instead of crying.

When I finished my secondary education, there were all sorts of expectations for me to go and do something else. But then I was reminded of that time when I was walking behind my mum. So I went back to that missionary and said, ‘well, this is the time for me to make a decision. I could go to university, but if I do that, there will be quite a lot of temptation to go and do something else. So I want to begin now, to start training to become a minister in the church.’ He couldn’t believe it. He said, ‘you’re joking.’ He sat me down and said, ‘you know you’ve gone to school with so many of your friends. In 20 years’ time, they will be high up there on the social ladder, and you’ll be right down there.’ So he said, ‘go and think about it. After three months come back to me again’. So I went away for three months, came back and said, ‘I still want to do what I promised to do.’

So he said ‘OK. You’re going to have to leave the pupil teaching you are doing. I’m going to make you a catechist in the church. And the first thing you’re going to see is that your salary will drop. I said, ‘that’s OK.’ So I left my teaching, started the catechist for several years, then eventually I went to theological college in Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone, and studied there for three and a half years. I graduated from there as a Methodist minister. During my first couple of years there, I was offered a scholarship by the Methodist Church in Ireland, to come and do post ordination studies there. So I accepted the scholarship, and came to Queen’s University. I stayed three years there, doing a BD (Bachelor of Divinity) degree. Then I got a scholarship from the University of Cambridge to do a post graduate degree. Then when I finished, I went back to Sierra Leone.

So, to get back to your question about love! I met Clodagh at Queen’s. She was a teacher in Bandon. Her primary degree was in Irish and French. She taught in primary school there for four years. Then she decided it was not what she wanted to do. She got a call to the ministry, went to Belfast, and it was while she was there that we met, in ’86.

I was afraid, and did everything that you would think an African man would never do to win her over! (Peals with laughter.) In Africa, all you have to do is say, ‘I’ll have you’ and she’s yours! (More laughter.)

Oh, I fasted, and everything. Took her to cinemas, and everything, and all the time I wanted to tell her that I’m really in love with her, but I was afraid. What would she say? What would the parents say? Because African men are still very traditional in that way, and the permission of the parents is very important. So these were huge questions for me. So I decided to pray and fast, for the courage to say that to her.

Was this your first relationship?

I was supposed to marry someone in Sierra Leone, but it didn’t work out. She was just finishing her primary school. And my parents had to pay for her secondary education to prepare her. But it never worked out.

Why not?

Oh my goodness me. We were not compatible. Her view of things was completely different. She also didn’t understand and accept the nature of the work I had to do. She was going to be an obstruction in my way. I talked to my parents and they soon realised that I had no choice really. There was also the advantage of my parents not being educated. Because that meant I have a lot of freedom to do what I want to do. So that was that, and then I left.

So, back to Belfast. I got the courage and then I told Clodagh. I don’t think she believed me. She actually wanted someone else. But they were having problems. So I came in at the right time! She said she would think about it. And when she said yes, I was on top of the world. I can still remember the way I couldn’t stop smiling, the way I was walking, whistling on my way to lectures. Then I started thinking of all the implications. At this point we’d had no physical contact. We actually only consummated our relationship after marriage.

So then I said to her, you have said yes, but what about your parents?

She said she would discuss it with her Mum first. Then her mother could win her father over.

I had actually met them once before. Her sister was preparing to go to the Gambia as a missionary, so they came to ask my advice. And I used to write in the Methodist magazine so they would have read things I had written. So anyway, Clodagh went and discussed it with them, to prepare the way! We had already bought rings in Darlington when I took her to meet my second family, the ones who had paid for my education.

I arrived at her home on St Stephen’s Day to ask for her hand. I was going into her home for the first time. She showed me into my bedroom. She had spoken to her Mum but not her Dad. And I thought, ‘there is no way I can meet them, and wait till after dinner to ask, I’ll have to do it straight away!’ So then I spoke to the parents, said I was in love with her, and wanted her hand in marriage. You can imagine – in Ireland – it was awful!! The father was absolutely gobsmacked. He didn’t know how to handle me, etc. So then I asked Clodagh to give me the ring, and I handed it to her father, and asked him to bless it for her. He was a Methodist minister too. So he had to do that! He did it, and then I put it on Clodagh’s finger. That took about 10 minutes, then everything was over. I left, went into the bedroom, and breathed out, a huge sigh of relief. There was frantic running up and down and around the house. But by the time I came out, they had already started looking up the directory for hotels! When I came back, then he said, ‘OK. We are very happy for the two of you’.

We got married in July ‘88. I was 31. Then I went on to Cambridge in September, while she had to stay on in Belfast. So we were separated! That was the year BT announced their greatest profits. We were on the phone the whole time! I came over every holiday. Then after three years I had finished my course, and we went to Sierra Leone. While we were there, my older sister died in the process of giving birth. She had a womb rupture. She was young. We were there when that happened, so we adopted the baby. We called him Fayia.

We told him from the very beginning, what had happened.

His father is in Sierra Leone. We are all hoping to go back there. We lived and worked there until 1995.

Were the children born there?

Abbie (who is named after my mother) was born in England. Fayia (which means ‘gift from God’) was born in Sierra Leone. Sahr (named after me, and whose name means ‘first son’) was born in Scotland!

So they have lived here for ten years, the longest period of their lives in one place. Do you think they feel Irish now?

I would think so, definitely. We came back in ‘95 because of the civil war in Sierra Leone. It started in March ‘91. I was in Sierra Leone at that time, doing my research. The country was controlled by rebels at that time. The first year I was working in the church in Freetown. Clodagh was at home. The second year I was moved from the church and made principal of the college. And Clodagh started teaching Hebrew at the college. But the war got so close to us in Freetown, I could hear gunshots. Our office in London phoned and said we should pack and leave, get out of the country. So I went back home that afternoon, we packed up, and Clodagh and the children left two days later on one of the last flights. But I stayed, with a suitcase and essential documents packed beside my bed. Because there was no way I could just leave the college like that. The family had left that way before, and then things had calmed down, and they’d come back. So we thought the same thing would happen this time. But things got worse and worse and worse. So in August ‘95 I came back and joined them in Ireland.

How have the children adjusted?

Abbie and Fayia were at school in Sierra Leone, so it was not easy for them. But the worst thing was the nightmares they used to have. They would dream that there was a soldier in their room with a gun. They were seeing soldiers in the streets in Freetown all the time. They might have experienced a little racism too, but we went and spoke to the person responsible at the school, and that was the end of that. I think they would be very comfortable in the community here now.

Do they learn Irish?

Yes they do.

What other languages do you speak?

I speak Kissie and Krio and Mende. They started Krio too. I’m hoping when we go back in January that they’ll pick some more Krio up.

How do you see the Irish?

I think they’re very culture conscious. That’s one of the reasons I decided to change my name. I was called John before. My name is John Sahr. Because in Africa we always want to be western. So we would give our children African names but always call them a second name like Prince or something! So here I decided to change my name back to Sahr. That kind of thing is appreciated here, a sense of cultural identity.

When I came here first I found a lot of people didn’t know about my part of the world. When I was going home once, a woman told me she wanted to give me a letter to take to a friend there. The letter was addressed to South Africa! So I said to her, I don’t mind sending the letter from there, as long as you don’t expect me to deliver it!!

People know very little about Africa, but they don’t want to know either. And they don’t appreciate that people from other parts of the world have really struggled to learn a lot about Ireland and the Irish. There is always a hint that you have something lacking if you are not making the effort to learn. It’s very challenging.

When people in the college knew we were engaged, that’s when we learned the true colour of people. At that time there were few individual friends, Irish people who were lecturers, who were totally with us. There were people really highly placed in the Methodist Church who were not a bit happy at all. I was even accused by one of them that I was stealing Clodagh, to bring her back to Sierra Leone. The reason was because the church felt she had great potential for languages, and they wanted to get her to continue, keep that up, and maybe become a lecturer in languages in the college. But because I was going to marry her, that was not going to be possible, so they were not happy at all.

I was always going to go back home, no doubt in my mind.

When you were living in Sierra Leone as a couple, did you have to adapt to the customs there?

A few adjustments here and there, but it was basically the same really. Clodagh dressed like an African there. She used to wear skirts and the African dress. Even when we got married, she used that instead of the traditional wedding dress.

Where do you feel you belong now?

Sometimes I don’t know where I belong. I am comfortable wherever I am. When I am in Sierra Leone, I get annoyed with everyone, and the system. That’s what I miss about here when I am in Sierra Leone. Here I know if I want to get things done, they will be done. In Sierra Leone, if I want to get anything done, there are so many obstacles in the way that you could spend the whole day trying to get round people to get things done. That really bugs me a lot in Sierra Leone.

As for other aspects of the culture, we do eat a lot of African food here. So food isn’t a problem. Culture is something we are not really aware of. It’s in us, and around us. It’s that kind of thing I miss. Everything just clicks together. Whereas here, when somebody does or says something, I have to spend a lot of time trying to put an interpretation on to it, what’s the meaning etc. I don’t have to do that in Sierra Leone. So in that sense, the thing clicks, so easily. And also in Sierra Leone, I don’t have to make any effort to be accepted.

What about Clodagh? Is she accepted there?

Well, you might know, in Africa, white people would be put on a pedestal. And because of that, you can’t come close to them. Also there’s a language problem as well. If people come to visit our house, most people don’t speak English, so we have to speak our language. So that’s quite uncomfortable for everybody.

Do you feel that you’re better off here, as a family? Or would you rather go between the two countries?

I think I’d rather do the two. That would be the ideal situation. Weather is very important to me. In Sierra Leone, I don’t have to jog to lose weight! Here I have to do all this jogging! It’s a big effort for me to do that. There I have loads of friends all over the place in Sierra Leone. Almost everywhere I go, I meet past students. You know everybody. It’s not the same here.

How big is your church here?

We have about 150 people, from 18 nationalities. In many ways, it’s not as exciting as church in Sierra Leone at all. There, it’s very open, informal, and people are into it. They enjoy themselves when they worship. It’s gospel. I enjoy the vibrancy of it all there. It’s not the same here. I don’t really know where I belong now. Sometimes I don’t really know what I want. When I go back, the services take hours. And after two hours, it’s really pushing me to the edge! After that, I’m off, it doesn’t matter what’s happening, I’m going.

Being married to someone from a different culture, have you experienced personal conflict with your differences?

There are always problems. And they get worse as you get older, oh definitely. Because we all become ourselves more and more, the older we grow.

And your children? From a cultural point of view, where do you think they’ll settle?

I think they’ll settle here. They were very young when they left Sierra Leone. But I’ve already told Abbie whoever she is going to marry will have to come and stay with me for at least two months! (Laughs.)

Are you strict with them? Re alcohol, drugs, boyfriends?

Oh yes. We would actually stop our children from going to stay with people unless we knew something about the family, and they were acceptable to us. If we knew anything negative about them, they would be forbidden to go. It’s probably also the Methodist influence.

If you were Bertie for a day, what would you do to improve this country?

I would move this country to Sierra Leone, and move Sierra Leone here! (Peals with laughter).

***

Sierra Leone in West Africa is bordered by Guinea in the north and Liberia in the south, with the Atlantic Ocean to the west. During the 18th century, Sierra Leone was an important centre of the transatlantic slave trade. The capital, Freetown, was founded in 1787 by the Sierra Leone Company as a home for formerly enslaved African Americans who had fought for the British in the American Revolution. These returned Africans were from all areas of Africa. The joined the previous settlers and together became known as Creole or Krio people. Cut off from their homes and traditions by the experience of slavery, they assimilated some aspects of British styles of life and built a flourishing trade on the West African coast. Sierra Leone gained independence in 1961.
Corruption within the government and mismanagement of diamond resources led to the outbreak of civil war. With the breakdown of state structures and the effective suppression of civilian opposition, wide corridors were opened for trafficking of arms, ammunition and drugs, all of which eroded national and regional security and increased crime.

From 1991 to 2002, Sierra Leone suffered greatly under the devastating effects of rebel activities, which were stopped by UN and British forces, who disarmed 17 000 militia and rebels. The brutal war in neighbouring Liberia played an undeniable role, with Liberia’s Charles Taylor reportedly giving military aid in return for diamonds. Forced child recruitment of child soldiers was also a feature of rebel strategy. The government of Sierra Leone, overwhelmed by a crumbling economy and widespread corruption, was unable to put up significant resistance. Several coups and coup attempts took place over the next few years, resulting in massive loss of life and destruction of property. In 1999, the UN agreed to send peacekeepers to help restore order. Some 500 peacekeepers were taken hostage, and the peace accord collapsed.

By the time the civil war was declared officially over, an estimated 50 000 people had been killed, while hundreds of people had had their arms or legs hacked off by rebels. A war crimes court was set up in Freetown.

Elections were finally held in May 2002. President Kabbah was re-elected, gaining 70% of the vote. Sierra Leone has been at peace since then.

Source: Wikipedia enclypedia

Bringing Joy from Thailand

2009-04-16T07:39:00.000-07:00

Joy Waters is an attractive, diminutive but surprisingly strong masseuse from Thailand. As she is gentle, what is not immediately apparent is the strength of character that propelled her out of her very impoverished childhood background, into the royal palace in Brunei, changing her fortune. When I met her, she was wearing her shoulder length smooth black hair loosely tied back, her aura calm and graceful. Her attire was lime green and white, with camel coloured short boots, fringed with fur and laced. She led me into her new salon, called Joy’s Relaxation Therapy Centre. Tall pillars, high ceilings, swirls of gossamer fabric, Oriental wall-hangings, a small altar with a bronze sculpture (not Buddha), plants in bamboo containers and a Thai wind instrument contributed to the exotic atmosphere. We sat on a futon while she told me her story. ‘My English is not good!’ she told me, before starting.

I’m from Thailand, from a part near Laos. I am the eldest. My father had eight children. My father and mother were really poor, but my father he tried to send me to school. I am 42 years now. I’m talking about when I was 12. I had to go to school then help my parents on the farm. If you wanted to go to secondary school, you had to have money. We had no clothes. My Mum had to cut curtains for me to make dress. Thai people won’t know this kind of poverty, now.

I had to go to school, come back at 3 o’clock. After school I had to run to the fields to tell the cows to come home. I reared the cows. From 4 to 6 o’clock I had to catch frogs, you know, jumping frogs? I had to catch frogs, to prepare for market. My Mum had to grow rice, to take it to market. After three months we could pick the rice. We had to transplant the rice, to grow with water. I had to find food every day.

I also reared 10 buffalo. On the farm we had to use buffalo to prepare land, to plough. On the farm, we also had a little rice, some vegetables. My Mum had to do so much. I see all my life, my Mum so poor, working so hard. I say to myself I have to get good job – any job –I have to be strong, because I cannot see my Mum like this. I have to help her. She has to work so hard because there are too many children. We didn’t have medicine to protect against pregnancy.

My father went to Bangkok, where he worked as a taxi driver, but he didn’t get money for four months, so I had to finish school to take care of the buffalo. I had to take the buffalo to the high land, where there is grass. Then I had to collect grasshoppers, for food, to cook for dinner. And any other things, insects, anything I could catch. I couldn’t go to fish, because I had to mind the buffalo, make sure they didn’t go on someone’s land.
By then, we didn’t have cows, just buffalo. Then I come home, I cook for my Mum. All the time, it was like that until my father said, ‘I have to send you to secondary school. The children often have to take care of the family after they turn 13, so no more school. But my father said, ‘I am going to send you to school’. But I must still earn money, I catch frogs, grasshoppers, I find baby bamboo – I have to find small animals, everything I can find - and on Saturday, Sunday, I am selling in the market.

Also at home I am doing many things in the home to help my Mum. When I am ten, I finish school in my home town. I go to Bangkok, I get a job housekeeping, in a private house. I do this for two years. Then I apply for a job sewing jeans, Tee shirts for a Chinese man. Chinese people have money to buy machines. Not in a factory. It’s very hard to get work in a factory. I had to get my friend to go to the manager and say, ‘can you give my friend a job.’ In 10 minutes we have to finish a Tee shirt, seams, everything. I had to learn how to put these together. I got a chance to go to the factory when I was 28 years old.

I worked very hard, every day. I worked from 8 o’clock, to 5 o’clock. I earned €2 per day. And I had to buy my food. But if you worked overtime, from 6 o’clock to 9 o’clock (after one hour break) you got good money. Another €1. So €3 altogether, if I worked from morning till 9pm. With that, I had to buy food, pay for the room.

We didn’t have a bed, just a mattress. The room was too small. I was sharing with two, three people. We all slept on the mattress. You have a gas cooker, a small table. We had one toilet, which we shared with four rooms. It was €20 a month for three people to share. One day I got a headache, because I was working with the machines all the time, and they were really loud. I got a migraine, and the migraine never went away. I couldn’t work any more, so I looked for a job in a hotel.

In Thailand if you don’t have English, you cannot get job in hotel. I learned English, a little bit, in school. I also liked to read. My dream was one day to go abroad, and if I worked in a good hotel, my English would get better. I didn’t know where abroad was! I didn’t know Europe. All the skin colours. I thought, ‘America.’ I didn’t have TV.

I applied for a job in a four-star hotel - not five star, but a good hotel. But they said I was too short. I said, ‘please. I need a job.’ I had two children with the boyfriend. But we had been separated a long time. So I said please. ‘But you’re short’ ‘But I’m strong! I’ve worked on a farm before, and in a laundry, I have done house-keeping. I don’t mind what work I do. I always learn my duty. Please give me a job.’ He said again, ‘But you’re too short.’ I said, ‘I can stand on a chair!’ And that man who interviewed me, hid a smile. So I got through part one of the interview. I was so happy.

Then I was interviewed by the General Manager in English. ‘How far do you have to travel to come to work? Can you translate this English?’ He was the GM. I said, ‘Mr GM, I was prepared for the first interview, but I forgot about the English, you know,’ and I talked with him. I said,’ ‘Mr GM, I am not good at English. I have had too poor a life. But I want this job. The man interviewed me already. He passed me. I just need a job. Please, not so much English.’

This man also smiled, like this, behind hand. The others told me, watch the paper, if you pass the interview, he will use a red colour pen. I looked to see, red or blue? He put red! He asked me to read in English. Some words I didn’t know, I just jumped the words, and he looked at me like that. I said, ‘I don’t know what this is – please tell me!’ and he laughed. I got the interview. I was so happy.

I worked so hard. I improved every day. We had seven floors. I had number three, the floor reserved for Chinese. Not too VIP, you know. I would say, ‘Good morning! How are you!’ I tried to talk to them. “I’m fine thank you? Yes, I’m fine.’ If they talked and I didn’t know how to answer, I just said, ‘Good morning Sir, good morning, Madame!’ And I got compliments from the customers. I learned all the words I needed, like, ‘you need something? Would you like…?’ The words on the menu, and for laundry, I had to learn.

Then I finished at that hotel. I was sent to Brunei, housekeeping in the king’s palace. My supervisor was paid money to send people to the agency. I was working for the king’s brother for three years. I have my certificate.

Brunei got freedom from another country, England, I think. So I worked in the laundry in the palace. They had many people in the palace. But we were not allowed to look at the king. If he passed, we had to look down, if we could not avoid being there.

The father and mother, they are Muslim, but it’s a good country. I’m Buddhist, but became Christian later, when I worked in Malaysia. Jesus helped me a lot. When I want something, I just say to God, God help me, so I believe in Jesus Christ. Before that, I worshipped Buddha in the temple. Always I prayed to make me strong. When I was Buddhist, I held Buddha. Now I’m Christian, I hold Jesus Christ. (Holds crucifix around her neck.) In my country, you can be any religion. No problem. Before, if somebody was a Christian, they had problems. But now it’s OK. I love God so much.

And then I came back from Brunei to Thailand. They called me for an interview at the agency. I got another job, this time in Dubai. But I didn’t like it there, because the man did not respect me. He respects people like you. He just said, ‘hey, you know…’(gestures lewdness). So I said no. I said bye bye. Then the agency called me for an interview in Malaysia.

When was 10 years old, and my grandmother was ill, I gave her massages. She told me, ‘press there, there, there’. And in Brunei when my boss played football with the prince, he came in the morning with bruises and said, ‘press for me.’ And when the king, the brother of my boss, told him to change the people in the palace (they can only work for a certain time) my boss said to me, ‘if you go to massage school, you can get a job as a masseuse, and get another job abroad.’

So when I come back from Dubai, I did a course in massage, then got a job in Malaysia as a masseuse. I had all the necessary experience now, housekeeping, laundry, massage. If I didn’t have experience, I couldn’t get a job in another country. English and experience together, are number one. And you have to be strong!

It was a good job, in Malaysia, working as a masseuse. I am very good. My manager said I was number one. I got compliments from the customers. I worked in the top resort, Pang Kor Laut resort in central Malaysia. I worked there one year. The next year I moved to another place, Lumut, a YTL hotel, still working for the same company. My co-workers did not like me, because I worked so much. In one day I can massage six, seven clients. My co-workers could not. That’s why they didn’t like me. I work hard, so they blame me.

I knew only the name Europe. I didn’t know where it was. But I said to God, ‘God please – get me to Europe!’ And then God sent my next employer to me! They come from Kinsale. They owned Harbour Lodge, and also the Vintage restaurant. They went to Malaysia in 1999. I massaged the two of them, and they said to me, ‘ Do this and this, go home, and then one day you will get chance to go to Europe. And in 2000 they come to me again and they asked me to work for them in Ireland. And they got me my visa with a permit for housekeeping. Now, I do no more housekeeping. I have been working here for about three years.

You know they say I look young, but I have really suffered. I have not had a happy life. My background was hard, and I’ve had a very bad life. That’s why I’m strong.

Have men ever given you trouble?

Exactly. So I don’t want to talk about it. Put it behind me.

I supported my children. I left my children with my boyfriend’s mother, when my son was just nine months. First I left my son at home with my parents. I gave my daughter to my boyfriend, you know. Then my boyfriend came to my Mum and said, ‘Joy says you must give me the son’. So my Mum gave him my baby. She didn’t know. I just cried.

So I just supported the children. He’s not responsible. His mother is a good person. But she cannot control her son. None of them, father, mother, son, were working, so I supported them. In Malaysia I made good money, in Brunei, very good money, in Ireland good money. So I could manage.

But now they don’t have my children, so I don’t support them any more.

Before, my children didn’t know me. I never talked to them. I never saw my children for ten years, except one day, here, one day there. I saw them sometimes when I was there on holiday. I visited them just for two days. The father would not let me visit too long, because my children were too young. They did not know who I was. My daughter wrote letters to me abroad. But she did not know how to write in English. We had to use English. We had to tell people next door to write to my address, to Brunei, to Malaysia. . When mobile phones came, I bought them mobiles. Then I started to talk, and tried, you know, (breaks down) to explain… why I could not be with them. I’m so happy when my children are with me.

Now you are married?

I met my husband here in Ireland. His name is Christopher Waters. I worked here for two and a half years before I went out. I was never going out because I’m not good in pubs. I don’t drink. When I finished work at the guesthouse, I just stayed in my room and read a book. I didn’t have TV.

This girl used to work with me. One day we had a meal with her family from France. I always gave her letters that came from her family, because she didn’t work there any more. So one day she said, ‘you must come out, you must talk to people.’ So one night I went with her to the pub. I met her friend, and my husband there.

I didn’t trust men before I met my husband,

My husband had an earring, he did not cut his hair, but he had no hair on top. His hair was white, even though he is one year younger than myself. He is 41. I am 42. He and his friend liked me, but I am not used to people. He got my number and tried to call me, but I really didn’t trust him, you know? Then he called me to have a meal with his sister and brother-in-law. He wanted me to know his family. Later we went to the pub and I just talk to his sister. Then we got to know each other a little. And I trusted him a little. Then next month he brought me to meet another sister and brother. The following month he brought me to meet the whole family. And then we were friendly.

He called for me in the morning when we had rain, to collect me for work, because he didn’t want me to get wet. For about three months, we grew closer. After one year, eleven months, I went home for a holiday. He asked me if he could visit my Mum and he also wanted to visit his uncle in Thailand.

He bought a ring and he gave it to me there. Now we have been married one year, four months. We got married in Glengariff, first the church in Bantry. I was happy. He is a very nice man. His father and mother have a nursing home in Blackrock. He works there. Before, he was used to freedom, to drinking. Now he doesn’t drink much. He is very good.

For me, I think Irish men, when they love somebody, they just love somebody. But in Thailand, when they love somebody, they still go out, go with other girls. I don’t know. It’s the fashion. But Irishmen are different. I just love him. He is very good to me. We are very good to each other. He wants to retire to Thailand. He wants to do food, or a guesthouse, something like that in Thailand. But I don’t know when. Ten, fifteen years, maybe. One day, we will do that.

My boy is with me now. I got him into school here. He is 15 years old and has a lot of Irish friends. He really likes them. He says they have good hearts. He forgets Thailand. When first I took him here, I said to him, ‘If the weather is not good for you, if it’s hard for you, if you miss your friends in Thailand, if you don’t feel happy, you can go home. You can try it for three months, and then see. Or if you want, you can stay here with me.’

At the moment, he is still my dependent. After 18 he cannot come. He said, ‘I’m happy Mum, I want to stay with you.’ I left my son when he was a baby. He was two years old. I left him with his father. But I sent money. I took care of him. But what does he understand about that? He asked me, ’Mummy, don’t you love me?’ I said, ‘I do love you, I just have to work, but I cannot stay with your father. So you stay there.’ I said to myself, some day I will get my son with me, but I will get him when he grows up. It’s not good to grow up without your mother, but now he knows I am a good mum. He has been here six months now. I have never been with my son, all his life. He was in a different part of Thailand. It’s not the same language. But we understand each other, because my hometown is near Lao. I speak Lao. People who live near Cambodia, they speak Cambodian. My son speaks North, so we speak North when we are together. He loves me. Sometime he doesn’t understand why until now we couldn’t be together. How for 14 years, I left him.

My son is so happy he’s here now with me. My son is a bit like me. His name is Zak. He can do everything! He is so proud. He says, ‘Mum, I can speak English!’ He takes special English lessons. At school he plays sport. He’s very good. He cleans, cooks. Before he didn’t know how. I had to teach him. I said, ‘you have to know. Do your duty, finish school, help your mummy, do this. Your stepfather is not your real father, but you must make him happy.’ So they are laughing, they are very good friends.

Does he miss his own father?

I don’t think he misses him. I don’t know. I don’t want to talk about it. But he loves me. He wanted to come to me. He asked me for a long time.

I will get my daughter to visit me sometime. She is studying in college now, in Thailand. If my daughter wants to visit, she can visit now, but I have to have money to show the government. I had her when I was 23 years old. So she is 20 now. She looks a little bit like me, a little bit like her grandmother. Her name is Shy (pronounced Sigh) which means sand.

Have you settled in Ireland? Does it feel like home for you now?

I like Ireland, but you know, one day I will go back to Thailand, because it’s my country.

Do you have Thai friends here?

Yes, we have. They have a restaurant here in Kinsale. They are really good friends. We also have friends in Dublin, and one friend in Waterford, and my sister in Cork. She came two years ago. She got a job in a hotel.

How is the rest of your family doing?

My parents are still there. But they are too old to move. I support them by sending them €100 a month. My mum doesn’t have good eyes now. She cannot see much. I have supported my mother and father since I left school. Until I came here, I could not give so much, but they didn’t need to work hard any more. My family did not get not much schooling, but when I got a job in Bangkok, I sent my youngest sister to school. I supported her, all of them. My sister came here when I got her a job. My daughter doesn’t know her plan yet. She visited me last year. Then she had to go back to the college. She doesn’t want to be in the college, but she doesn’t know where to go.

What are the negative aspects of Ireland for you?

Too expensive!

The weather, first was cold, then it was OK for me. I just wear something warm. Now I love the weather here more than Thailand. It’s too hot for me there. But the food is not good, and it’s very expensive. In my country, my food was mostly vegetables and fruit. Also there is the language problem for me. I’m sorry my English is not good.

What are the positive aspects about life in Ireland as you see it?

The people in Ireland are very kind. They are like Thai people. Especially old women, old men. If I ask directions, they just take me there. Also the music is the same. We have the same type of instruments. Look at this. (Shows me a wind instrument, like a one stringed fiddle, only with a much longer neck, and thicker bowl.) I love music. I do Thai dance also.

People have good hearts, like Thai people. So I am happy living here. The rest is not a problem. People with good hearts, that is the important thing. My background was very, very bad. But I am very happy now.

As I was leaving, Joy asked me to tell people that although in Thailand certain types of massage are offered, her massages are strictly regular. The massages she offers are Thai, Balinese, Malay, Slimming, Swedish, and foot reflexology. ‘But no kissy, kissy!’ she said to me. Or as she firmly had to say to one enthusiastic male enquirer: ‘no mickey massage!’
***

European powers began travelling to Thailand in the 16th century, but despite frequent attempts, failed to colonise the country. Thailand is the only south-east Asian nation never to have been colonised by a European country, because Thailand had a long succession of very able rulers in the 1800s and it was also able to exploit the rivalry and tension between the French and British. However, Vietnam did lose one large territory in the Mekong to the French and three predominantly ethnic-Malay southern provinces, which later became part of Malaysia in the Anglo-Siamese treaty of 1909.

In 1932, a bloodless revolution resulted in a new constitutional monarchy. During the Second World War, Thailand was allied with Japan, while at the same time having an active anti-Japanese resistance movement known as the Seri Thai. After the war, Thailand emerged as an ally of the United States.

In the succeeding decades, Thailand went through a period characterised by coups and military regimes, eventually progressing towards a democracy. However, a military junta overthrew the elected government again in September 2006, declared martial law, and appointed one of the King’s Privy Councillors as Prime Minister, a position that could be terminated at any time. Martial law was partially revoked in January 2007, but the junta continues to censor the media and has been accused of several other human rights violations. The ban on political activities was lifted in July 2007 and a new constitution was approved by a referendum on August 19, leading to plans for democratic elections in December 2007.

In 1997, Thailand was hit by the Asian financial crisis, but by May 2007, the Thai baht had recovered and was valued at 33 baht to the US dollar. The official calendar in Thailand is based on an Eastern version of the Buddhist Era, which is 543 years ahead of the Gregorian (Western) calendar. For example, the year AD 2007 is called 2550 BE in Thailand.

Source: Wikipedia.org

Here comes Poland

2009-04-16T07:34:00.000-07:00

Bogna Siegel, from Poland, is 29. A tall, strawberry blonde with a cropped haircut, she opened her door to me wearing elegant black trousers and a red cashmere jersey. Lively eyes welcomed me behind funky specs with black frames. She exudes charisma and charm. A fire was burning in fireplace. Instead of coffee, she offered me freshly squeezed orange juice. We sat on comfortable leather sofas. In the course of our interview, I discovered that the waitress I had come to know in my favourite café is actually a classically trained pianist.

My father is from a very big family. Everybody in his family is a musician. Everybody.

My mum doesn’t know anything about music. She’s a dentist. She is from Warsaw, capital city. So after study, she got a job in a small town, where she met my father. He came to her as a patient, but then he started to fall in love with her, and came back to her more and more often!

All my father’s family is in one place – Grudzi`a. But my parents moved to another big city, called Walbrzych, to follow my mother’s job.

So he was like a black sheep, because now he was separate from all the family, all the cousins doing music, following the line of musical tradition. My older sister likes music but she doesn’t have an ear. I wasn’t the best, but I kept going. And only me, from my generation in the family, finished Academia of Music. The rest of them basically finished six years. So do you have that picture? Black, sheep, moved to another city, and only his daughter completed traditional musical education. He’s very proud of that. It doesn’t matter how good I am. For him, I’m the best! I play piano, like my father. The others also play piano, but some play cello, double bass, drums. My father also plays double bass.

My childhood was all around music. I didn’t want to play at all. But they pushed me and pushed me, and thank God they did, because when you are growing up around music all the time, it changes your thinking, really, about life. You have a different imagination and sensitivity.

Poland used to be a communist country. Which meant we didn’t have much food. We had monthly vouchers, which entitled you to I kg of meat per head per month, or 1 kg of sugar per month. There were huge queues at the back doors of the shops. Someone would see them waiting, for toilet paper or something. So they’d join the queue. And it would grow like that, as neighbours saw others waiting. And it would grow. And it was like Waiting for Godot, or something, for the truck that never came. So after three hours, they’d go home.

I had my first banana when I was seven or eight. My sister had her first orange at the same time. We had to struggle all the time. But it was just natural. I didn’t know any other way. It was just Poland.

My father works part-time. So he also does the cooking, and the shopping. It was always like that. My mother doesn’t know how to cook. She doesn’t like it. And she’s always had more work than he has. But she does the housework. My father now does some work for the government, but mostly he’s home.

What was your typical staple diet?

Bread. You don’t have bread like we have. Polish bread is very good, heavy and wet. We’ve got loads of bakers. They make dark bread with seeds, nuts, raisins, plums, Afric, my mouth is watering thinking of it! What we have also, since ’89, is white smoked cheeses with radish, or cucumber, or chives. Kind of cottage cheese, like Philadephia. And scrambled eggs. That would be our typical breakfast. And then around 3 to 5 o clock, we have dinner. Like soup, with chunks of vegetables. Then mashed potatoes, like Irish, a piece of meat, like pork, or chops or burgers, and vegetables. Then supper at 8 or 9. It would be something hot but light, like sausage with mustard and a piece of bread. Or cabbage, warm cabbage.

A typical dish would be sauerkraut with loads of meat, wine, dry mushrooms, sausages, onions. Every family has own recipe, coming from generation to generation. The cabbages are kind of meaty. In the cabbage as well you’ve got pieces of fat. You fry it in the frying pan.

But here I discovered Irish cheeses, milk, cream - Afric, hello! For me it’s fantastic. In Poland there are loads of Es in the milk. They also mix it. A good few years ago they’d even put a minimum of washing powder in it. So the milk was really, really shit. Just to make more of it.

Did you grow up with religion?

My parents are horrible religious. They go three times a week to mass. And they think you can ask God for everything. They think if you pray hard, you gonna have it. I used to go to church. But now I’m working on Sundays. If I had Sundays off, definitely I would go.

Poland was communist till 1981, the cold war. Then in ‘89, solidarity won, and it was like breaking the mould. Before that, what I remember, we always had to struggle in every way. For example, we had to be the best, to win competitions. The level was abnormal. Education was a very high level, but it meant nothing, because after study, even if you were the best of the best, you still didn’t have a job.

We couldn’t get passports. Everybody was afraid.

We couldn’t go out after 7pm because police curfew everywhere. That’s what I remember. There was nothing in the shops. I was growing up with this though, so I think I was pretty happy kid. When there’s nothing to compare it to, you just take it like it is.

We had television, black and white, for a long time. No radio, no video. My parents aren’t modern. We didn’t have electrical things like Hoover, for very long time. It’s like two generations in Poland. Older generation, they’re so afraid of changes. They are so used to struggling all the time, they are comfortable with it. Because something new is something dangerous. They just don’t know.

But new people, young people, they’re mad. They’re completely opposite. They’re doing too much. They risk everything. Like right now, it’s very easy for us to just move. So many moved when we joined EU. And look at that. 3% of Irish population is Polish. About 120 000.

The biggest thing after communism was food! Sweets, ham, salami, everything. Food, food, Jesus, I could go to the shops and get chocolates, anything. Do you know that during communism, we had machines on wheels – you can see them in old movies – and they were selling fizzy-type drinks in dirty glasses in the streets, made to look like Fanta? It was disgraceful. And everybody drank it. There was a kind of virus because of that. Oh Jesus. So we could say we weren’t so different from other people.

We didn’t have channels on TV. Nobody told us how it is abroad. So we just lived as a very closed country. Obviously it was dangerous for government to let us see how it is abroad. We not stupid, and you know it’s dangerous when someone goes out and discovers a new world and comes back and says, ‘this is a piece of shit.’ You know what I mean.

I left country because I wasn’t patient enough to give myself time to find a proper job. And when you’re 26, it’s a pity to be taking money from your parents still. And to find a job in Poland is only possible if you know someone who is rich or in a high position. My sister is 36 now. Her daughter is 15. Now she has a proper job. But imagine that, she has had to wait so many years to get that job. It’s absolutely ridiculous.

So we are not confident at all, we Polish people.

But one big thing to help our confidence as a country was our pope. 98% of the population is Catholic. And look at that – we had a pope. For us that was huge. It doesn’t matter what he did – I’ve heard here that he was very conservative – but for us he was Polish, and he was abroad, and he showed Polish mentality in front of whole Europe. For us he was like a huge kick.

I think Pope and Lech Walesa were heroes. Walesa invented politicial group, solidarity, and he broke communism. Funnily, he wasn’t a very educated person, but he had charisma, so he was very popular. He was president. But he couldn’t speak other languages, and not even good Polish, so people started to be ashamed of him. How would the outside world perceive him? But certainly in the beginning, he was a hero.

We have huge complex in our blood. Even here, if we speak English perfectly, we always feel in worse position than other foreigners. Everything is a problem for us. We’re just worriers. We have to think right and left. So if it’s not good, it’s not going good, we have to find new idea. Polish people are very creative, but have not had the outlet.

I came here with a very big foreigner complex. I had no English. Even after two years, when people get to know me, and they know how I’m working, if I feel that sympathy from them, there’s something in the back of my head saying, ‘there has to be something in that sympathy.’ You know.

But for example, there is one thing that is common with Polish and Irish people. I spent a whole year at Greyhound, (a local Kinsale pub) because that was my object. To hang out with Irish people. And other things, language, obviously. And after a year, they start to treat me like a friend. I’m not dangerous. I’m not only a summery person. But this is what I find. The Irish are not very open people. They’re open in the beginning, like, ‘hello! How are you? Oh lovely to see you,’ blah blah blah. But then it’s like huge wall or something that. To break it takes time. I think Polish people are the same. If someone comes to the house, it’s our tradition that you’ve got to give them meals, invite them to sleep over, everything, but you’re not going to know us. That’s it.

What made you choose Ireland?

During my sister’s study she had an exchange in Galway. She studied there for a year. She told me about the people and the beautiful views and these kinds of things. And Afric, as I said before, I was fed up with not having money.

But after that experience, probably I would never go to a country without a language again. Because it was a fucking tough time. When you try really hard to understand, and you just cannot. And you try, week after week, after week. I had headaches every day. I was wrecked.

I escaped at work. People gave me a chance, thank God. Sometimes, someone tells me, ‘you’re very brave, Bogna, coming to the country without the language, and you’re doing very well.’ But it wasn’t braveness, it was something opposite. For me, it’s very brave to stay in Poland. Here, you’re washing dishes, but still, on pay day, you can buy yourself perfume, and you can go to the pub and get pissed completely. You can go for pizza or dinner somewhere out. And you have money for rent, everything. So the standard of life is higher, even if you’re doing shit jobs. Whereas in Poland you’re starving. That’s a pity, you see. That’s why I left the country.

I’ve bought a piano, so I’m coming back to music. In a different language! So I feel very good about that. I’ve advertised and already I’ve got a good few students. I phoned my parents to tell them. It’s only because of them. My parents planted something and I’ve got the fruits right now. I live here, and they are absolutely proud of me. For them it’s not possible to learn a language at this stage of their life, so they see what I’ve done as a big deal.

When I first arrived, I made my home in Diva, a small café, regular clientele. Afric, Kinsale is amazing. It’s small enough. I’m not nobody. People say, ‘hello Bogna’ to me in the street. I love that. I’ve fallen in love with it here. I want to stay here. I feel safe.

This is the beginning of my 3rd year here now.

Do you miss Poland?

Not at all. But in the beginning, I missed the climate, the seasons. In Poland we’ve got four beautiful seasons. Spring, we’ve got that green like Irish green. Everything is growing, it’s all so fruity. It’s about 18 to 25 degrees. Then in summer it’s very hot, 35 degrees, then autumn. Afric, it’s unbelievable. We’ve got colours like yellow, orange, all palettes of brown, the leaves are falling down, and if the sunlight is on them….so many writers have written about it, it’s really spectacular. And in winter it’s really cold, below zero, we’ve got snow and everything.

Also, we have beautiful places. In the north, we’ve got sea. In the middle of the country we’ve got lakes and national parks. And we’ve got cities with very old architecture, cathedrals.

Some of the cities are more modern and they look like a piece of shit. Our capital, Warsaw, looks horrible. But Krakow, which used to be capital city, is a city with beautiful architecture, tradition, scenery, universities. That city is like a bit of your heart. My city, Wrocl`aw, is the same. Plus we have the third most bridges in Europe. First Venice, then Amsterdam, then Wrocl`aw, Loads of bridges.

For first year, I missed it, because I was alone here, and lonely, very, very lonely. But then I thought, maybe that’s part of my life, loneliness. What I miss definitely, is real, real friends. At this moment, there’s a group of Polish people here. If I look at them, sometimes, that’s what I miss, really.

Are Polish people health conscious? Do they take care of themselves?

In Poland you know, when women are going out, they are perfectly done. They make up, dress up, even for shopping. High heels, especially in the city. You only see beautiful people. Fat people, they staying at home, Nobody likes them. You cannot see fat ones. Then, when I came here, I saw loads of fat people, loads! And how they dressed! Pink trainers! It was unbelievable. Trousers too long, so wrecked at the hem, belly outside, very small top, and they are happy. That kind of pinkish skin, and one doughnut, another doughnut! In Poland, it’s not possible! In Poland this is not existing. This is what is beautiful about Ireland.

As you see, I have big boobs. So here, for first time in my life, I bought so many bras for myself. In Poland, they only have bras for average size. Otherwise you have to have very cheap bras, which look like two circus tents! It was horrible. Not sexy at all, when you’re a teenager and your sexuality is just springing. How can you look like a piece of shit? You just cannot. So I think it’s wonderful here. Non-beautiful women are doing what they want, so they become beautiful. And guys, they don’t have a problem with fat women, or very skinny women, or with red hair, or with piercings. You know what I mean.

Do you think you’ll stay in Ireland?

I want to be here until I can really express myself in English. Ireland has given me confidence, really. And I know that I’ll be OK, wherever I go. I really feel that. I’ve always wanted to travel, so my next step is to discover another place. I don’t want to go back to Poland. But probably I’ll settle down somewhere where my heart will be. If I meet someone.

What’s your impression of Irish men?

Kinsale is a builder town, or a fisherman town, or a barman town. When I came here I thought the men were not handsome at all. Because I come from a country where guys are looking after themselves. It’s a kind of pressure there, especially in cities. But here, nobody cares. Now I like it very much.

But I think Polish guys treat women better, with respect. They treat us like a flower. You not going to bed after first date.

I understand one night stands. But I don’t like the way the Irish guys treat women in the morning, like nothing happened. And it happened only with Irish, because I had experience with foreigners from different countries, and they not like that. They behave normally, like human beings in the morning.

In Poland I had a few long relationships. But here I had only, like, adventures, or flings. I don’t know why. Do you know what I found in guys here? They’re very, very afraid of women.

It would be nice to meet someone with a sense of humour. Easy-going, money wise. A person who is not very tight. That is barrier for me, when someone is tight. Because I am from country where everyone has to be tight. But Afric, I cannot be fussy, I don’t have nobody!

What were your expectations of Ireland before you came, and how have you found it?

I thought that if Ireland is kind of rich country. You’ve got your wage and you can live your life. But people kind of use foreigners in a way. I don’t want to generalise. But I’ve heard from others the same thing. Unfair treatment. I heard them say, ‘give all the shitty jobs to Bogna. She’ll do it’.

When I first got here, I was illegal, but it was really easy to get work. Nobody asked me anything. And I was working in public places. And there were Gardaí often. And they knew my face, but never said a word.

What do you think about Poland joining the EU?

I think joining the EU will be very good for Poland. Here though, there are too many Polish for me, as a Polish. I came here to soak up other things and obviously I hang around Poles as well, which is very nice, because we understand each other, between lines. I think we are good people, Polish. We‘ve got good hearts. But I think Poland will be very afraid of foreigners. We’re not going to be open for foreigners.

Did you think Ireland was open, when you came here?

Yes. Big time.

What’s the best thing about Ireland for you?

For me, nature. Water. I discovered the sea here. I now know that I have to live by the sea. I’m more healthy here. I love that smell. Even at low tide. You know that briny stink! It doesn’t bother me at all, Afric. I like it really.

Mostly, I love the open space of it. You can get the possibilities in your mind. that fresh sea air when the wind is coming to you. I have misty glasses the whole time. I think that’s the most beautiful thing in Ireland. And the green is green.

***
A large country in central Europe, Poland is flanked by the following border countries: Belarus, Czech Republic, Germany, Lithuania, Russia, Slovakia, and Ukraine, with a coastline of 491kms along the Baltic Sea.

Formerly partitioned amongst themselves by Russia, Prussia, and Austria, Poland regained its independence in 1918, only to be overrun by Germany and the Soviet Union in World War II. When allegiances later changed and the Nazis attacked the USSR in June 1941, Germany took control of the whole of Poland, with the intention of eradicating Polish culture through mass executions and to exterminate the country's large Jewish minority. Wislawa Szymborska, born in Western Poland in 1923, survived the occupied state, even managing to study illegally during the war. She later published nine volumes of poetry and won the 1996 Nobel Prize for Poetry.

After the war, Poland’s borders were shifted westward.

Labour turmoil in 1980 led to the formation of the independent trade union, Solidarity, founded by an electrician, Lech Walesa. Over time Solidarity became a political force and in 1989 won a stunning victory in the parliamentary elections. Lech Walesa also won the presidency with 74% of the vote.

Economic difficulties did not improve however, leading to widespread discontent. In 1995, Aleksander Kwasniewski, leader of the Democratic Left, won the presidency in a landslide victory over Walesa.

Economic liberalization throughout the 1990s paid off, and Poland today stands out as a success story among transition economies. Even so, much remains to be done, especially in bringing down unemployment

In 1999, Poland became part of NATO, along with the Czech Republic and Hungary, and in September 2003, became the leader of a 9,000-strong multinational stabilizing force in Iraq. It contributed 2,000 of its own soldiers. In April 2005, Poland announced it would withdraw all troops from Iraq at the end of the year.

On the 1st May 2004, Poland joined the EU, and has already seen a burgeoning of its economy through exports to the member states. Poland stands to benefit from nearly $13.5 billion in EU funds, available until the end of 2006. Farmers have already begun to reap the rewards of membership via higher food prices and EU agricultural subsidies.

Predominantly a Catholic nation, the average family is nevertheless small, with 2005 statistics putting the birth rate at 1.39 children per woman.

According to the 2005 National Census, 5% of the Irish population is non-national, with Polish immigrants making up the majority from any one state.

Sources: Daily Almanac (website)
CIA Factbook (website)

One man's story of Nigeria...

2009-04-15T12:48:00.000-07:00

I walked into this little café, called New Generation, tucked away into a street corner in Letterkenny. There was a buzz in there, and surprise when I, a white person, entered. It stocks staple foods from African countries, and is a gathering and meeting place for African refugees and asylum seekers. Internet facilities are the next thing on the agenda. The owner is a soft-spoken Nigerian called Femi, who obligingly gave me an impromptu interview in the back room. Drawing up two hard-back chairs, we sat opposite each other while this burly, warm man gestured his way through his story.

My name is Bola Femi Daniel, as in Daniel O’Donnell! (It is traditional in Nigeria to put the surname first.) I grew up in Nigeria, in a town called Kaduna. Life was fantastic except for crisis every time, religious riots. I’m the fourth of eight children. My father worked in the Ministry of Agriculture. My mother was at home, bringing up the family. I went to primary school at the age of six. In Nigeria, you have to be able to touch your left ear with your right arm over your head before you can go to school. At first I couldn’t do it, and had to wait. But finally I got to school! I did well there, went to secondary school, then to the Polytechnic where I took a diploma in mass communications. Then I went for a work attachment to a communications company called ABG. The company manager liked me, and I worked up to assistant manager.

What was life like in general for a young guy growing up?

Life there was very good, but everyone there is very much under the control of their parents and elders. Do you know that at my age now, if I mess up, my mother can smack me? And I am 31! We are smacked whenever we do anything wrong. It could be anyone; it could be our neighbour, anybody who is around to correct your behaviour. So there is no freedom. Life is very good though, because when you know what you are doing, you can focus on your dream of what you want to do in your life. Parents always dream of their children doing something good. I think there’s a big rivalry in the community. This man wants his child to do the best. Everybody wants their children to do the best. If you don’t do very well, it’s very difficult to proceed to the next level. So at every level, you have to do very, very well. Or if you are lucky to come from a well to do family, you can have everything. But if you come from a poor family, you have to struggle and work hard.

Was your father seen as a success?

Yes, he had a good job, but not really the best, because the only really successful people in the community were the politicians. They get money they have influence. But when you work in the ministry, you can work for four months, unpaid! So life could be very difficult. But in politics, you can always embezzle!

Where I come from, our rate of civilisation is very low compared to the way it is here. You cannot see a young boy moving on the street with a young girl and kiss her on the lips. That would be seen as an abomination. But I find the way people drink here a big shock. Women don’t go to beer parlours there, or smoke on the street, or wear jeans. It’s an abomination. They call these women harlots. But it’s not like that here. Do you know if a woman wore trousers, she would be seen as a bad woman. But here, it’s a different culture. It all has to do with culture. Women there wear wraparounds, but in big cities now, they wear trousers. Cultures are mixing.

I was raised with religious influences, so I feel that a woman has to go along with the wishes of her husband. Whatever her husband wants you to look like, that is the best for you. I am pastor at the church here in Letterkenny, at the Cliwon Sanctuary of Praise on the Port Road and I always say to the women that you have to try to satisfy your husband.

Tell me about courting customs in Nigeria.

There are different customs. The Muslim group in the northern part, if you have a baby now, you can say to your husband, I want our baby to marry this one. In that northern culture, a lady can get married before the age of 12. The parents make the arrangements. They can bring their daughter to a man as a gift. They use it as a sign of friendship. Muslim men can have up to four wives and they can have five concubines as well. But in the culture, the four wives are the real wives, but the other women, they can sleep with them in the afternoon, but not at night. That’s what the culture allows. There are three different kinds of tribes in Nigeria. If you are from the Yoruba tribe and you are a Christian, you are only allowed to marry one wife, but custom allows you to marry two or three. In that part of the world, they treat women as a second-class citizen. They are just household possessions. They have nothing to say. So that’s what men like to do. The women prepare the food, and have babies for the man, that’s all. The man has to supply everything in the house. I am Yoruba, from that tribe, but I was brought up in a modern culture. We live our life in the northern part.

There’s another tribe called Yibo in the eastern part. They are the most enterprising in Nigeria. If a man from the Yibo culture wants to marry a girl who is educated, he has to pay a lot of money, a bride price. Why their tribe is so good is, if the man pays for the woman, if she leaves the man, she has to pay him back. So that’s the eastern tribe.

The city is full of different cultures, just like Dublin. In the city, even now, a man will approach a lady and ask her out, like in the western culture.

When I was in school, I used to have a girlfriend, but when I left home, we lost contact for a long time. Now I don’t know where she is. Here, I’ve tried to keep to myself for the time being. I don’t go to pubs or socialise at all. It’s strange, but I just occupy myself with doing things every time.

What is the worst thing that happened to you in Nigeria?

The rioting, in the year 2000. That riot made me sick, because I could see how human beings could slaughter people like a goat or chicken. People have no respect for human life, and it made me sick. And when you see a whole family dropped into a well and covered up, it’s unbelievable. I was about 24 then. Many people were killed. It was terrible. Not less than 7 000 people were dying. It was like the Irish peace process. Today there’s peace, tomorrow there’s trouble. That’s how it is in Nigeria.

Femi’s career in Nigeria was just getting established when this rioting crowd of Muslims converged in his neighbourhood. Femi, who was close to the family that had been plunged down the well, felt he had to take action. Already a religious leader in his community, he called his people together.

I said look we have to defend ourselves. We must arm ourselves, bomb up some mosques. They take our people, we take their mosques. The Muslims knew I was popular, that people were following my ideas, so now they wanted to come and get me at my house.

They came to the house in the night, calling my name. They wanted to cut my head off. So my father woke me up and we ran out of the house.

We went to some people and they gave me a passport. From there I came to France, and I can’t understand what they are saying. So I think, I’ll go to England because they speak English. Then somebody said don’t go to England, go to Ireland. They speak English there too. I’d never heard of Ireland. I looked it up, and saw that Ireland was at the extreme edge of the world! So we came to Rosslare.

How did it go when you arrived?

Oh it went well. When I came I was afraid because I had no travel documents. But the first thing they did was they fed me. I was hungry, and the first thing they did was care for me, to keep my mind calm. They fed me very well. Then I had a rest. I was thinking, ‘what am I going to do?’ and they said, ‘don’t worry.’ This was in Rosslare. There were about five Romanians with me. Later they took us in a bus to a BB house. They took care of us. When I got to Dublin the following week, they sent me to Donegal town. While we were coming to Donegal town, in the hostel where they keep us, people were saying if we were going up to that side of the country, they were going to kill us. The owners of the hostel, they were Irish people, said it was terrible. They said it was close to Northern Ireland. So I was afraid when we came to Donegal town, back to more troubles. But when we got there, it was good.

So it’s not too scary, living so close to the North?

Not at all! I always go to Derry for shopping. I also have a pastor friend there, who has a Presbyterian church. I went for a programme in Northern Ireland and I met this missionary from Nigeria, an Irishman. He introduced himself to me, and I told him I’ve never heard from my parents and he took my number and promised to get in touch with them. So he went back in a year, looked for my people, gave me a call after speaking to the pastor of my church and that’s how I got in touch with my family again. And they are alright. They have all moved together.

The pastor said if I want to help any of them to come, he will help me. But they are still at school, and I want them to finish their school. He’s a good friend of mine, this pastor. His name is Watson.

How long did it take for you to get asylum?

About 18 months

Why did you move from Donegal Town to Letterkenny?

I never wanted to leave. In fact I still work in Donegal Town, at night. I was looking for a house and couldn’t get accommodation. Everyone was trying to find accommodation for me. So that’s why I had to come here.

What work do you do there?

I work as a receptionist, in the hostel where I first stayed. I have a good relationship with the manager there.

And otherwise you have this shop. Tell me how this got started, and how it’s going.

Well, it’s going good. It’s called New Generation and the idea is to supply
foods from Africa, and also to set up an internet café.

Where are you importing food from?

I get most of it from Dublin. There are people who import food from Africa, and they have warehouses. I stock dresses too, local dresses from my country.

Did you get funding?

No. They said because I’m not unemployed, they can’t help me. People who don’t work at all, they get money, but if you are trying to get up yourself, there is no help. But I like to do things on my own. I’m trying to get a bookkeeper. I keep phoning people, and they say, ‘we’ll get back to you,’ but they never do. I think when they hear a black person on the phone, they don’t want to do business with me. That’s what I feel. But already I’m busy now. It’s kind of difficult. Now somebody has given me the name of one. He’s in Donegal town and I’m going to meet him tomorrow. But, apart from that, it’s OK. When you start a business, it’s always difficult.

And on Sundays, you’re a pastor?

Yes! Some days we have fifty or sixty people. We have people from Kenya, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Ghana and Nigeria. Religion is strong in Africa, and it can bring people together.

The best attributes of a Nigerian are prayer. And you see people go to church or mosque, or wherever they go, to pray every time. Sometimes they have all-night vigils, from 10pm at night to 4 am in the morning. But at the same time, everybody is fighting under the name of religion, even when they have political motivation. They hide it under religion. I try to teach that religion belongs to God, and God is one, so why are we fighting? Everybody thinks, ‘my religion is the best.’ In our country, I would say Muslims are 50%, and the rest are Christians.

In Nigeria, there’s democracy in name, but not in fact. It’s the same in almost all the African countries. People in power always want to keep the power. And when they want to leave, they want their children or their family to carry on. That’s the problem. And I find it unbelievable that the Western World always say they want to help Africa eradicate poverty, whereas in a certain way, they cause the poverty.

How do they cause it?

Nigeria is wealthy. Nigeria has natural resources. We have crude oil. We can get money to finance everything. But yet, we don’t have. In Nigeria we have to queue for petrol, because they export the crude oil to other countries, then they take the money to Sweden, America. And the Western World take it from them. Where money is in circulation, there will be development. But the money is coming to the West.

Interesting point!

How do you find life in Ireland? Was it difficult to adapt to such a different culture?

No. I have really adjusted. Initially, the cold was always stopping me, but now I’m very happy with the whole thing. It is my home away from home. I do miss people from home, but I’m happy, every time. I have not experienced any racist treatment. I used to work in the courtyard before as a security guard and when the students came and stood around by the well, it was our job to move them from the well. So at times, when I was trying to move them they say, ‘oh you’re just black’, but that was because they just like to say something. And when they say that, I say, ’oh! OK so ‘ and we laugh at it. Nothing riles me. And they did move. And now they greet me when they see me.

Have you been to any other European countries?

I’ve been to England and Holland. I find Holland experience very, very good. Because everywhere you go, you see trams. So you don’t need a car. You see all of them riding on bicycles! It’s great! Yeah! Because here it’s always difficult when you have a car, for insurance. I bought a car for €400, but I had to insure it for €2 500! Why? Because I have no experience on Irish roads. But I’ve been driving in my country for years!

What do you miss about home?

I would say before I used to miss the food. But now I can get some of it. Again, the beautiful weather I miss. And again, I find I miss the language. Because when you speak your own language you are yourself. But here I have to speak a foreign language. I wish I would be able to speak Irish. I would love it more than speaking English. I miss the language.

Do you think sometime in the future you’ll get married?

Yes, it’s on my agenda to get married and have a family!

Will it be an arranged marriage, or will you marry for love?

I will marry for love.

A Nigerian?

Anybody who comes along! Irish, German. You can find love anywhere.

Are there many Nigerians in Letterkenny?

Yes, there are many. We have an organisation for non-nationals. And the group of Nigerians would be more than 300. And non-nationals would be up to 1 000, including Nigeria, Ghana, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Kenya, Sudan, Pakistan, Indian, South Africa, Iraq, Iran. A lot are professionals on contract here. On one night we have an Irish night. If you want to meet Irish people this is the night you come. We want to have nights like this more often.

If you were to think of four aspects about Ireland that you would criticise, what would they be?

Drink. The drinking culture is getting worse, day by day. I always talk to young ones, and some young ones coming up, aged 14, they can’t wait to get to 16 when they can get away with drinking. It’s always, ‘I need to drink.’

Then, religious aspects. Where I come from, it was Irish people who brought Christianity to Africa and up to now you see a lot of Irish. The way they treat religion here is amazing. They only care about their business, their work, and their drinking. I begin to wonder if the economic boom, people are so comfortable, they have forgotten about God. They think they don’t need God. But when we have a problem, we run back to God. So even though it was Irish who brought Christianity to Africa, now it is Africans bringing God back to Ireland.

Then there is the attitude to education. The way people get educated here is not the way we get educated back home. Here, the young ones can’t wait to finish school, to start working, to get money. They don’t care about becoming a doctor or whatever. Look at the hospitals in Ireland. 80% of the doctors are foreign! I think it’s not geared for the future. They need more time to equip themselves with good quality education. Where I come from, it’s not like that. We think long term. Here, even the attitude to credit, it’s for the short term.

How many students go on to university or college in Nigeria, would you say?

I would say 75% of students go on to college. And the other 25% would stop only because they can’t afford it. Because everybody want to be in this place in society, and the only way to this place is through education.

So you’ve mentioned three points. Anything else?

Number 4, I think the rate of development is not keeping up with population growth. Like in Letterkenny – I can’t believe there is still no rail! You have to sit on a bus for four hours! There is separation not just of distance, but of communication between small towns and the seat of power. If you want to do anything, you have to go to Dublin. Now I think they are trying to decentralise, and things might change.

I want to say this: Irish people should give foreigners a chance. It’s always foreigners that develop a country. Irish people developed America; Irish people developed England. If you go to England, you still see foreigners developing Britain. People coming to Ireland - let them develop the country.

***
There are over 250 different peoples, languages, histories, and religions in Nigeria. When oil prices shot through the roof in the seventies, this ‘hectic and often volatile republic looked set to become prosperous, but perversely managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Its history is littered with oppressive dictators, massacres, bloody civil wars, human rights abuses, and horrific famines.’ *

Following almost 16 years of military rule, a new constitution was adopted in 1999. It is now a country struggling to contain the sum of its parts within a democratic framework. Despite some irregularities, the April 2003 elections marked the first civilian transfer of power in Nigeria's history. President Obasanjo now faces the daunting task of rebuilding a petroleum-based economy, whose revenues have been squandered through corruption and mismanagement. A chronic crime problem, large-scale unemployment and overcrowding in poor living conditions, in addition to longstanding ethnic and religious tensions must all be tackled, if the Nigerian government is to build a sound foundation for economic growth and political stability.

* Source: Lonely Planet (website)

Hi, this is Jane...from Zimbabwe

2009-04-15T12:39:00.001-07:00

Raised in Zimbabwe, Jane Skovgaard, an artist and interior designer in her mid-thirties, has a classic Nordic look, inherited from her father - platinum blonde cropped hair and a tall, willowy figure. On the surface, she is soft-spoken and feminine. But once you get to know her, you discover that she is possessed of a wicked sense of humour. She is extremely well liked by her art students, and one client of hers said that she was a ‘calming and inspirational influence’.* We met up at the cottage she shares with her film-maker boyfriend, Ed and their dog Benny.

I was born in Kenya. My father’s from Denmark. My mum’s from Hertfordshire. They met in Kitali, in Kenya. Dad had been there for a few years as a forester. He’d also worked in forestry in Burma and Canada. Mum was a teacher. In those days you either taught or nursed, or got married. After an unhappy love affair, she’d travelled round the States, and on her return to England, she was offered a job as a teacher in Kitali in Kenya – which was a bit like Kinsale, a small town where you could make friends, a lovely place. She met my dad there, who was recently divorced from his first wife. I think they had a bit of an affair, she got pregnant and they got married a month before I was born.

Then, when I was one, the Mau Mau killings started and we moved to Botwana. Dad worked for Danida there, a Danish aid organisation. At the time aid was quite new and Denmark literally poured money into the country. Dad was a forester and was sent to plant trees. But Botswana was a desert! A few problems there, an unbelievable amount of money wasted. Dad wrote a letter to Danida, and they put it up on the wall as ‘the letter that should never have been written.’ It was very politically incorrect, describing the utter nonsense that was going on, with aid people and stuff. This was 1971. Denmark was a particularly liberal democracy, but they did the most stupid things. Sending those typical aid workers floating around Botswana, ‘being helpful’, and all the Africans taking them for a ride.

Dad was apparently told he’d have a house when he arrived. But when he got there, someone was living in the house. Dad was the first person ever to go and shout at the person in charge and say, ‘I have a wife and daughter coming in one week and I want that house vacated by then.’ The person living there was an African, and it was actually unheard of that, you know, a white person would turf this black person out. But that was his allocated house. Dad said when he got there he made them scrub the walls from top to bottom because they were covered with soot and handprints etc. And that was also seen as a no-no. But Dad wasn’t someone to pander to politically correct opinion.

My first memory was of a goat being born there. I just remember this green stuff coming out of the goat’s bum. I was about two. But then Dad decided it was all a crock of shit, and we moved to Melsetter in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). By now I was almost three. Dad bought a farm in the mountains and called it Perversity. He farmed pyrethrum there, which is the main ingredient in fly spray. He built the house himself, a wooden house, and a waterfall so there was enough pressure for the water supply to get to the house. There were scorpions everywhere. And then the war started, so Dad got a job in forestry in Angola, Portuguese Angola. He thought we’d all move there. But you know Africa and wars. He got there just as the Angolan revolution started, so he came straight back. There was an earthquake and a revolution at the same time. Dad came back and said, ‘we can’t make it work there, we’ll try central Zimbabwe’, which out of the war zone. Where we were, was becoming a bit of a liability. So we sold our farm and moved to Chegutu, the arsehole of the world. I was now four, about to go to kindergarten.

Dad hooked up with an old mate, Eric. Eric said he knew an Indian called Ranchid, who farmed in Chegutu. We ended up leasing his farm for 25 years. Dad never wanted to own anything in Africa ever again. He was sick of owning things and then losing everything. He turned out to be quite a good farmer. He didn’t expand much, but always repaid what he owed, and made enough for us to travel once a year or go on nice holidays, and send me to a private school. Good for Dad!

So there we were living in Chegutu. I met my best friend there, Laura. She called me the girl with the blue shoes. So although I was an only child, I wasn’t really lonely, because I had her.

Later I went to primary school in Hartley. Then Dad was called up to the war, and we built brick walls around the farmhouse. The farmhouse was riddled with termites, the walls were hollow, and the ceiling dripped. It was a typical farmhouse, just absolute chaos. Mum despaired of it for 25 years.

Dad went off to the war and Mum made a big veggie garden. It was outside the security
gates, so whenever you went outside, you had to wear your holster and your gun. She learned how to shoot at the gun range. At school we learned about grenade attacks and how to dive under our desk.

What I remember from primary school are things like staying at friends’ farms when your Dad went away. He was a ‘bright light,’ not a solider. A bright light was someone who would go out to really remote farms - like that back road from Mutare all the way down to Beitbridge through Chiredzi – you’d go to a remote farm and stay with a farmer’s wife for a few days and make sure she was alright. And there was a lot of drinking involved. And pissing in cupboards. (Mistaking it for the loo!) It happened quite a lot, I think! Dad made some of his greatest friends while on patrol. They hardly ever came across any action. It was just the camaraderie of being out there, together in the bush. It was great for community spirit afterwards

Mum and I would sometimes go and stay with a neighbour whose husband was at home. Women, I think, felt they could defend themselves, but it was nicer to be in company.

After the war, the only thing that affected us was that blacks came to our school. I was about eleven. That was 1981. We had Charity, Hope and Love in the class. And they were all great. There was no problem.

And Dad sold the TV. He said he just thought black television would be worse than white television. I remember doom and gloom, quickly replaced by a feeling of ‘the war’s over, thank God.’ But not much really changed. One thing I did notice – I was part of the Young Farmers’ Club – where you learned to make hanging baskets and things - and you get your Young Farmers’ Club badge. Black kids would come from the local school while we were gardening and stuff, and call us white racist pigs. But that was the only thing really.

Secondary school was a nightmare. It was a private boarding school called Arundel, and I was lonely as hell for three or four years. I couldn’t make friends. It was a huge transition going from solitary farm life, your own life, where your best friends are your dogs, to a place where there are groups of people all fighting for top place in class. I became quite concerned about my marks. I was a swot, a nerd, a religious maniac, all the cool things in life! I became born again, to my Dad’s horror. My parents were both atheist. Well, my Mum was an Anglican. But you know, English people don’t have real feelings about the church. It’s just part of an institution, part of being English. And they couldn’t bear the happy clappy thing, which of course I embraced with fervour. That was my rebellion. Sad but true! Every weekend stretched like an eternity. It was so lonely. Mum and Dad would come and visit me only very occasionally, because although they only lived an hour away, there was a petrol shortage.

Then onto South Africa, where I went to Fine Art college. Fantastic. Wearing mini skirts, and short hair for the first time. First boyfriend. Tim. In South Africa you either join the army or the police. Or you go to university. But you have to do either of those first two at some point. So when I met him, Tim had joined the police, and they’d made him a detective. It was before the end of apartheid. They were a very English family. He wasn’t like a Boer. It was all very wonderful and scary. Ja. So that was my first love. It was very passionate. You know, there were all these art schoolboys, and they were very rebellious against apartheid. I looked and I thought, no. I was searching for that authority figure. I’ve always had boyfriends like that.

After college, Jane spent time in Italy and Spain, first with her friend Karen. Later Tim joined her, and they toured the States for nine months before returning to England.

I was now 24, taking a whole load of ecstasy and acid, basically enjoying the London nightlife. What happens is you end up in a big, dark, depressing space, only alleviated by more clubbing more drugs, more…and I could see my life not going anywhere and I realised I was getting to a place I shouldn’t be.

My mum came over for a visit and I wasn’t very nice to her. I realized it was only a matter of time before I had to face up to myself. I’m not saying I was a druggie or anything like that, but …at the time it was quite strong. Yeah, it was quite a drug culture then. Life was shallow. I was doing social work through an agency, which was pretty depressing, working with lots of old and lonely people, surrounded by photos of their children, going, ‘these are my children.’ Who never visit.

So I said to Tim, ‘We have to go back to Africa, we have to go and see our parents.’ I went back first, and he followed. But when I got back to Zimbabwe, I realized I wanted to stay there for a while, to get back to myself, my life. And I realized I didn’t want to be with him anymore. He’d mentioned marriage – ‘shall we do the next thing?’ and I had a terrible feeling at the pit of my stomach and knew it wasn’t right. So I wrote him a letter – a real Dear John letter. Terrible.

I moved to South Africa and spent about 2 years there, working illegally.

Then I got cancer. By then I’d met Gully, my very confrontational, Jewish Iraqi boyfriend. Got pregnant. Abortion. You know. Life. And around that time I went for a facial and the beautician noticed a lump on my neck, and advised me to go to the doctor immediately. Within about two weeks I was in hospital having an operation. They’d found a carcinoma. I’d had an abortion in February, had my thyroid in June, then immigration got onto me, and I was basically deported in September. It was quite a year. I’d never really thought about anything too hard. The cancer, well you deal with it the rest of your life. If you live.

So I went to England. Lived with my folks, who had moved there, until they went mad. Then I got this call about a house-sitting job in Kinsale. I negotiated a price, £500 a month, a studio of my own, all expenses paid except food and petrol. I drove to Ireland in spring. It was March. The moment I drove into Ireland, through all the wild flowers – I got onto a back road by mistake, as you do – and that was it. I fell in love.

The house was divine. It was the biggest break I’ve ever had…it’s probably the nicest
thing that ever happened to me. I was in a huge Georgian house in the middle of the
countryside. I like my own company. I probably went into a bit of mad syndrome, doing strange things that nobody could see, and only I knew just how strange things were getting. It was kind of nice. I spent lots of time by the Aga, reading lots of books, pretending I was working. But I did have two big exhibitions while I was living there. Then I got a job teaching in Kinsale. I’d avoided people up to then. Once you get involved in a community there’s no way out. And there I was, involved. And that was the beginning.

Then I met Ed. He makes me laugh because he’s really black. We’ve both known shit, and we’re able to laugh, knowing we can be completely politically incorrect constantly. And we can shock each other, but only to spur each other on. What I love about Ed is his tremendous compassion. The average weeping willow won’t affect him, but give him someone like a physically disabled kid with no home and he’ll give them respect, treat them in a way they value. He likes the offbeat. He has a strange social conscience. It doesn’t always extend to the social circle. He’s hard on that, but oddly compassionate with down and outers.

I ended up buying a boat, and living on it, which was wonderful. The boat for me was like Crime and Punishment – candlelight, pasta – and wind. And always battening down the hatches.

Then we moved into a derelict cottage together, on the edge of the ocean. Walking through one field, two fences, at least 15 cows every night to get to a completely drenched stone house. Often the electricity was off because we’d overloaded the electricity with the computer, TV, video and cooking. So we had about 5 fuses always ready to pop in. and salad ready. Covered in dust, covered in cow shit, no showers. Showers at the leisure centre every two or three days. Maddening when you’re having sex. Lots of baths though, in a tin bath by the fire. Good parties there, intimate dinners,
walks by the cliffs. When friends came from London to stay, and saw just the Atlantic ocean in front of them, and not another house within sight, they went, ‘oh my god’ …it was wonderful.

Then I found a new lump in the old place. We were in a nightclub in Cork and I felt something, but I kind of ignored it. But then I kept getting cystitis. And the kidneys and the thyroid are connected. Finally I had to overcome my resistance to the signs and book another appointment with a doctor. And then I got the news. Again.

In Johannesburg, there was no counselling. But at least you had the illusion of people caring, and I was dealing with one doctor. Here, you sit on plastic chairs in an echoing room along with 50 other sick people, all the Wednesday endocrine cases. You sit there until you’re called, one or two hours later. And they hand your file to the nearest doctor, and whoever’s free at the time looks at your file and either sends you for tests or decides what’s wrong with you…it was just appalling. It was not so much a lack of caring as a lack of understanding, or sensitivity to what it’s like to be the person being told ‘you have cancer’. People would say, ‘is there someone with you, are you alright?’ No, you’re not. You’ve just been told you’ve got a tumour. And how much worse do you think is it when you’re young and you’ve got a violently active one?

So anyway, I had the operation. It’s quite difficult to understand the experience of being close to dying if you don’t feel that unwell. So it was on my mind, but without the real terror and horror of it all. The drama of everyone’s concern, on the other hand, was quite interesting. Ja, it gave me a chance to be noble! Despicable. But human, I think. And then people’s interest faded, even though I had to keep going back for iodine – you know people’s attention span is very short – they’d just hear, ‘she’s fine’. So they’d think, ‘grand’.

And suddenly there was the realization that the radioactive iodine I was taking could give me leukaemia later on, or make me sterile, and it went on and on. All this stuff you hear about but you don’t actually understand. It’s quite good to talk about this sort of stuff; it’s
good to have a cry. But it ends up that you don’t want to talk to your boyfriend, to your friends, because it’s a huge load to lay on them, and people have their own shit. And parents just go completely into heart attack mode. They don’t show it, but you feel it. And I sometimes wonder, without being too egotistical about it, whether I’ve caused their health problems.

So you carry your emotions inside you, keep them there. You can’t, you can’t do it to them. I ended up, after a dreadful experience in the hospital where the doctors and nurses stood shouting and screaming, not being able to take it anymore. It was truly horrible. I had to go back to the hospital for these periodic radioactive iodine pills, and once I lost my letter and missed the date of my appointment. I came the next day instead. I was almost comatose because to prepare my body to take the radioactive iodine, I couldn’t take my thyroid pills – because now I have no thyroid – so I was almost in a comatose state. And they just screamed at me for missing my appointment. And made me wait another 2 weeks. So, two weeks later, still not on my thyroid pills, I was even worse, and now my eyes had all swollen up, and I thought it was just cruel. I just decided I wouldn’t go back after that. Wouldn’t take any more iodine. I’d just sort out my health myself with a macrobiotic diet.

Now, every little thing has to be considered, all the time. Is this toxic? And I’m not a very relaxed person, and sometimes it really stresses me out. And sometimes you just want to break out, have a drink, a cigarette. You want to be fun for your partner. Not be heavy for him. He’s wonderful. And he really understands.

I truly believe that the cancer is my lesson in life, that I have something to learn from it. Because I’ll probably die when I’m like, 85. It’s changed my priorities, made me realize what I want to do. I’m not so driven by ambition. It’s not all about money. Getting things. I still worry that I don’t have them, and that I’m useless and inferior and all these kinds of things, but I also realize what I have. I get worked up, but now I realize why, and watch
myself doing it, so I can change my thought process, laugh at myself. There’s more awareness. It’s about who you are, right now. I have learned that the most important thing is to love. And be loved. And to find your place.

Africa is still my home. But I also have to consider what you have to go through to be a white African. I don’t really like the new Africa. I love the old Africa, the kraals, the old ways. Without even going back, I know I’m African. I’m not guilty anymore about being white. I’m not prepared to be guilty anymore, to bear the responsibility for the sins of our colonial past.

Then, there’s Ireland. It’s kind of like a haven, like a green haven. But I think that the Irish are leaving behind a lot of the good things in their mad headlong rush to get as many material things as they can. They’re leaving behind their traditional sense of extended family and community. Before this rich, liberal era, I think there was a freshness and simplicity.

I feel I belong in a way, in that I’m part of my boyfriend’s family. I think going through a tragedy together (when Ed’s brother committed suicide) really brought us close. Just being there. It was an opportunity to show them how much I loved them, which was quite important for me. To be part of the whole family, especially for me, as an only child, has been a big thing.

The sense of community here is kind of like Zimbabwe, but less open. They don’t have the energy to open their doors to strangers, to newcomers. Their lives are full enough with the family and friends and neighbours they have already. So you end up being friends with other foreigners. Or Irish people who have travelled. Kinsale people are different though, because there are so many different nationalities here.

I’m proud that I’ve coped here, I’ve never had to go on the dole, I’ve always been in a happy situation, and now I’m teaching. So I feel I’m contributing to Ireland, and I’m a part of it. It’s important to be able to offer something.

(A year after this interview, Jane and Ed took the plunge, and got married.)

**

In 1966, a white minority regime under Ian Smith took power in Southern Rhodesia, just north of the South African border, unilaterally declaring independence from Britain and preventing the colony from being released into independence under a government representing the black majority. The settler regime named their new country Rhodesia. Britain and the rest of the world imposed sanctions immediately, and the country was only recognised by Apartheid-era South Africa. When the Rhodesian government banned all political activity by the black nationalist opposition parties, ZANU-PF and ZAPU, they decided to turn to guerilla war as their only alternative. The civil war ("Chimurenga") cost numerous lives. From 1976 Black nationalist forces operated not only from Zambia on the north border but also Mozambique to the east. More and more white farmers emigrated to South Africa, Britain or Australia.

In the late 1970s, the government finally agreed to negotiations, which eventually led to the country becoming independent as Zimbabwe. In 1980 ZANU won an election victory and Robert Mugabe became the new leader of the country.

The country was not to enjoy freedom for very long. Rivalries between the ZANU party (dominated by ethnic Shona from the North) and ZAPU (based mainly in Matabeleland in the South) escalated into a low scale guerilla war. The government responded brutally, torturing and murdering many ZAPU-supporters and suspects. ZAPU leader Joshua Nkomo went into exile in the UK. Later he returned to make a deal with Mugabe and ZAPU merged with ZANU. Peace returned, but the country effectively became a one party state.

Since then Mugabe has remained in power, in spite of evidence of election rigging and forcible removal from office of independent judges and imprisonment or deportation of journalists who publicly denounced him. Mugabe initiated compulsory land acquisition, forcing almost all commercial farmers, and hundreds of thousands of farm workers off their land, and giving most of the land to his cronies. As a result, there is a critical food shortage, and the economy has collapsed, with inflation at over 1000% and rising daily. More than a third of the population has emigrated, and there is 80% unemployment among those remaining. The AIDS epidemic has added to the crisis. As Zimbabwe’s rich mineral wealth has been depleted, and there is no oil, the UN and international community have not seen fit to intervene.

Source: BBC World History

Prologue

2009-04-15T12:39:00.000-07:00

I didn’t approach this book with a formal methodology. There was no prescribed selection process. I came upon people in the day-to-day course of my life, and asked them for their stories. Or one person would pass me onto another. I did have certain questions in mind, but mainly allowed the conversation to progress the way each individual allowed it to. It was more interesting to keep things open-ended, to be receptive to what they wanted to tell me. There is something hypnotic about the ebb and flow of a narrative, and I don’t believe in being too intrusive, especially when people are trusting you with their stories. So only where there was a pause, did I ask a question.

Some people I asked, of course said no. They didn’t want their private lives to be exposed to the public, something I respected. Others didn’t want the tape recorder on for certain parts of their story. Or I would meet them and spontaneously get to hear about them without the benefit of a Dictaphone, so I’d have to report it later in my own words. Then I’d meet them another time for the second part of their story. It’s quite difficult to get people to repeat a narrative, especially if it’s close to the bone. Some got emotional and asked for sections of their story to be deleted. There were also those whose English was so limited, they couldn’t relate their stories extensively. In those cases, I strung their monosyllabic answers together, to create more of a flow.

Foreigners living in Ireland include settlers, contract workers, professionals, undocumented workers, international students, asylum seekers and refugees (i.e. those who have received asylum status.) For the purpose of this book, I have only interviewed people who expect to be living here for some years at least, or who have settled here.