This past
weekend we were swept off to visit Belfast city in Northern Ireland, the
epicenter of the Troubles that lasted for nearly 30 years. Our journey began
early in the morning with the gang trekking out the door by 6:45 a.m.,
double-checking that we had our passports, to meet the bus near Trinity
College. The morning light was still not distinguishable from that of the
yellow street lamps along St. Stephen’s Green, and we resorted to grabbing
coffee at the McDonald’s on Grafton Street.
I must say
that the events of our Saturday in West Belfast, nicknamed “The Killing
Fields”, left me emotionally rattled. The weight and proximity of the stories
we were told on that day are on a level that I have never before encountered. I
have not found adequate words to describe how I felt yet, and must resort to a
few bare perceptions:
-A
storefront, destroyed on the day I was born by a bomb that left 9 innocent
people dead, had what seemed to be only a small cross and the memories of
locals to remember the loss.
-The term
“Belfast confetti” refers to the objects often launched or thrown during a
fight, and could be nuts, bolts, pieces of brick, or even car keys.
-The
Bombay Street and Cupar Way “peace wall”,
dividing the community and towering at over 40 feet tall, was like opposite
sides of a coin- one side glistened with colorful graffiti; the other somberly
mourned the casualties of Belfast’s guerrilla warfare.
 |
One side of the Bombay Street/Cupar Way
wall…
|
 |
| …and the other. |
-We had a
late lunch in The Felon’s Club and were later informed by Séanna Breathnach, a highly
ranked former volunteer for the IRA, that full membership into the club
entailed serving prison time for offenses connected with the IRA’s cause. Séanna
himself spent 21 years in jail.
The fire that burned in West Belfast and Northern
Ireland during the Troubles may have been put out, but I sensed that there
still may have been a few hot coals under the ashes.
 |
| Ambiguous words decorating the Belfast peace wall. |
The second
day of our excursion was, thankfully, a more lighthearted one. The Giant’s
Causeway is a grand example of nature’s strange expressions of overwhelming
beauty. The culprit that formed these hexagonal slabs of rock was (sadly) not a
legendary giant named Finn MacCool simply paving a walkway to Scotland, but
centuries of slowly cooling volcanic overflow. The surrounding landscape inland
that we saw on the drive back to Dublin was some of the most picturesque I have
ever seen. After viewing the political divisions in Belfast and Northern
Ireland, the continuous path through rolling hills and sheep-filled pastures
was reassuring.
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| Looking north out to sea off the jagged tip of the Giant’s Causeway. |
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Colleen Boardman is a Junior in the Fulbright Honors College
at the University of Arkansas, working her way towards dual majors in English
and Chemistry. She is spending the Spring 2015 semester at Trinity College
Dublin in Ireland. In addition to her college classes and researching her
honors thesis topic, she is also exploring the culture of her new home by
taking Irish language and dance lessons.
