please don't stand in front of the dear leader.

He may look like your fun hipster grandpa, but trust me, you do NOT want to mess with this man.*

At this point in my life, the closest thing I've come to experiencing Communism was drinking vodka with Russians in Prague almost exactly two decades after the end of the Cold War. I won't say it was really heavily focused on the relative merits of democracy, either, so in terms of a cultural experience it was more theoretical than anything. That changed on Friday, when Mom and I headed north-- but not too far north, because that would involve getting shot on sight.

"Nothing normal happens here. EVER."

To set even a pinky toe on the border of North Korea, here is what we had to do: wake up at 5 am, take the subway for an hour to the USO office, take a bus for another hour and arrive at the edge of the DMZ (Demilitarized Zone), switch buses and go through a kind of "indoctrination" into the UN-- "No pointing, no waving, no gestures that North Korea could interpret as hostile, no bags, no photos unless we are in specific zones." We signed waivers that declared if we got shot or kidnapped, the military wasn't responsible for whatever we did wrong. Then we took another bus through the Joint Security Area and became aware that we were suddenly in the weirdest place we'd ever encountered, and it was only 9:30 am.

"We're watching you, you Western capitalist pigs." (please note the man with a camera, trying to be sneaky in the lower left window)

As our baby-faced military guide recounted 60 years of Korean history in ten minutes, I was pretty much losing my head with excitement because how many times have I sat in a foreign policy class trying to figure out how to save the world and never actually pictured the front lines of where all the negotiation happens? I almost peed from excitement and nerves. The DMZ is the most heavily militarized border in the entire world, and one of the most fascinating stretches of land I have ever set foot on, as it's a line that divides two completely disparate worlds that share a name. It's the difference between a swiftly growing Asian economy that's connected with the rest of the world and a socialist, totalitarian police state with one of the world's strictest (ie. craziest) dictators. You heard it here first, people: Kim Jong-il is CRA. ZY.


Left foot in democratic South Korea, right foot in nuts-as-all-getout North Korea




The stare-down that is border patrol.

Let me expound. In brief, North Korea is absolutely batshit, and the people there think they are the only country in the world that has it all figured out. They are 100% utterly convinced that Kim Il-ung is God and that they are living the dream. I could fill a book with all the bizarre things we heard about the personality cult that keeps North Koreans in line, and how juvenile it is (in a super-deluded and dangerous playground bully kind of way), and how hell-bent the regime is on keeping North Korea isolated from just about everything that exists. Here's a sampling:

1. The negotiation room that sits on the border, evenly split between North and South, has to be cleared out by two armed soldiers before tourists can enter. They used to only have one, until two years ago, when the soldier securing the back entrance was ambushed from the north side of the building by NK military, who broke through and tried to drag him across the border. Now ROK soldiers have to hold onto each others holsters or link arms when securing the area. To this I say, "what the hell?"


2. In an effort to avoid the land-mine-ridden DMZ but still sneakily invade South Korea, North Korea dug a bunch of tunnels, one of which was later uncovered with the help of a North Korean defector who had helped build it. North Korea then denied having built the tunnel, like a dumb kid standing in front of a broken lamp holding a baseball bat, despite the fact that the dynamite blasts were pointing south and water was draining north. Finally, they admitted having built it, but claimed it was an old coal mine (in an area that's almost entirely made of granite). So, in the most believable cover-up in the history of mining, North Korea PAINTED THE WALLS BLACK. "Nothing to see down here but some old coal! Run along!"

3. Checkpoint Charlie: Shane from Vice Magazine said something about this spot being one of the most dangerous places in the world, since you're standing surrounded on 3 sides by a totalitarian dictatorship, but I found it just pretty eerie. I mean, technically we aren't looking at Kabul or Mogadishu here, but the possibility of massive war is, I suppose, what made the Cold War so quietly powerful in the first place. Here's a shot of the sham town Kijong-dong, with the tallest flag pole in the world to show everyone how awesome and powerful North Korea is and designed to lure South Koreans across the border to join this utopia. But it's a lonely town-- these buildings are all empty; a facade created to give the illusion of bustling prosperity. And you can't see it in this photo, but there are wave blockers lining the southern border to prevent any outside information from entering the country. Our guide told us that "recently, Chinese airwaves have been infiltrating, and that's a really good thing for North Koreans." How do you know your country is in huge trouble? When getting media from CHINA is a step up.

North Korea has a bad thing going. Development is stunted and the standard of living is, relatively speaking, quite low. This photo is a snapshot of the Korean peninsula by night-- there's China on the left, and Seoul glowing like a firefly, and an eerie void in between. That's North Korea, a state that allows its denizens zero control over just about everything (including their own thought processing capabilities) and recently demanded 65 TRILLION DOLLARS from the US as reparations for damages incurred since the Korean War. This is why I never would have succeeded in my original plan to be a diplomat: how do you not laugh when Dr. Evil asks you for a million dollars in all seriousness? It's too much!

Kim Jong-il is a character begging to be made fun of, but when it comes down to it, this is a huge tragedy. This man holding razor wire kind of says it all-- his family was split down the middle and the two paths they took could not have been more disparate. The scariest part about North Korea is that their citizens have no clue how bad it really is-- they think they're experiencing utopia when it's actually more like hell on earth.


Here is the Vice Guide to North Korea-- pretty much the most fascinating 45 minutes you could spend today, I recommend you getting involved so we can experience the mind warp together.

*Amy mentioned that if I post this entry, my blog may get blocked from her computer since South Korea is pretty into censorship when it comes to issues of the North. Everyone is sooo sensitive around here about brutal dictatorships! However, the free press shall conquer yet again when we land in Bangkok on Thursday!

that's mine, that's yours

At 13,420 feet, Potosi is the highest city in the world and, although we didn’t spend more than an hour there, it’s one of the most fascinating places we’ve been to so far. If you get a chance to read a little on about it, it’s worth your time. With a bloody, unjust history and boasting what used to be the biggest (and arguably most important) city in the New World with 200,000 inhabitants, Potosi was run ragged by the Spanish colonizers, who capitalized on the health, labor and natural wealth of the city to take back boatloads of silver and leave behind a trail of black lungs and poor campesinos.

Today, the average miner doesn’t live past 40. As we drove by one of the city’s biggest mines, I couldn’t decide whether to smirk or cry at the name: “Mina Cristo Redentor.” Christ the Redeemer Mine. Thanks, Spaniards! Drop off your strict Catholicism, get rich off the slave labor of your converts, and peace out once everyone who can afford it has bought titles of nobility. Awesome foreign policy; love what you’ve done with the place.

If you want to spend a few dollars, you can see the mines yourself. For a few bolivianos and gifts of coca for the miners, you too can crawl into someone’s hellish workplace to see what it’s like. There is a thriving tourist business (granted, “thriving” is relative. It’s not a beach or a resort town by any stretch of the imagination) in Potosi that allows you to don a hard hat and climb a rickety ladder into the earth.

Personally, the whole concept of mine tourism makes me feel queasy. I don’t think observing a place that is both employment and a death trap is something to be added to the list of “Must-Do in Bolivia,” and I was more than happy to skip straight through the town. Being fully aware that tourism provides jobs and also that exploitation happens in far more industries than just mining, I still feel totally uncomfortable with the idea that people come to Potosi and are “excited” to “do” the mines. Just because we can, doesn’t mean we should. I’m all for travel that is outside the norm, challenging, and that expands our awareness of the wide stratum of life stories being played out in the world, but this just seems like an eerie, voyeuristic extension of the original Spanish attitude.

Based on conversations with fellow travelers, my opinion is the minority. What do you think? Am I totally off-base with this one?

Travel Short- Sarajevo Taxi

"We are so thankful for you," our acid-washed denim-clad driver, who could not have been more than 18 or 19, gushed to us. At that time, our three faces, dusty from the bus ride from Dubrovnik, represented the US State Department circa 1995. "Bill Clinton, yes! But..."

He trailed off, lost in thought and deeply concerned for his poor country. He wanted to defend it, to share the righteous indignance at what little Bosnia had seen, wanted to express the injustice of the war to this carful of women who had not ever seen or touched real injustice. It's not our fault that we don't know what war really means, who, for all our well-meaning curiosity, could not and most likely would not know what it was like for those four years in the city as it was bombed, what it was like to lose family members and friends, smell the sulfur as a thousand years of literature burned to the ground.

"But why not more?" his flat palms tapped the steering wheel with the restrained frustration of someone trying valiantly to maintain politeness in front of new friends. "Why not sooner? Where were you when the Serbs were-- how do you say it-- firebombing us? and our history?"

A raised pair of shoulders looks remarkably like a passive shrug, but we didn't know what else to say. It was the raised shoulder of solidarity, of wishing that decisions made deep within the state department were not determined by the skin color of the people at hand, or the trade options to consider, but the fact that little kids were dying on the sidewalk somewhere and we had the money to make them stop it. We didn't feel equipped to articulate our thoughts on this to our young driver, who was probably dodging mortar shells while I was searching for conch shells on a Hawaiian beach.

I think one of the most interesting and important aspects of arriving somewhere is to find out where your reality intersects with others, and to keep building on those little points of light until you find some semblance of the truth. But sometimes it's also important just to be quiet.

-July 2007

Travel Short- WC Priču

I was locked in a bathroom in Sarajevo, and my travel buddies (one of whom had given birth to me) seemed to have completely forgotten about my existence. Thanks, Mom!

I knew what was happening outside of my tile prison. Mom was lying down on the bed in our cabin-style hostel room, flipping through the thin copy of Oscar Wilde children's stories I had just finished. Lauren was outside, dealing with round two of the drunk Finn who had spotted us on the porch earlier. He watched us conduct an unproductive conversation with the sweet desk manager who spoke no English, and, buoyed by cheap beer and unwarranted confidence, he wandered his way into the hostel foyer, ready to grab our asses and fight with anyone who wanted to stop him. Earlier, we had played along lightheartedly with his inebriated attempts at flirtation. Now, worn out by exhaustion at finding decent accomodation, his middle-aged slurriness was not quite as cute.

This is when Emir entered our lives. Oh dear God. Emir. This is what he did: he woke up that morning, he put on a tight t-shirt, he re-Biced his head till it shone, he lit a cigarette and showed up in my life and dammit Emir, why must you be a chain-smoking, espresso-guzzling seductive Muslim from the former Yugoslavia while I am stuck, STUCK I tell you! in this lame life as a white girl from American suburbia? Why can't I have an addictive personality, leather pants, at least one dark secret that gives my eyes a hooded quality? Why can't I have stories of my days as a traveling busker, when I lived off of the kindness of strangers? Emir had the relaxed cool of someone who knew that, scars and all, they were the absolute shit and didn't care if you didn't agree. He also had flawed English, a confident chuckle and the ability to make me shy just by looking in my general direction.

I loved him.

Emir came blazing into the hostel and argued furiously with our Finnish suitor and quite literally tossed him out by his collar. Oh, the testosterone, how can a maid in waiting not swoon? Dusting himself off, he shuffled some papers behind the counter and explained that "he needs to stop drinking, it's not attractive. And he also needs to get the fuck out of here." I felt childish that moments before I had been amused at the old guy's antics. A more worldly woman would not have taken the time to laugh.

Earlier that day, a rickety bus took us up the side of the hill where we had heard a wonderful view of the city awaited us. An old woman, holding her groceries fresh from the market, wriggled her way around in her seat and gazed at us, telling us a story in Bosnian while smiling serenely. She paused. "Zlatkas," she grinned, gesturing to her face in the way Santa Claus did for the deaf girl in Miracle on 34th Street. "Golden Girls? Golden Child?" Our limited vocabulary clued us in to "zlat," but the rest of her meaning was lost. We got off the bus together, the old vehicle kicking up dust as it made a three point turn to head back down the hill. Last stop! And beautiful it was, yes. But also surreal to stand on an isthmus between two valleys and imagine the Serbs standing, crouching, lying in the grass around us and using their massive guns to entrap the Sarajevans. We stood alone, sharing the view with an abandoned crane ("Volim te, Tito!" declared in bold, spray painted contrast to the fading yellow of an unused machine), the city's beauty holding a bitterness that we wanted to touch gingerly.

"The tunnel? No, no. I don't want to go near the tunnel. I have seen the tunnel. I have seen plenty of the tunnel, and I never want to see it again in my life."

Emir had spoken. At this point, his word was pretty much law. We had asked him about the locations one expects to see in Sarajevo-- Olympic stadiums, the Holiday Inn (Lauren's suggestion-- the exact location in which so many journalists had been confined during the war held a strange attraction, although by the time we got there, it was hardly worth the trip, since no one was willing to acknowledge that anything of the sort had ever occurred), Baščaršija. They were all met with an aloof disdain, but at the mention of the escape tunnel, we were firmly shut down. I again felt sheepish.

They say that the escape tunnel, which was the only entrance to or exit from the city for the thousand days of Serb attack, was used by every person living in the city at one point or another. Despite the fact that, much like Anne Frank's house in Amsterdam, it is a major draw for tourists in Bosnia, Emir saw it as dragging out the past, not to mention a little disrespectful to treat what once was a lifeline as entertainment for an afternoon. Isn't it too soon to go near a place that holds such bone-deep pain for so many?

Maybe. But if no one sees the tunnels and the houses and the mortar shells that represent what man can do to each other, then it will keep happening.

I had a lot of time to think about this before Emir rescued me from the bathroom with a laugh. Yes, I think I'm in love.

(July 2007)

Absolve: v.

sorry for the picture of four old white men as an opener, but i suppose you could call them fairly important...

Northern Ireland and the American South alike saw the 1960s inflamed with an influx of civil rights movements and now, forty years later, both places are still mincing forward in attempts to solidify their own tentative peace. After reading John Perkins’ Let Justice Roll Down, the parallels stood out to me all the more. Perkins is a civil rights superstar and has fought for equality nearly his entire life. This man has a story of forgiveness that is absolutely unreal. Having been beaten nearly to death by racist cops after a lifetime of being tyrannized in mid-century Mississippi, after having witnessed white police kill his brother, after years of being beaten down, physically, economically and socially, Perkins relates how every fiber of his being pulled to reject the entire white community. But at the same time, “I began to see with horror how hate could destroy me—destroy me more devastatingly and suddenly than any destruction I could bring on those who had wronged me… And where would hating get me? Anyone can hate… An image formed in my mind. The image of the cross—Christ on the cross… He was nailed to rough wooden planks and killed… But when He looked at that mob that had lynched Him, He didn’t hate them. He loved them. He forgave them… His enemies hated. But Jesus forgave. I couldn’t get away from that.”

And so John Perkins also felt love and forgiveness for his abusers, for the entire racist and bigoted system that had attempted to hold him down for his entire life.

Things like that make me believe in God.

I ran into Chrissy (the same Chris I mentioned in August) downtown last week and felt the normal swell in my heart when I saw his little smile. Still job-hopping, still in love with the girl he’s dated for a few months (even her baby has started calling him Daddy, a sure sign of true love in Belfast), and still hopelessly stuck in the trap of severe loyalist mentality. Inevitably, the power-sharing topic came up (naturally a popular theme these days: http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/05/08/europe/EU-GEN-Northern-Ireland.php, if you’re interested). I didn’t even need to listen to know what Chris was going to say; in sum: Paisley is a sellout. Adams is still a f***. Prods are gonna have to run at this rate, and we are all gonna need to head to England before *they* take over. Chrissy, having been raised on a steady diet of “anti-Fenian” rhetoric and nervously protective philosophies, really is convinced that Protestants have to stand their ground against Catholic upswings. Power sharing cannot be seen as a step toward workable peace; instead, it is a sure bet that one side or the other is gaining ground (just which side is actually gaining depends on whom you’re speaking with, though). It makes me sad, because I really love this boy. I really want him to become better than his UDA upbringing would have him be. I wish he could see that despite singing the same national anthem and adoring the same Queen, culture-wise Northern Ireland is no more British than Ireland. Northern Irish, both Protestants and Catholics, have carved out a little sub-culture that would not easily assimilate into either Ireland or England.

I also really want Chris to learn how to forgive “the others” for sins that have never been committed against him personally. Perkins talks a lot about how creating victims also perpetuates a group’s own victimhood—essentially, damaging both groups. “After I was beaten by white policemen, I began to see things a little more clearly. I was able to see the needs of white people and what racism was doing to them. You see, I had gotten set to the fact that that the sickness of racism had affected the black community in a way that kept them from functioning as a healthy community. A lot of our people were sick—affected by generations of slavery, oppression, and exploitation—psychologically destroyed. But I had never thought much before about how all that had affected whites—how they had been affected by racism, by attitudes of racial superiority, by unjust lifestyles and behavior.”

Like it or not, Catholics and Protestants are equally at home here in Ulster. And just like for blacks and whites in the American South, they have merely coexisted for far too long. But finding a way to begin absolution is a tenuous process.

“Love fills in the gaps of justice.”
-Shane Claiborne

Ssshh!

With the political situation in Northern Ireland being what it is, I seem to have been listening to a lot of people spout off lately with their thoughts on politics. This invariably leads to the big question of history: can we get past the history that colors so much of Northern Irish culture and spills into so many corners of life and society? I love this topic; and it's a huge part of what brought me back here in the first place. I didn't feel like I was done with Belfast in 2004 because I'd only scratched the surface of the complexities this place holds. So I came back to ask questions and listen to the answers, to study the polarities between the ends of Belfast, to watch historic politics unfolding in person. I love hearing people's thoughts on Belfast, and I love daydreaming with them about how to help pull it out of the history that drags it down.

But, in the words of Peter Griffin, it really grinds my gears when people who have no clue about what life outside middle-class Belfast is actually like seem to think that they're experts in the social situation all over the country.

For the people who claim to have a lockdown on the Belfast social situation and have never ventured into so much as Sandy Row, for those who think the Troubles are long dead and that society has achieved a peaceful equilibrium, and for those who prefer to talk a lot rather than listen: Belfast's Troubles are technically over, but their legacy refuses to die. Paramilitaries are still around, riots are still cropping up, gun violence hasn't ended, teenage pregnancies are still the highest in Europe, broken families are still the norm, and the suicide rates are still enough to make any jaw drop. Catholics and Protestants are still on edge in each other's neighborhoods, and many wouldn't be caught dead in "their" territory. Peace walls are still the fragile buffers that seem to be multiplying overnight. In many parts, the economy is still struggling back onto its feet. Of course it's not as bad as it was ten, twenty or thirty years ago. But the impact is still real.

I'm not trying to make these communities sound like cultural wastelands, because they aren't. But I also don't believe in sugar-coating them just because others don't see what actually goes on here. I don't claim to be extremely well-versed on Belfast, but eight months of living on the edge of the northwest end of the city, in one of the most divided and deprived areas of the entire country, has opened my eyes and put a passion into my heart for an area that has largely been forgotten. Many people's view isn't holistic, and it really bothers me. Ignorant chatter is irritating coming from Northern Irish people, and even more irritating coming from people who have lived here for less than a year and don't have a clue about what the situation actually looks like. It's like if I were to go on a rampage about how racism is dead on the US west coast. Just because I haven't ever seen it myself doesn't mean it isn't a reality for so many people. I have really learned to not say much when I don't know much about something, because I'd rather not speak until I think my words are more worthwhile than blabber.

We all want to be heard, and we all want to be the expert, but there are a lot of people who I just want to say, "SHUT UP, and just look around you for a minute before you keep talking!"

What It Is!

Sometimes all it really takes to feel like a normal person again is a really long laugh with someone you love... and since I am so lucky to have had Schlosser visit over the weekend, I am reminded of who I am and what it's about. I was a bit nervous to have her come to my little corner of Northern Ireland after she had spent so much time seeing all the glamorous places in Europe, partying in Italy and drinking beer in Munich. To come to a place like this was going to be a shock to her system, and I didn’t really know how to explain everything, let alone justify it. But Aimee showed up, nearly a month into her European adventure, with a totally expanded worldview and willingness to become a part of wherever she was. She really impressed me, actually. I am reminded of how much I love her heart.
Schlossmo showed up late from Dublin and we headed straight to the Crown Saloon, her huge backpack in tow, and had Stella in hand within ten minutes of her arrival. When in Rome, we say. Before I had even gotten back from the bar, which took a bit longer because I had to bitch to the bartender about how they didn't pour Harp (this is BELFAST... what do you mean, NO HARP?), Aim had discovered the two guys in the bar who were under the age of thirty. So Madrileno Faro and Salzburgite (not a word) Thomas became our partners in crime for the night, which was an interesting choice to say the least. On the plus side, I got to speak Spanish, we got free passes to a "trendy" club, and despite lacking a bit in the English department Thomas completely got us and actually thought we were funny so of course we loved him. On the down side, there was some really ugly dancing at said club and Aim and I were unsuccessful at explaining the meaning of "that girl," which apparently doesn't translate (side note: after a long discussion on the meaning, Aim and I decided to be walking examples and in fact became "those girls").

Throughout our lovefest of a weekend, I spent a lot of my time translating for her, especially at YF when she was surrounded with “the craziest bunch of teenagers” she had ever met in her life. I had to laugh when they informed me I must be losing my American edge because her accent was so strong. She did really well though, for being thrown to the wolves, and they loved her. But I can’t wait to see their faces next week when we tell them she’s Catholic… for being so world-wise, they really are sheltered in so many ways. Alison mentioned to Aim that they all think I’m crazy because I walk to work through Ardoyne, because I get coffee at the Toasted Soda, and now to have Catholic friends who they actually LIKE… it’s going to blow their minds! It’d be funnier if it weren’t so sad!
On Sunday, as Aimee and I tooled around Belfast looking at murals on both sides of the peace line, I think it all became real when we spotted a massive Home Depot-type building that was completely collapsed and charred from a firebomb a couple weeks ago. Apparently it’s the work of the Real IRA, a radical offshoot of the Provos (Provisional IRA, which from what I can tell is getting increasingly united with Sinn Féin, its political wing, and naturally has become much less violent in the process). So members of the RIRA don’t agree with the talks that are going on in Stormont right now to create some kind of workable power-sharing Northern Irish government, because they don’t think the Sinn Féin (via Gerry Adams) should be trying to cooperate with Protestant leaders. So instead of peaceful demonstrations against the negotiations, they’d prefer to firebomb buildings. Not surprisingly, the US has the RIRA categorized as a Foreign Terrorist Organization. Since the Good Friday Agreement, they have supposedly agreed to ceasefire, but still are pretty into planting car bombs, bombing rail stations in England, etc., including a couple places in Belfast in the last few weeks. Kathryn, who was driving, told us that that particular shop most likely had 50 or more Catholics working there, ie. the RIRA just put dozens of their own “people” out of work in the name of revolution, in an attempt to spur Catholics toward a more hard-line stance against what they consider political acquiescence. The logic is so absent it’s astounding.
Seeing Belfast through Aimee’s eyes revived my fascination with the history, the personality, and the people of the north and west ends of the city, and I remember why I wanted to be here in the first place. Everywhere you go you are walking on ground steeped in historical conflict and potential turbulence. There’s an edge to it, and it’s unreal sometimes. It was amazing to have someone to remind me of what a dork I am and laugh at nothing for way too long! I waved goodbye as her bus pulled away, we both tried not to cry, and I realized that it’s much easier to be the one leaving than to be the one left…

Showing my teeth in Ardoyne

So the past week has flown; Graham came to visit in between London and Budapest, and Eli Grindstaff got here too. So Malia and I wanted to take them up Cavehill to show them the coolest view of Belfast, but of course neither of us has a very keen sense of direction. What was meant to be a fun afternoon walk turned into a survival-of-the-fittest escape drama, during which we got caught in what we affectionately referred to as a "squall" (the boys got acquainted with Northern Ireland's special sideways rain), completely lost the trail, and slid on our asses most of the way down. Oh, and Eli and I ran into some kind of vicious plant that felt strangely similar to poison ivy. They never saw the summit, unfortunately, but we're alive.
There's a group of hilarious people at Crumlin Road who are all in their 20s and 30s, and I don't know what I'd do without them, because they let me tag along to the bars and they feed me really well. Alison, who's a social worker and is about 13 at heart, made me dinner last week and we spent the whole night laughing and solving all the world's problems. She's a realist, but she's an awesome encourager as well, and as I told her how strange it was for me to come into a program that is essentially whatever I want it to be, she said, "Laura, you are absolutely the best person for the job. The kids were drawn to you from Day 1, you made friends with the teenagers really quickly, and you have enough initiative to make this job a success on both ends. Just you being excited about this place makes other people sit up and think, why is she excited? Why shouldn't I be excited too?" I felt a little better after that :)
Since we still haven't wrangled bikes, walking has been our main mode of transport (good thing, too, because somehow I've become the girl who doesn't stop eating), and Malia and I made the trek from the Drennans' to Woodvale for the kids' camp every day last week. It's about a 45 minute walk, and we didn't think anything of it until Alison mentioned that we should watch our backs walking through Ardoyne. At that point I didn't even know what Ardoyne was, but we quickly learned that to get from one Protestant area to another (Ballysillan to Woodvale), we'd had to walk through a Catholic area (Ardoyne), and one in which Alison claimed we would never see Protestants walking or doing business. I don't think I've mentioned how little business actually goes on in my little corner of northwest Belfast- whereas the Shankill is full of life and people and businesses, Crumlin and Ballysillan are dead zones- a byproduct of poor city planning as well as cultural and economic depression. Malia and I have been dreaming of finding a coffee shop with WiFi in our area and came across "The Toasted Soda" on our way to Woodvale. I asked Alison if she'd ever been in there, and she laughed and said, "No! And I never will, it's a Catholic business, just like all the others on that row." I was actually stunned into silence. "And you'll never see a Protestant so much as walk through that area either... too dangerous."
Of course, being the nerd that I am, that night I got on Wikipedia and looked up the Shankill, the Falls, Ardoyne, Ballysillan and Woodvale, just to compare. All of them were flashpoints during the Troubles, and my innocent jaunts through Ardoyne were actually, unbeknownst to me, mini historical tours of the Protestant "no-go zone." Peter even pointed out the police camera that still patrols the main roundabout in case of trouble. But the consensus is that we will be fine no matter where we go, since we're Americans. And whenever we ask how they can tell before we talk, most people say, "You have perfect teeth." I say, thanks, my parents paid a ton for them! And figure if I try to show them, no one will think twice about us wandering naively in random locales.
So just a little background to Woodvale: it's the reason Malia and I were so passionate about coming back here. At the top of the Shankill and filled with kids who are more than willing to love you and let you love them, the short time we spent there on Dep made us laugh louder and cry harder than anywhere else. We were so broken for the community during our short stay that we knew we needed more time, so that's why we were more than happy to help out with the club last week. We were so happy to be spending time with Kaitlyn, Andrew, and a few of the other kids we had bonded with, but I still hadn't seen Chris, though I didn't really expect to. Chris was a 16 year old goth kid we made friends with two years ago. His dad is in the UDA, he was always hanging out in the park when we were there, always critical of everything we did, and for some reason I just really wanted to get to know him. This was the kid who idolized Marilyn Manson but thought the church was one of the scariest things he could think of. I think half of the stuff he said was meant to get a rise out of us, but by the end of the week he was getting into the football tournament we were running at the park and even came into the church on the last night ("You guys really don't act like any of the Christians I know..."). When we look back on the people who really defined our experience, Chris is one of the names that always comes up. On Wednesday, as we walked past the teenager room, Malia grabbed my arm and whispered, "Laura, CHRIS is in there!" Needless to say I was thrilled to see him! He's lost the piercings, gained a few tattoos, and wants to be an actor. We spent most of the day on Thursday hanging out with him and talking more about his life, and it was by far the most interesting conversation I've had since I got here. Even though Chris doesn't want anything to do with the paramilitaries and is actually blacklisted from the UDA and UVF, it is so evident that he was raised with a separatist mentality that strongly borders on hate. He reaffirmed the idea that he would never be able to walk from his house to my house because the Catholics in between "would leave him for dead." When we asked if he would ever support a more integrated Northwest Belfast, he just laughed, "And let 'them' come into our neighborhoods and take our jobs? As long as people like me are around, that will never happen." I couldn't help but wonder what it was he was so protective of... to me, an outsider, not only did everyone look the same ("Oh, but you can tell a Catholic by his jersey/haircut/accent"), but the streets were just as sad in both areas. But the line has been drawn.
Which brings me to what else has taken up a lot of my thoughts this past week: The Peace Wall. It separates the Catholic Falls Road from the Protestant Shankill, and it's much easier to think about abstractly. I kind of wish I were living on the Falls side: the accent is prettier, and the street signs are in Gaelic as well as English. Yet history makes it so these are two apparently irreconcilable worlds, separated by a wall that does little more than remind people that "they" are on that side and "we" are on this side, and that it should stay that way. I asked Peter if we could pull a Reagan/Berlin Wall-style coup and just start tearing it down. He said that he thinks it mostly does more harm than good, but that when things get touchy and people start throwing petrol bombs over it, he's not so sure. So the wall remains.
Just when I think I am starting to get comfortable with living in a place that has so much turmoil ingrained in its personality, I'll think twice about something small and it will strike me as unusually bizarre. This happened in my trip through Ardoyne situation and again when we drove past the Mater Hospital. Jack jokingly mentioned that if we're going to get shot, we're in the right place, because Belfast hospitals are the best in the world at treating gunshot wounds. It's quite the paradox for me to think that we are living in what used to be one of the touchiest war zones in the world and now claims to be the safest city in Europe.

Thunderbolts and the Belfast Blitz

“If the world were merely seductive, that would be easy. If it were merely challenging, that would be no problem. But I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.” -E.B. White

That summarizes my first week in Belfast perfectly. We’ve gone out a couple times, danced a ton (to the point of sustaining my first war wound- a swollen knee- after dancing into a stage), and really enjoyed downtown nightlife, but also seen what a challenge my life will be this year. I wish there were an easy way to find that balance of improving things and enjoying them.
As far as the quick rundown goes, I started work the morning after I landed and have been surrounded by dozens of six year olds since then, doing the Crumlin Road day camp (interesting fact: Crumlin Road was bombed by Hitler in the Belfast Blitz of 1941 and the church was rebuilt after having stood there for about 100 years) and this week we're popping over to Woodvale to see our favorites from Deputation. We are living at the Drennans because the house that Peter and I are moving in to has no fridge and no standards of cleanliness…but we’ve gone in with bleach and boiling water, so don’t worry… you guys should still come visit! There’s a guest room! Malia has been having a field day taking video of the place and there will be some serious before and after shots that I’ll post when I’m all done “girlying the place up.”
Last night Malia and I made dinner for the Drennans and sat out in the twilight drinking wine and talking before they got home. I’ve spent a lot of time meeting tons of people in the past week, and each of them has a perspective on the community and the church, the demographics and the teenagers I’ll be working with. Honestly I felt like I had hit an early dead-end, because I kept getting questioned at every turn. At the bars, guys ask, “WHY would you be living in Ballysillan?” And even the Crumlin Road people are warning me, “Wait till mid-year, we’ll see how positive your outlook is by then.” I knew what I had gotten myself into before I stepped onto the plane, but it’s made me seriously question myself.
Just to give an idea of the neighborhood and community I am living in, I thought I’d include an excerpt from some of the reports Jack gave me, because they bring me to my knees in how heartbroken I am for this area and how monumental the task of bringing light to this area truly is:
“Over the years the area has become synonymous with deprivation and hopelessness… 92% of births are to unmarried mothers, 64% of people are economically inactive, only 2% have a degree.” Community complaints include the fact that the Housing Executive (basically the branch that runs placement and construction of the projects, like my neighborhood) dumps “undesirable/problem families” consistently into this area, it is ignored by politicians, drugs run rampant and are propagated by the paramilitaries even more in this economically depressed area, which also perpetuates crime. The youth have no incentive to do well in school because there are no jobs to be had, so it is much easier for the girls to get pregnant at 16 and live off of the state for the rest of their lives rather than struggle to make their own living. With nearly ¾ of the community living on the dole, boredom appears to rule and any sense of purpose or meaning is completely missing here. Even tonight, as we drove home at around ten, people were wandering the streets aimlessly, we passed a sign on fire, kids on their bikes. All looking for something to do, something to be a part of, something that is painfully lacking.
I don’t want to be trite, and I don’t want to be presumptuous. I wonder what makes me think I can prance into a community that is one of the most depressed, psychologically and economically, in Northern Ireland with the supposed purpose of bringing hope here. It is easy for me to talk about hope: when I go home, I have options. I probably have more education ahead of me, jobs that capture my interest, nice housing. A lot of these kids can’t see past their few blocks. Who am I to tell them, guys, you can do better than this! What do I know about growing up in a place where college is never mentioned, where boredom rules, where paramilitaries run the show because they are the only groups that give people a sense of worth, a sense of purpose, and activities to occupy their time? But then I thought back to high school, when I got to spend time with families in Mexico who were overflowing with love and generosity despite abject poverty, and how I was struck by the humble and heavy reliance on family connections and their faith, which allowed them to see past their current situation and focus on the long-term. I still think that economic viability is strongly connected with identity, but I am learning to separate the two, and my memories of Ensenada have really helped me with that.
Yesterday also got me thinking about my own motives. It is one thing to live in the rough area for a one year stint. Malia and I thought, if Christ were wandering around Northern Ireland today, he’d be living in Ballysillan and hanging out with the people no one else wanted to be with. But how brave would we be to humble ourselves at home, in our own element? Would Christ be living at Greenlake, or would he put himself on Aurora or the South Side? I would never dream of voluntarily moving to one of those places, but somehow when it’s not your real life, it’s easier.
I am reading Orthodoxy by GK Chesterton, and he mentions Joan of Arc, saying “She chose a path, and went down it like a thunderbolt… She was a perfectly practical person who did something, while they are wild spectators who do nothing… She and her faith had perhaps some secret of moral unity and utility that has been lost.” Sometimes I think I’m further behind on that idea than anyone. I have a long way to go with learning discipline, learning about a more pure love, and uncovering a lot of my own pride.