Division for the First Time

Yesterday was the first day that I was really forced to experience turmoil between factions in Europe. Dublin itself has wonderful architecture and plenty of people of different background just walking en masse in the city center and Temple Bar. It’s a really warm place to be, with no cars around and streets full of kind buskers and block upon block of old style pubs and taverns. It’s the Dublin I thought it would be.

This, however, is a big difference from Northern Ireland. Though it’s been quite sometime since the true hey day of the IRA, the marks have been left and there’s still uneasiness among the relative calm. Driving through the countryside, you would not know the difference; Ireland is the same rolling green throughout the isle. However, the first time you really know you’ve entered the UK dependency is with the road signs. Any trace of Gaelic has been erased from the boards describing road services and towns. This attempts to function as a sort of dominance over the Irish, or it did for the longest time during the “Troubles”.

The citizens here aren’t different from those of the South of the island, which is probably what made this place such a hotbed for so called terrorist activity. Our tour guides into the North spoke with a similar Irish accent and knew Gaelic as well. Genuinely kind people they were, like the Irish of Dublin. So why all of the hate and turmoil? This is one of the key places of evidence today for religion going beyond its proper realm and fully interfering with politics. Derry/Londonderry is the perfect display of the division. The Bogside is an area of this city where Bloody Sunday occurred and the population is primarily made up of Roman Catholics. There is a small block of land clad in blue, red and white where Protestants reside, sort of a resistance against the goings on surrounding the area. The murals of the Bogside are quite blunt and potently symbolic of the anger the public feels about the untied knot of the events of deaths of innocents. Though it looks like no one is fighting and people are harmonious, the appearance does not echo the same sentiment.

The same sort of idea could be seen in the mythical story of Giant’s Causeway. At first glance, this is just a magical feat of nature, the fury of volcanic activity at it’s most graceful state. However, when we examine the mythology, we see a feud between emotional giants, Ireland and Scotland. The story is that this causeway was build between the two isles to gain the love of a woman and to settle a dispute over her. In the end, the Irish giant prevails over the Scottish (for this sake, British) giant because the will of Finn McCool shakes the core of the Scottish giant. We thus see the heart of Ireland versus the physical strength but coldness of the British; a battle that can be seen throughout the past century.

Despite all of this turmoil, I had a cameo entrance of football make me feel at ease. In the middle of the Bogside, at the heart of unrest, were a group of children in their front yard frolicking with a soccer ball. Sport in general has turned conflict into civil competition, much like war was in the older days, where agreements were made about the fights. It forces people to exercise caution and sensibleness while fulfilling the anger within the most deepset conflicts. And, what I learned yesterday was that, inherently, it wipes the salt from the wound, though very slowly and with very little magnitude. Whatever helps is worth it, though.