Belfast

Very randomly my road trip campaign just quoted this verse, from the Yeats poem Easter.
"I write it out in a verse -
MacDonagh and MacBride
And Connolly and Pearse
Now and in time to be,
Wherever green is worn,
Are changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born."
This was almost the last thing I was expecting to hear from him, especially after we had spent the previous hour singing along to my Johnny Cash compilation.

We were driving back from a very eventful weekend up in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Both of us competed in the all Ireland powerlifting nationals, having driven up after work on Friday evening.

While planning the trip and speaking to friends in Cork, I was amazed by the kinds of warnings I got about going up to the North. The people you would imagine to be the "toughest" guys I know, all said they wouldn't go up and that I must be careful.

Excuse me for being niave but I survived a childhood in South Africa, can remember having metal detectors at the supermarkets, civilians with non concealed weapons and riot shutters being closed in M&S while a riot went past the shop. Ireland and most places in the world hence feel very safe to me, specially as in theory no one in Ireland should even be able to own a firearm.

After a very uneventful drive up, in a very uneventful but amazingly fuel economical hire car we got to our B&B in Lisburn road. Our host seemed very welcoming to me with my thick loud South African accent in comparison to my Cork buddy, who seemed to me a little paranoid about the situation.

The cageyness between them carried on until the next morning when the host dropped into conversation something about hurling (an Irish sport), after which our host seemed to have confirmed we were Irish enough to enjoy hurling, his guard dropped and he told us his life story.

On Sunday after our breakfast we arranged to go on a black cab tour from the pamphlets we picked up at the guest house. The black cab wasn't really a black cab it was a 7 seater people carrier and the black cab driver was more amateur historian. He spent the first 5 minutes of the tour telling us how unbiased it was going to be and how it was going to show both sides of the troubles. Then the next 55 minutes telling us how ignorant and divided the loyalists are and how victimised the Catholics have been. With many Michael Collins facts and a few murals thrown into the mix.

From the passion he spoke with you could tell the troubles are not yet over, it is just a ceasefire because people are feed up of all the killing.

Looking in from outside perspective the whole situation to me seems to infuriatingly petty. The "peace lines" that are made out to be Berlin wallesque, just made no sense to me. Why did they build them, they separate the houses, but you can just walk 5 minutes to go around the wall, or walk through the gate?

A few of the walls, which in fact are really just fences have been raised a few metres. Still low enough for anyone to lob a half brick over, in fact it almost invites people to show how worthless the fence is by throwing a brick over. When we had troubles in South Africa we built proper anti-grenade fences with turrets, at least you can see how they did something rather than just some petty symbolic divide, that encourages division.

After our 1 hour of intense propaganda from our tour guide, whose solution to the troubles included to ban marches, take down the wall and all murals. I was very disillusioned and sad that such a small little town could be so divided.

I hope that this level of intolerance and hostility is only limited to the boroughs of Belfast. Certainly I don't feel it down South in Cork, where must people seem to be fed up with the deaths and have realised the world is bigger than a petty argument about minor differences in faith (if that is even what they are fighting about).

During the tour my world suddenly became very small and I was thrown back to thinking about all the interactions I had over the weekend. Our hosts comments on the first night we went out on where we should go, when he said "You will be safe on this street". Did he literally mean that "we" as people from the South would be safe on this street but not on others?

Also did we end up on the very pro republican tour because we had randomly ended up staying at non loyalist b&b? The paranoid part of me thinks that his whole pamphlet rack only contains approved contacts and a loyalist b&b would have a totally different selection.

Luckily after our tour we went for lunch with some good friends an "international" couple who are also vegan and have the cutest baby who likes cuddling. This put everything back in perspective for me again.