This weekend, we took a trip to the north of Ireland. The first day, we went to Belfast, the hotbed of riots and trouble between the Protestants (Ulster Volunteers) and Catholics (IRA). We first went to Stormont, the legislative building in Northern Ireland. We met with representatives from all of the parties in Northern Ireland, including the Green Party, Loyalists, and Sinn Fein, the party that wants Northern Ireland to be part of the republic. The representative from Sinn Fein had actually been imprisoned during the "Troubles" (that's what they call the violence between the two sides from the 70s to the early 2000s). Honestly, everyone there talked like a politician; they never gave straight answers and didn't really want to discuss the past. I felt like everyone there was hiding a huge secret that in reality everyone knew about. I also had a problem with them calling it "The Troubles"; that's like calling an iceberg a piece of ice. True, but not describing it accurately at all.
In the afternoon, we were led on a tour of the two different sections of Belfast. Our tour guide was an ex Ulster Volunteer, who had been to prison during the Troubles. Since it's hard for anyone with a criminal record to be employed, the government sets former prisoners up as "Black Taxi Drivers"; these taxis are incredibly cheap and often take tourists around the former war zones.
Our first stop was Shankill Road. It was a Protestant housing project, and you could tell from the moment we got off the bus that the fighting was definitely not over. Everyone looked at us sideways, and we could only take pictures of some of the murals when our guide gave us the ok. The houses looked run-down and depressing; the project obviously wasn't being kept up by the government, and it looked like any type of law enforcement was carried out by the residents. The guide mentioned afterwards that sometimes he has to gloss over the truth depending on who's standing around him when he gives his tours, and that one time shots rang out while he was with a group in the area.
Our next stop was one of the Peace Walls that divide Belfast into Catholic and Protestant sections. The strange thing is, the residents actually want to keep the divide; the walls aren't like the Berlin Wall where the residents want them down and the government is keeping them up. I signed it, as did so many people before me; it's scary that it is 2012 and people still don't feel safe to live in a city without walls to protect them.
The last stop was Bombay Street, in the Catholic project. Admittedly, this section looked a lot nicer than the Protestant area; I'm afraid that I might have some bias because I myself am Catholic, but I felt a lot safer in this area than on Shankill road. Regardless, we were directly on the other side of the Peace Wall; the houses that backed up to the wall had cages surrounding the backs of their houses to protect them from petrol bombs or other things being thrown over the wall.
The entire city felt like it was stuck in time. Our tour guide's attire and facial hair reminded me of what my father wore when I was a child in the early 1990s. Although "The Troubles" were officially over, it was clear that there is still a war going on in Belfast; from the looks we got to the walls still being there to the helicopters overhead, there is still more than general animosity between the Protestants and the Catholics and frankly, I could not leave that city fast enough.
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