Meeting Desy

One of the most interesting parts of being in Northern Ireland for me has been meeting people face to face and hearing what they have to say about the conflict, or as it is called here in what always seems to me to be a bit of an understatement “the troubles.”  On our first full day here we toured as a group some of the murals and sites in the heart of both Catholic and Protestant strongholds here in Belfast.  I was struck by the militant and hate-filled messages of the murals and also by the sheer number of them which told me that the conflict is still, at least in some ways, very much alive.  During the tour we were concerned about looking too much like tourists or being disrespectful of the neighborhoods that we were touring which were of course also home to the people that lived there.  Despite our concern, we were approached by one elderly man named Desy in the Catholic area of Falls Road who was more than happy to talk to us.  Desy had been living in that particular part of Belfast all his life, and his accent was so thick that we had to listen closely to understand what he was saying.  He asked us if we were visitors and where we were from, and when we told him the purpose of our trip he gladly made recommendations of sites we should check out.  He also invited us to attend mass at his church, which we are planning to do before we leave Belfast.  He told us that at his church he also had some rubber bullets (which were used by police to control rioting crowds but ended up killing children) which he really wanted to show us.  When asked about the troubles now, Desy tolds us “they’re over.”  Although meeting Desy was a mere few minutes of our 3 week-long trip, it was a highlight for me and really brought the human side of this religious, political, and economic conflict to life.