Yank Discovers New World in North Belfast

By Kathleen Keating Elms
Special to The Irish American Post

As a volunteer with peace and reconciliation groups in Belfast, I had a unique opportunity to work with children on both sides of that divided city. It was at youth center in a loyalist area of North Belfast that I learned that kids in Protestant areas feel rejected and pushed aside as a result of the publicity and attention focused on nationalist Catholic neighborhoods. 

I was introduced to Norman Davison, the director of the center, by his cohort from the Catholic side of the peace line. They explained that increasing violence during the previous summer prevented any possibility of cross-community projects. Davidson said that he would be happy to have some help, and he wasn't kidding! 

He said that Catholic neighborhoods had learned to work together as a community when faced with serious job and housing discrimination 30 years ago. Thanks to teaching nuns and brothers, they also had an emphasis on education as a means of self-improvement. 

Workingclass Protestant kids, on the other hand, became apprentices in their fathers’ trades in the shipyards and the mills as soon as they were old enough. With employment guaranteed, there was little need for an emphasis on education. 

When civil rights moved into the employment arena, and Protestant kids were not able to automatically assume a job in their father’s workplace, they were often not able to compete with the better educated Catholics. 

I started out working at the center three evenings a week. Some nights there would only be three workers, including myself. On a good night there were four. Up to 50 children ranging in age from 6 to 18 would tear through the door. The noise was deafening. The kids were like monkeys, leaping, running, jumping onto any surface where they could get a finger or toe hold. It was like a descent into Dante’s Inferno. 

They screamed obscenities and assaulted each other with pool cues. On the first evening, several of the little girls gathered around me, and as children will, they put their faces very close to mine. "Look! She’s got gold teeth!" One of them shouted, and the others came running to view the gold fillings that are a status symbol in their social circles. 

There was an "art room" on the second floor. There were no art supplies except the stubs of half a dozen broken pencils, and some odd stacks of paper. The sink was clogged with poster paint, paper and hardened brushes, the counters and the floor strewn with paper, egg cartons, and white glue: the leftover messes of several previous art projects. The cleaning lady quit, Davidson explained, and the board hadn’t replaced her yet. 

So I began coming in the afternoon before the kids got there. I cleaned up the art room. I did portraits of the kids with the bits of broken pencils. I finished painting some large cartoon characters on the wall of the "tuck" shop that a former worker had left unfinished. This, along with the gold fillings, sealed my approval with the young ones. Belfast is full of murals on both sides of the divide, so artists have a certain amount of respect. Sometimes I gave them paint and paper; invariably they all drew the raised red hand of the UDA.

It was important for the kids to find out what religion I was. I knew better than to identify myself as a Catholic, even though Davidson had assured me that an American "taig" would not be a threat. I had seen enough mindless bigotry to not take the chance of exposing myself. It’s said in Belfast that if you’re Jewish, you’ll be asked if you’re a Protestant Jew or a Catholic Jew. That’s not too far off the mark. And I knew that one of our parent volunteers was active in the Ulster Defense Association. I had seen him on television being interviewed with other UDA men.

There are several ways that people in the North are able to get clues to tell what religion you are: by your Christian name, by your address, by your school, by the way you say "Mater" when referring to the Mater Hospital, ("matter" for the Catholics, "mayder" for Protestants), and by the way you pronounce the letter "H." 

Anyone with an Irish name like Sean or Séamas or Sinéad is a Catholic; Scots or English names like Ian or Robert or Nigel are more likely to be Protestant. Catholics name their kids after saints or popes. Damien or Bernadette: definitely "taig." Protestants tend to use biblical names like Mark and David. It is only a rule of thumb, of course, with hundreds of exceptions, but at least it gives a clue. 

The acid test is where you went to school in the North’s deeply segregated school system. As an American, the school test couldn’t be used, and an address up near Belfast Castle was mixed territory, so the kids would have me singing that little alphabet song for them "A, B, C, D, E, F, G..." I finally caught on to what they were doing. "Aych" is the Protestant pronunciation in the North and "haitch" the Catholic one. Poor things. They didn’t realize that all of us Yanks say "aych!"

We took the kids for an overnight stay at the folk park in Cultra, with several of the parents chaperoning. After we had settled in, a few of the girls came charging into my room, "Kate, Kate, come on with us! You should see where the taigs go to chapel!" 

Out they bounded with me in tow. We went into the little restored chapel, and while I was explaining to one group about the confessional, several others ran up to the altar, and grabbed for the chalices and anything else they could get their hands on. The woman caretaker was aghast, shooing them out of the sanctuary and trying to make sure they didn’t make off with any sacred vessels and implements.

Most of the kids have never seen the inside of a church, and are not sure what it means to be Protestant. They have been ignored by the large Protestant middle class. Many of their mothers are children themselves, teenagers with single parent families. Their fathers, brothers, and uncles are often serving time in prison for involvement in paramilitary organized violence. 

They are in constant motion, hyper from too much caffeine and sugar and video games. They have faces like angels and nicknames like "Cocky" and "Beast". Some of them are smoking by the time they’re seven, and sneaking vodka into their Coca Cola cans at twelve. They can throw bricks and stones like a professional pitcher by the time they’re five. 

They have identical counterparts on the Catholic side of the peace line. I learned that working with some of the mothers and kids traumatized by the violence surrounding Holy Cross school in Ardoyne. Together they carry the whole burden of "the Troubles"—the bigotry, the fear, the despair, the violence, and the poverty on their skinny little shoulders. 
 
 

Writer Kathleen Keating Elms, formerly of Joliet, Ill., has been living in Donegal for the past four years, following four years in North Belfast working in peace and reconciliation projects. She can be contacted at caitlinceitinn@eircom.net. The youth center at which she worked has been closed because of lack of funding.