Doire

We had our class field trip to the city of Derry/Londonderry yesterday, and I think it was one of my favorite experiences thus far. First off, a bit about the odd name of the place: The city was originally named Doire, which means "oak grove" in Irish, and then simplified to Derry. When the English settled, they found the city to have much potential and decided on renaming the walled city "Londonderry". To make a long story short, Irish nationalists tend to refer to it by its original Irish name whereas British unionists call it by the latter. As far as I've seen, no one around here has really made a big deal about whatever you choose to call it, but it's definitely good to know what you're saying and how you're probably being perceived.

Apart from the name, the experience in the city was amazing. I haven't mentioned this yet, but Nigel has a lot of different music in our giant van and we have come to realize he times it fairly strategically so that it perfectly supplements our mood. As our van wound through small towns with extremely troubled pasts on our way to Derry, a beautiful but sorrowful Irish-folk song about the troubles set the tone. I think it was pretty appropriate preparation for our day in the Walled City.

We began in the morning by winding through the downtown. It was a pretty standard city despite the numerous abandoned Protestant churches and the run-down Apprentice Boys base with paint bombs all over the front of it. Once we reached the wall, we were overlooking the Catholic side of the city known as the "bogside". I'm not sure if everyone is familiar with the Battle of the Bogside or Bloody Sunday, but the "bog" has definitely had its fair share of violent history in the past few decades and there's an eerie sort of feeling on the streets. During the day, we had the honor of getting two extremely moving tours. The first was from an ex-IRA member who showed us Derry's "peace wall", some historic places, and of course, the murals. The second tour was of the museum of free derry and sort of a tour of where exactly the events of Bloody Sunday commenced.

The murals were amazing. The pictures definitely don't do them enough justice:



Bernadette Devlin is slowly becoming our new idol...


Father Daly waving a white handkerchief on bloody sunday, right before he got shot

There's a lot more murals, but these were some of my favorites.


The "peace wall"

I can't believe some of the things they had in the Museum of Free Derry. After a few minutes of curating, the man showing us around let us know that his 17 year old brother, Michael Kelly, was one of the victims on Bloody Sunday. He was comfortable with answering any questions we had, and it was really incredible hearing the story from someone who was present during the entire thing, and especially someone who had to help lift his lifeless teenage brother into an ambulance at that.








These are pretty self-explanatory. Needless to say, we were all in a pretty somber mood when we left the Museum for the tour on the streets. When we walked outside, we were alerted to the fact two victims had died on the sidewalk in front of the building. This tour shook us all up a bit, but I think when our curator showed us the place that his brother was shot was when a few in the group started to lose it. Anyway, our day in Derry was a pretty significant one and being in such a historic place makes everything seem so much more real.

Alright it's dinner time, I must depart!
cheers, k.g.