Northern Ireland

County Fermanagh, Northern Ireland

We had barely been back in Dublin for a day when Pip asked me if I wanted to go with him to visit friends and family in the North. He was up there visiting his dad, so I hopped a 7:00 AM bus to Northern Ireland and met him in the southern border town of Cavan.

Northern Ireland, if you've always wondered, is the six counties of Ireland in the north that make up part of the United Kingdom. It is a country separate from the Republic of Ireland. You've heard of The Troubles. Traditionally Northern Ireland has been Protestant, though that demarcation has become less and less clear. In fact, Catholics now have a slight majority in the North. Someone here told me the policy of Catholic Nationalists has been to "breed them out". Looks like it's working.

Pip and I went to a cafe and got some tea and breakfast, and we wandered around the town before making our way back to the car to drive to the North. Little Pip in the backseat, music going, sun shining, villages and churches and ancient ruins dotting the landscape... there was no reason to worry that Pip's windshield wipers had stopped working. "No problem," Pip said. "It hasn't rained in Ireland since 1988."

That record was shattered the moment we crossed into Northern Ireland in County Fermanagh. The rain started and didn't stop (it's the rainiest county in the island of Ireland). There Pip was, winding down his window to wipe his windshield with his arm, but that wasn't doing the trick. We stopped into a little furniture shop right across the border. Pip knew the owner and wanted to pick up a picture he had left there.

This was my first time in Northern Ireland. We walked nearby to change our money into pounds sterling. We saw some hunters coming out of the woods with their rifles and hunting dogs. The accents all around us were slightly different, the signs were in miles instead of kilometers, the welcome sign was in English instead of Gaelic.

We drove down the road a bit to a mechanic, who took one look at the wipers and told us the wiper motor "needed replaced." He rang a few people, but no one in the area had a spare part today. Luckily, the rain had stopped, and we continued on our way.

It had rained 42 days straight in Fermanagh, and the flooding had wiped out basically everything. Entire fields were submerged. Roads diverted. Trees were underwater. Apparently farmers have been taking kayaks out to their cows in the fields. It's bad. Worst flooding in living memory in Ireland.

We drove to Enniskillen as fast as we could to make it to a 2 pound fry in a pub, but it ended at noon and we were 4 minutes late. Instead, we walked around Enniskillen and went into a shop for cheap chicken and chips. As we sat on a bench in the main throughway of the town, I swear Pip must have talked to about every person on the street. He had lived there for 6 years or so, running his photography shop in a nearby market. We went there next.

With Little Pip running ahead, we went to an artist's market where painters, jewelers, and photographers ran little shops selling their wares. We stopped in at each place, talking to the owners and introducing myself. Maybe it's because we're studying religion, but religion kept coming up. I was asked a couple times, casually of course, if I was Catholic or Protestant. It was harmless, but worth noting, based upon what would happen later...

We stopped in a framing shop where Pip introduced me to the "Google of Enniskillen" who told us that there was a storytelling/traditional music festival going on that night in town. Pip dropped off some photos to be framed, and we continued on our way.

We swung by an old farm where Pip's friend keeps horses. We got lost along the back country roads and farmlands, and had to stop and ask a farmer for directions. "It's just down past da two trees," he said, pointing vaguely into the horizon. Mind you, we were in a forest.

Luckily, we found the two trees we needed and arrived at the farm. Pip's friend wasn't there though. An old man offered us a ride in his truck down to where she was riding her horses. "There's only one direction she could be walking," he told us, but as he dropped us off in the middle of the woods, we realized he was lying.

We wandered around for an hour, but all we saw were old horse tracks. I felt a bit like Legolas, inspecting the mud prints, but to no avail.

We ended up walking the 3 miles back, uphill, through the Irish countryside back to the farm. It was really nice. The weather was good. We didn't pass a single car. Sheep in the fields, the sound of running water in a stream.

Then we got lost. Luckily, a completely random car happened on down the road, and Pip knew the guy! He had taken photos at his wedding! He gave us directions to the farm, and we walked over that way, and finally made it before dark.

Pip's friend had ridden back to the farm, of course, so we talked to her for a little bit, met the horses, and met an old man who got to talking with me in particular. He was keen to point out that "they're having problems in the South," referring to last week's Dublin Report, which has shocked and devastated Ireland by revealing that bishops knew of child abuse cases and kept them hidden.

And there again was that question about my religion. And about my last name. He knew lots of Moores in the area. The name is very Anglo-Irish, and it's very common in the North. Someone told me once, "Yeah, emphasis on the common," meaning that Moores are often seen as very simple people. And the old man also knew Pip's father and uncle! It's a small island, Pip repeated.

It was dark when we left the horse farm. We drove on northward, to meet another friend, but halfway along the way Pip had the idea to stop somewhere where we took a ferry to an island, where he had done a bunch of wedding shoots for clients. (It's one of the top 10 places to get married in the UK.)

Stop, park, ring for a ferry on a little phone, it floats over, hop on, it floats back, and there we are. On an island.

We went into a little pub. Fire in the hearth, Guinness in our glasses, for cheap cheap. Sat and made some friends with three 50-year old ladies from Belfast who were at a retreat with their company. The ladies didn't want to be there at all, so we sat and drank tea and ate biscuits with them, and they started asking us about our program, and before long, it was an all-out religious debate about Catholicism vs. Protestantism. Didn't mean for that to happen, but the lady across from me got into a rant about how she thought tradition was "bullocks" and how she had left the Church, and I kind of gave her my entire perspective on tradition and why it's important to maintain the mystery of God. I don't know if I influenced her or not, but she was definitely interested in the idea, as if she hadn't considered it before.

Pip later said that any moment we can get to witness for Christ is time well spent.

Neither of our mobile phones worked in the North, so we ended up swinging by Pip's good friend's mom's cottage, and we sat in her living room by the fire and drank some gin and tonic. Then we headed literally next door to see her son Joe and hang out with him for a bit. "Moore? We've got Moore's up the road," he said. Joe was absolutely great. We left there, and Joe drove us all over to Enniskillen for the storytelling gig.

And it was bad. Some of the stories were ok, but man, the delivery was dreadful. The music parts were ok. Anyway.

The place we were in was bombed by the IRA in 1987. 60 people were injured and 12 people died, including Pip's schoolteacher. It's the event that Bono goes off on in the live version of Bloody Sunday, the "Remembrance Day" bit. The building had to be completely rebuilt. Border towns really are like that. It makes history come alive in a way you never could experience through just reading a book. Joe and Pip talked about the trouble you used to have crossing the border with all the checkpoints, just 10 years ago. Anyway...

It was about 11 PM now. We walked over to Pip's favorite little, as he says, "fiddly-diddly" pub (traditional music pub) and sat by a fireplace right next to an accordionist, a guitarist, and a fiddler. They're there every Friday.

Bought Guinness. And more Guinness. And more Guinness. Pip was moving about the packed pub, talking to old friends, friends' dads, friends' kids. Catching people up on his situation, telling people he was in school, in a very chill, I'm-a-hippie kind of way. He knew half the pub, or they knew him.

Anyway, the night wears on, and we get to the final stages, and this big red-faced ogre kind of a man walks over, drunk, and sits down next to the band, and belts out this beautiful Irish tune, this melancholy kind of folk song, and the whole pub grew silent. The next song, the band joined in, and it was really grand.

But after the band packed up to leave, red-faced giant man stayed in his spot, next to us, sort of examining us with his wandering eyes, before coming over to sit down at our table. First thing we all said of course is, you have a great voice, those were beautiful songs, etc. He looks at me first and says something really derogatory about Americans. OK, I think, and I laugh. He's drunk, he's just causing trouble. No harm. He then says something about Bush and says that America has been in Iraq for so long, it's another state. I sip my Guinness nervously.

Pip tells him that we don't need any anti-American chats here tonight, and the red-faced man looks at him, and then at Joe, and then back at me and he says, "So what part of the States are you from?" I look at him squarely in the eye and say, "Baghdad." He sort of cracks a smile and the people around us laugh. He offers me a handshake.

But then he looks back at Pip. "What town were you born in?" the man asks. Pip immediately catches on. "What are you saying," Pip says. "Which foot do ya kick with?" the man asks again. Pip interrupts him: "What era are you from, dude?"

A paraphrase of what happened next:
Man: Where did you go to school?
Pip: Listen to you, asking questions like it matters anymore. It's not 1980. Welcome to the 21st century.
Man: Where are you from?
Pip: I'm from *town*.
Man: And you're a Protty?
Pip: Aye.
Man: Can you sing me a good Protestant song from your town?
Pip: You want me to sing the Sash don't you (This is a big no-no in border towns. It's the Unionist's national anthem of sorts.) I don't actually know the Sash, but I wouldn't sing it anyway.
Man: Go on, you know it.

I'm sitting there, my heart racing, my eyes darting from left to right as the two face each other. I have my fists clenched, not sure what's going to happen. Joe is sitting across from me, and we look at each other, and back at the man, ready to jump to our feet.

Pip then starts to sing a song he heard in Jerusalem when he went there with his dad, years ago. It starts "El Shaddai," and it's in Hebrew and English. As he starts to sing it, he pounds with one hand on the wooden table, shaking the place and rattling everyone's attention. He sings at the top of his lungs -- an absolutely beautiful song. Then he shouts, "Jesus was a hippie who walked around with 12 of his mates and told people to love each other."

The man stands up, reaches his arm over the table and shakes Pip's hand, shakes mine, and turns and leaves the pub. Did that really just happen? We stand up, grab our coats, and head out the side door.

Slept on a couch in Joe's cottage. Couldn't stop thinking about the whole thing.