A wall in the park

Yesterday we climbed the mountain in the background of the city. Today we visited Intercomm where I will be starting my community service tomorrow. We were given a lecture and question and answer period that cleared up almost anything that was missing in my understanding of how things worked in Northern Ireland. After Conor took us to the interface areas and the park there.

The park is the only one in Europe with a peace wall through it. The peace wall was put up because there was so much rioting going on in the park between Protestants and Catholics. It runs right in the middle of the park, a road leads up to it and disappears. There is rather impressing spray painted art on the wall.

In the interface area there is Catholic and Protestant streets all very close. The The catholic street we went down leaving the park had a row of houses on one side and a peace wall on the other. The windows had wire mesh over them, to protect them from stones thrown over the wall. Some houses were even abandoned, very unusual for Catholic areas. 70% of people on the list who are in dire need for housing are Catholic. There are Protestant houses which are empty and Catholics houses with three families in them.

It was such a problem of drivers going down one Catholic street and shooting someone and just going on their way, one side of the street needed to be blocked off. Conor grew up in the area and told us of having to move out one family at night because their house had been broken into from several windows and doors and raided and the family beaten up.

Racism is replacing sectarianism. An Indian grocer down this street was killed my Protestants who knew nothing about who he was of how he lived. He was very neutral toward Catholics and Protestants.

Mike talked to a woman on the street as we returned through the park. She asked what he thought of the Peace Wall, and when Mike asked what she thought she said she didn't think about them. I suppose if it seems normal people don't think about things; and the Peace Walls have been up for enough years to be "normal" in North Belfast.