Meet My Friends, part 2

The journey across Belfast continues. The next four team members live in North Belfast, so I think here is an appropriate time to say something about that area. While the area is safe now, 20% of all deaths in the Troubles happened in North and West Belfast. There are a couple of housing estates nearby with very strong paramilitary links and violent histories. 15 miles of “peace walls,” dividing Protestant/Unionist from Catholic/Nationalist areas, cut across the community. North Belfast is home to both the very rich and the very poor. As Jessica (who you will shortly meet) put it, the area is “a patchwork quilt of polarized neighborhoods, screaming for transformation.”

Our next stop on the tour of my teammates is not far north of downtown, where we meet Jessica. She’s one half of the married couple (whom the rest of us often refer to collectively as “the marrieds”) on the team. Jessica is from Pennsylvania and majored in social work atEastern University, also in Pennsylvania. She spent a year working as a children’s social worker before coming to Belfast. Jessica is a gentle person with a sassy streak, a peacemaker who isn’t afraid to speak her mind when she needs to. She’s the oldest of the women on the team, so the rest of us tend to look up to her a bit – but she’s also fairly wise, so that works out.

Jessica and her husband, Kevin, work at two sites in North Belfast, Fortwilliam Macrory Presbyterian Church and The 174 Trust. They work with the youth and help out with general church stuff at Fortwilliam Macrory (whose pastor is a very influential woman in the community, heavily involved in the politics of transformation). The 174 Trust is a community centre dedicated to fostering positive relationships between Protestant/Unionist and Catholic/Nationalist. Jessica works a lot with the children there – working with the nursery, after-schools programs, and the disability club, among other things.

Lately, a lot of the team have been having problems with mice in their house (though fortunately not me – knock on wood). A few weeks ago, Jessica came up with an interesting illustration that speaks to the heart of Belfast. When she discovered a mouse in her kitchen, she immediately jumped up on the couch to get away from it. And then she started thinking: what was it that made me so afraid of mice? She realized that her mother had taught her that mice are bad, germ-carrying, etc. Her prejudice against mice was not from any experience she’d had with mice, but from what she had learned from her mother. In the same way, a lot of the prejudices in Belfast are not from any personal experience, but from ideas passed down through generations.

Jessica and Kevin. Note the umbrella -- no surprise, it's raining.

Word of the Week: Lorry. It’s a truck, of really any variety other than pickup. Lorries can be big 18-wheeler transport vehicles or, more commonly, a delivery or road-work truck. Lorries have been everywhere lately, putting grit (mostly salt) down on the roads in the wake of a big snowstorm (all of about an inch).