THE Stormont breakthrough – aka the Windsor Framework – may be a song to the ears of some, but not all immigrants.
FOR 25 years, Patricia Byrne has been shaking up the theatrical space with theatre that is mainly directed at social issues, not just entertainment for the sake of it. Her work as co-founder and artistic director of Sole Purpose Productions has put the City of Derry and Ireland firmly on the map.
THE more we see and hear it, the more we should talk about it so that one day it will be a minority pursuit. There is institutional racism in multiple sectors of the economy in the North. It is actually embarrassing to stop talking about it for fear of being labelled ‘chip on your shoulder’ or nonsense like that.
THE war with winter has just begun. After all these years of being here, I earned myself a fair bruise on the left side of my back. I fell with a fast, heavy thud, but as far as passers-by were concerned it was like nothing really happened.
PEOPLE smugglers earn anything from £2,500 to £15,000 for every person they ship into Ireland or the UK. It is a very lucrative business.
ON Sunday past, the curtain came down on the life of one of Northern Ireland’s most illustrious intellectual powerhouses, Annie Yellowe Palma. Anne had a late diagnosis with cancer in August of this year and was given a short time to live.
NOTHING really big has happened to justify Brexit. For example, we haven't seen any saving of the sterling pound economy from wastage. This was one of the major claims of the people who wanted the United Kingdom to leave the EU.
KASHINDO David, what a force in the boxing ring – and in real life! Kashindo has never lost a fight since entering competitive boxing in Belfast two years ago. He has nothing to defend because no-one is coming for him yet.
SOME time around September 2007, a call came to my desk when I was doing research work on migration at Magee Campus.The man introduced himself as Paul from the Northern Ireland Office. He said that he had heard me speaking on a BBC Radio Ulster programme that morning. He was interested to know if I could leave a specific date open. I said that would not be a problem. Of course I did not hear from him for over two months, because security checks were being done on me, I think. Then, in late October, I received a special invite from her Majesty the Queen to a Commonwealth reception that was slated for November 12, 2007.
I HAVE travelled home to Kenya. My paternal village is a small quiet place called Mirogi. It is near Lake Victoria, some twenty five minutes from Homa Bay township. I was trying to find any connection between Belfast and this, my rural place where I visited grandfather Ombija. The closest thing would be the Nile tilapia fish sold in the stalls at St George's Market or sizzling hot in some restaurant of exotic dishes. Grandfather Ombija has a spiritual thing that many Belfast ones also share: the rosary. Ombija and the holy rosary are inseparable.Think of a 21st century person with their cellphone – totally connected. This village used to be majority Catholic, they have Mirogi Boys’ and Girls’ schools. These two high schools are run by the local Catholic administration and public service teachers. The community has maintained its unique, quiet presence in the region but since my last visit in 2015, some few disappointments have come to fore. For example, it is very hard to believe what has happened to the local homes, architecture and social mannerisms. We used to have mud-walled, grass-thatched huts in both rich and poor homes. It was a symbol of Luo tribe traditions stretching back hundreds of years.
I WOULD say that there are many unofficial galleries of African art in many homes in Ireland. I can't explain this movement enriching the homes of many people here. Was it possible that Irish people were caught up in many ornamental fashions and African art became one of them? You know – the way a whole working class street where I live choose to buy the same type of blinds for their windows and after two years it is all change? Were the new collectors of African craftware even a phenomenon, or did people become tired of the same old flags, murals and bric-a-brac that represented the old Northern Ireland? I do think that some of the owners of these pieces of African art travelled to Africa as holiday-makers, missionaries and other pursuits that brought them in touch with the continent. I met this interesting African masks collector who has a long list of art in his man-shed. He is a bit of a hoarder and absolutely nothing wrong with that. He has a crocodile mask from Ivory Coast, a wooden ‘aban’ mask from Ghana and a weird ‘komo’ originating from Mali.
THE DUP is letting down the side that is the north. It is contradicting the first letter of that acronym DUP by refusing to accept that its opponent Sinn Féin carried the day in the Stormont elections in May. In many countries this outright blocking of democratic rule can have serious consequences. The DUP must find a way to drop some of their post-Brexit demands and form a government with Sinn Féin. Many people are in environments where they have to work with a difficult and annoying person they can't stand (this is not a suggestion that Sinn Féin is a difficult partner, by the way). The DUP has to stop pretending that they are doing anything other than avoiding the backlash that may follow if they work with Michelle O'Neill as First Minister.
SOME people ask this important question: Why do race and race relations feature a lot in your writing? This is why – the problem is in fifth gear, it is not slowing any time soon. This column will make nil references and reports on racism when the problem has disappeared in the day-to-day language of the North. We must report things as they are and examine them without any bit of anxiety about a backlash. It is also fair to report without a biased opinion about any case. So last week, there was yet another difficult story about a victim of a racially motivated attack in Belfast. A young African man who lives in the Graymount Parade area of North Belfast arrived home in the early hours and found graffiti daubed on the outer wall of his property. It is not the whole of Graymount Parade that is racist. It is not all the people of Northern Ireland that are racist. There is something, though, that is wrong with the system. Some people are not happy when Belfast and other parts of Northern Ireland just want a bit of happiness among citizens of this country and those who came from other countries. State agencies, especially the PSNI, are not doing enough to curb racially motivated crimes. This 26-year-old man is one of many cases of people in Northern Ireland who are suffering quietly under this sombre cloud of hate crime. Many have moved out of here; in the past, people have even taken their own lives because of the desperation. I have been writing about race relations in North Ireland and Britain for as long as I can remember, over 20 years – that includes radio shows, community workshops and those elitist academic platforms where theory spars with practice for whatever reason. Scholars can use their knowledge and privilege to fight systemic racism that rears its very ugly ahead in the halls of power, mostly in and around government and other public institutions. When scholars are successful in doing this, their theories against bigotry can only be tested by the advice and reports they contribute towards otherwise known as commissioned publications. In 2002, the writer Paul Connolly produced an article, ‘Racist Harassment in the White Hinterlands: Minority Ethnic Children and Parents’ Experiences of Schooling in Northern Ireland’. In that report, 32 children and 43 parents chosen from the then largest minority ethnic groups in Northern Ireland – Irish Travellers, Chinese, Africans and South Asians – were interviewed. These were very thorough interviews. There were stories of direct and indirect bullying, subtle and direct teasing, and many parents felt that although some schools were prepared to put in place zero tolerance and were acting firmly, others were actually part of the problem, often turning away from the victims instead of listening to their experiences. Twenty years on, these things are still happening in many schools. Northern Ireland, a small place, has really done good things to make foreigners move in and live here. It is something commendable. Over the last few years, thousands of refugees have come to settle here from Afghanistan, Syria, Eritrea, Sudan, South Sudan, Somalia and many other countries. In December 2021, a resettlement programme for nearly 150 Congolese refugees from a camp in Tanzania to the UK and Ireland was stopped because of the rising cases of racial attacks here. Some of the refugees were to go to Monaghan in the Republic of Ireland and the rest were to come and start their new life in Northern Ireland. For a country that has endured a very disturbing war for over four decades, when there came a peace dividend, to receive new faces would have been a good thing, not a bad thing. To the bigoted people who are obsessed with skin colour, the question is: Would you also visit a tanning studio to make yourself look like me? Or would you not?ellyomondi@gmail.com
IRELAND has always been a home to refugee populations. For many generations, Ireland has received so many people from around the world. Some stayed on and others left for pastures they presumed would be greener. Can you think of a place greener than the Irish landscape? Nevertheless, people flee to certain desirable destinations depending on what lies ahead of them. In some c. For example, the years of the Troubles in the North would prevent them from sailing to the docks of Belfast or Larne. After the Vietnam War, the Troubles in the North were at their peak but refugees escaping that country by sea ended up here. In 1979 and 1980, the largest group of the Vietnamese refugees was resettled in Craigavon.
Northern Ireland. We are all aware of something called state benefits. I spoke to a group of young Africans who were sitting outside their hotel accommodation. For data protection reasons, it is not fair to name the street or hotel. I wanted them to tell me exactly what was in their mind now that the cost of living crisis is affecting so many people in their day to day lives. People are struggling with living costs and because it is impacting on many, there is less time to think about how and where does someone get their next feed? In this candid conversation, some of them were relieved that the people of Northern Ireland are doing their best to support them. Others blamed themselves for the unforeseen future they have, they are not even allowed to work. It is the moral duty of government to allow refugees to work even before their residency permits have been approved. The law should be changed urgently to allow them to work. Many of the asylum seekers have tremendous skills which they can inject to the economy. Seeing them sitting there killing time with a coffee at the cafes of the Botanic area, it may look as though they are happy, but they feel abandoned in their quest to be doing something like everybody else. Imagine you going to a foreign country. You land there, the border agent tells you in a nuanced way that he or she does not want you in their country. You arrived in a dinghy made in, you guessed it, China! All you did was to run away from your dictatorship country; not that there are no despots here in the Ireland and the UK, but you walked the desert, conquered it and floated in some inferior vessel to get across the English Channel. Just a reminder: The British and the Irish should be the last to lecture anyone about illegal migration. The two nationalities have roamed the world for centuries with or without the permission of their host community. Last week a boat carrying 80 migrants landed in Dover. In the background, the British government was insisting on sending asylum seekers to Africa – to Rwanda. That failed because some compassionate legal minds on the bench thought Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Home Office Minister Priti Patel’s policy of deportation to Rwanda was nonsense on stilts. If Downing Street was a pair of legs, let us just admit that the left side does not know what the right side is doing. So, the hotel accommodation migrants are feeling very frustrated that that they must wait for as long as it takes before they are allowed to work. And in between, they are robably narratin their long journeys to each other. Elly Omondi Odhiambo ellyomondi@gmail.com
