T.C.D.
Volunteering | Freshers guide | festivals
We Speak to Amnesty Ireland’s Chief Executive, Colm O’Gorman, about Mental Health in Ireland and Corporate Accountability in India Volume 118|Issue One|September 2010
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Editor’s letter
COVER STORY
Polly Dennison
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imes have changed. Reflecting on the theme of this issue - charity work - I was thinking about what my parents used to do for their summers at university. They would go to England for a summer job, stay in Dublin to work, or just go home and help out there. Today things, as you know, can be entirely different. Yes, people still do all those things that my parents did; but now, we go to the USA to look for work and go to farflung regions of China and India to help out, as our contributors Connor James McKinney and Margaret Bridge did. Charities are all the better for this increase in volunteering students. It made me think that if everyone did some form of volunteer work, whether it be two days a week at the local charity shop or weeks on end in Guatemala, like Andre Mendon Madaleno - imagine all the great work that could be done. My summer was spent in Chicago on a J1. I was miserabley unsuccessful in getting a job, so I volunteered at a local animal shelter to pass my time. I was basically the girl who scooped out the litter boxes and sat with the cats until they were adopted. Along with all our stories of charity work, we’ve got interviews with the peolpe in the know, Colm O’Gorman of Amnesty and Evie Foley of SUAS. We take articles on anything and everything, besides our theme It was very interesting to learn about the other festival options for the summer, besides the normal Electric Picnics and Oxegens, in our articles “The Festivals of Irish Summer”, by Ellen Lunney and “The Greenman Fest.”, by Joanna Stauton. If you fancy getting involved, come by the Freshers’ stand or drop me a line at editor@miscellany.ie. We’ve got a few positions open and are always happy to take submissions on anything! I would also like to say how much I am looking forward to editing T.C.D. Miscellany and to wish you all a happy and successful year.
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ur editor interviews the Chief Executive of Amnesty International Ireland, on page 14.
NEW BEGINNINGS
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survival guide for all: We’ve
got everything you need to know about living in Dublin as a student. Page 6. Photo by William Murphy
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LONG LIVE THE KING
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fter Oxegen and Electirc Picnic, Ellen Lunney reviews the other options, on page 28.
Contents 4
Old Miscellany
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Guide to Freshers’ Week and What’s Hot and What’s Not.
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Student Survival Guide We have everything you need to know for living in Dublin
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Parental Discretion Tara Monaghon discusses living at home
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On the Up and Up with SUAS Our Deputy Editor interviews Evie Foley from SUAS
12 Asylum in Ireland Kate Ferguson on working with Asylum seekers.
JUST RIGHT
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Volume 118, Issue 1
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the Green Man Fest in Wales. Page 27
IN CONCLUSION...
14 Underfunded and Outdated Our Editor interviews Colm O’Gorman of Amnesty. 18 A Passage to India Margaret Brdige tells us about her summer 21 The Cut-throat World of Charity FundRaising Spare a thought for the chuggers. 23 Kashmir in Unrest Caelinn Hogan tells of her summer in wartorn Kashmir 27 The Greenman Festival Joanna Staunton on another summer festival option 28 The Festivals of Irish Summer Ireland has always had festivals, as Ellen Lunney explains 30 From Student to Doctor in Guatemala Andre Mendon Madaleno was kept busy for his summer 33 Good on English, Bad on China. Our past editor was teaching in China for the summer. 34 In Conclusion...Fintan Mallory Our new regular columnist reflects on charity today.
T.C.D. Miscellany 6 Trinity College Dublin 2 www.miscellany.ie editor@miscellany.ie
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ur new regular columnist, Fintan Mallory, reflects on charity in the world of today, on page 34.
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editor deputy editor copy editors Tara Monaghon. design printers
Polly Dennison Elaine McCahill, Maeve Montgomery and Martin McKenna Conway Media Limited
T.C.D. Miscellany is funded by a grant from DU Publications Committee. This publication claims no special rights or privileges. Serious complaints should be addressed to: The Editor, T.C.D. Miscellany, 6 Trinity College, Dublin 2. Appeals may be directed to the Press Council of Ireland. T.C.D. Miscellany is a full participating member of the Press Council of Ireland and supports the Office of the Press Ombudsman. This scheme, in addition to defending the freedom of the press, offers readers a quick, fair and free method of dealing with complaints that they may have in relation to articles that appear on our pages. To contact the Office of the Press Ombudsman go to www.pressombudsman.ie.
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Old Miscellany
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Freshers’ Week Events at a Glance.
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onday 20th September: Traffic Light Ball @ The Academy in association with Dubes. 11pm
Traffic Light Ball @ Purty Kitchen 11pm Colours Comedy Debate @ G.M.B. 17:30. The event will be chaired by
Colm O’Regan.
DU Players present Pajama Men in the Player’s Theatre @ 9pm.
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uesday 21st September: Headphone Disco @ Tripod 11pm
Acoustic Chillout Session @ Players Theatre. 5pm. Summer Party in assocation with V.D.P.
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ednesday 22nd September: Fresher’s Week Ball @ XXI’s Club. 10pm Foam Party @ Purty Kitchen 11pm
DU Players Showcase @ Regent House. 12pm
hursday 23rd September: JAMnesty @ Crawdaddy. 11pm sharp. Club Philth in association with The Phil @ Dandelion
DU History Soc Drinks Reception @ Atrium. 8-10pm
riday 24th September: Vodafone Campus Carnival @ The Pav
Fresher’s Night @ Break for the Border
What’s Hot and What’s Not in Dublin What’s Hot: »» Freshers’ Week. New people, new places, new fun. Everything is fresh and ready to party after a great summer. »» New Winter Wardrobe: Cosy coats, woolen cardigans and leather boots make the season a little easier to handle. »» Crawdaddy on a Tuesday Night. C.U.N.T brings an amazing mix of music, people and style to your midweek nights out. »» Nude cafe on Suffolk Street. With a 15% student discount and ¤1 coffees between 2 and 4pm, it’s a wallet friendly way to get that coffee fix with friends. »» Cycling. Agyness Deyn and Sienna Miller are among a host of other celebs who are always pictured out and about on their bikes. Being healthy and economically friendly is the new and chic way to get about.
What’s Not: »» The end of summer. No more festivals, denim shorts, seaside visits and yummy ice-cream. Sigh. Eight months of disastrous weather here we come. »» 9am lectures. There’s nothing worse than being up at first light, nursing a hangover, when it’s raining out and you can’t decide what to wear. »» The rain, there’s only so much a stylish umbrella, a nice pair a boots and a warm coat can do to make you feel better about getting soaked. »» Part-time jobs. Since everything went down the economic drain, trying to get a few hours of work to support your lifestyle has never been harder. M&S have already stopped taking in cvs for Christmas work. »» The upcoming budget, god only knows what concoction of pain the eejits in the Dail are cooking up for us.
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student life
Student Survival Guide Whether you’re a wide-eyed fresher or a seasoned senior-sophister, we have compiled everything you need you need to know about living in Dublin as a student. By Elaine McCahill, Aoife O’reilly, tara monaghon, ciara henigan, Katie abrahams and JAmes Hagan.
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hether you are a new Junior Freshman running around the cobbles of Front Square or a Senior Sophistor dancing your nights away on Harcourt Street, Miscellany has come up with some tips for student living in Dublin.
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: Wise up about Nights out. This one is mainly aimed at the incoming first years. It’s so important to be in the know about which clubs are good (and cheap) on what nights. Midweek is when all of the student nights take place. Most clubs run nights that cost no more than ¤5 to get in and then offer concession drink prices once inside! Going on your class nights out is the high way to a great night out! Not only will you make loads of new friends
Costing only ¤5 to get in and with drinks from ¤2, C.U.N.T. at Crawdaddy is always popular with students.
and maybe even meet someone special, but your class rep will secure concessions on the entrance fee too. Societies are always running nights out too and buying your tickets in advance is always the cheaper way to go. Pre-drinking is also vital. B.Y.O.B is cheap and cheerful and the best craic is always had before hitting the Pav/club. : Student Discounts. One of the best parts about being a student is the discounts that are available. Many shops and restaurants offer at least 10% discount to students, especially those around college. Make sure to get your Student Travel Card as it entitles you to cheaper travel as well as a range of discounts. Kiosks will be placed around college during Fresher’s Week. Here are a few to get you started: Topshop: 10%; Topman: 15%; A-Wear: 15%; Urban Outfitters: 15%; Boots: 15%; Office: 15%; Nude cafe: 15%; Pacinnos: 15%; O’ Brien’s 15%. and the Reader’s Café at Waterstones 20% If you’re searching for a new laptop, Apple offers Trinity students a great discount too. If you’re living in Trinity Hall, Mother Reilly’s of Rathmines offer students ¤3.50 pints. : Join Societies. Trinity offers a wide range of clubs and societies. Between charities, sports clubs, publications, radio and debating, the list is endless. There is a society to suit everyone’s interests
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and if not, you can always set up your own. Getting involved helps you make new friends, develops your personality and expands your interests. If you join societies, do try and go to the first meetings and events as these are usually the most important and interesting and it means that you are involved from the start. Bring a mate and get involved together. The majority of Trinity’s societies will have stands in Front Square during Fresher’s Week where you can sign up and get some goodies. : Food Shopping. Now, more than ever before, supermarkets are offering great deals on your grocery shopping. The most general advice is to shop around and keep an eye on the meat and fruit offers in different chains. Lidl and Aldi are great for cheap fruit, vegetables and cleaning products, as well as alcohol (of course). Tesco and Dunnes are great for meat, bread, yogurts, and buy one get one free offers. A great way of saving a few quid is to bring your lunch into college instead of buying it in the Buttery or random cafés every day. You’ll be surprised how quickly it all adds up. : Travel. If you need to commute to college every day, Dublin Bus, LUAS and DART offer student tickets but these can still be pricey. Cycling is the newly trendy way to travel, as long as the weather isn’t awful. It’s healthier for you and is a great way to see the city too. Make sure to get a good lock too as there is always the potential for your bike to be stolen. If you’re within walking distance of college then go for it, as long as the weather is good. It’s an easy way to get some exercise into your day and in the mornings it’s often faster than the bus. If you’re out and about at night, sharing taxis home is always the way to get your drunken self home and when you divide the cost it’s often cheaper than the Nitelink. If you’re off home for the weekend, Irish Rail and Bus Eireann offer student prices and booking online is often even cheaper. : Talk to People. Whether it’s your new flatmates, people from your course or random strangers on nights out, getting to know people is one of the greatest aspects of college. You’ll get to know people from so many different walks of life: people from different counties, courses, countries. College is made up of a large, diverse group of people and the opportunities for social interaction and making friends are more common than in everyday life. I advise every college student, fresher or not, to take advantage of that and seize these opportunities. Go to society events and talk to everyone you can.
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Not only this; but make the most of every situation you find yourself in - you should always try to strike up a conversation with the person sitting next to you in a lecture theatre. If you make the effort, you’ll be surprised who’ll talk back and potentially become a friend for life. : Volunteer. While Trinity is packed with societies and clubs, there are lots of charities that could really use your free time. If you have a few hours during the week or want to help or organise charity events or travel abroad, there is a charity to suit you. It’s a very rewarding pastime and it’s great to know that those few hours are making a real difference to someone in need. Depending on what you’re interested inDepending on whether you’re BLU or Hamilton, be prepared to there is a charity to suit spend a large portion of your time here - and make sure your you. If it’s tutoring primary school children, helping out fellow let your essays or tutorial work build students or travelling abroad there are up, this way you’ll avoid the end of term loads of charities to choose from, most freak-out. Some essays and course work of which will have stalls in Front Square will count as parts of your end of year during Fresher’s Week. grade so don’t pass them off with shoddy : Be Safe. work as this will bring down your averWe all know that college is a age. Start studying for exams in advance time of new experiences and extoo and avoid the major stress of starting perimentation. However, do look after the week before. By keeping on top of yourself, whether it’s getting drunk on a things, you’ll enjoy your free time more night out or getting frisky with someone as you won’t have that unfinished essay new. If you’re out make sure to keep an lingering in the back of your mind. eye out for your mates and take them : HAVE FUN! home safely if they do get too wasted and College is truly one of the make sure they’ll do the same for you. most defining life experiences There’s nothing worse than being left in so soak up every second of it. Enjoy your a club, with not enough cash to get home. nights out, meeting new people, society When it comes to new sexual experienccommitments and even your college es, make sure to protect yourself. Free work and it’ll combine for an amazcondoms are available from the Students ing year. Enjoy the city too by visiting Union, the College Health Service is exhibitions, random bars and pubs, mufree and Boots offers a 15% discount and seums, parks, cafés, hidden boutiques, often run offers. The college Counselling vintage shops and even the zoo. Initiate service is also free for all these who need conversations; meet new people; ask it. Make sure to avail of these services as questions; smile. You’re hopefully going it’s always better to be safe than sorry. to be here for at least the next four years, : College Work. so start as you mean to go on; comfortI know it may put a dampener able in your surroundings and surroundon your idealistic view of college ed by interesting and pleasant folk-many being an amazing piss up. However, for of whom will undoubtedly be a friend the first time in your life, you’re studying for life. Whether yours is a case of “Wela course that you have chosen for yourcome to Trinity”, or “Welcome back to Trinity”, let’s start making some great self and have worked so hard to get into. Work consistently throughout the year, new memories. Ones that we can cherish together for many years to come. doing a few hours every day and don’t
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student Life
Parental Discretion Advised
Living at home is definitely challenging but there are plenty of ways to make it work. by TARA MONAGHAN
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orget lectures, grades and passing your first year of college. Disregard all prior anxieties about friendships, money and student accommodation. Even leave sex, drugs and drink in the shallow gutter at the back of your mind. All these troublesome topics are trivial in comparison to the two most controversial words in student vocabulary: Mum and Dad. One naturally assumes upon leaving school and being accepted into university that you are considered an adult. Surely the last eight years or so can be put away in a box somewhere as you begin the new phase of maturity and independence? Won’t your proud parents idly look on silently supporting and funding all of your actions and decisions? Hardly.Although you will not be a child forever, your procreators will never stop being parents. In their memories it was not so long ago that you had trouble tying your own shoelaces. You are a direct product of their efforts to form you into a functioning member of society. They applauded you when you succeeded and picked up the pieces when things fell apart and they are not going to let go now. When you achieve, so do your parents and so in the back of their minds they too have made it to Trinity College and will not let you mess this up now. Like many of my peers, I am the first member of my family to go to college and so I had an extremely tough time explaining to my parents that University is not like school. I am very close to my parents, with whom I have had a consistently good relationship since my conception and so it was with much pain that I insisted that they did not walk me to Front Arch on my first day. Sceptically they accepted that John Hegarty would not be waiting to shake their hand and welcome me onto campus. As the days went on so did the constant questioning that every fresher should prepare themselves for. It seemed essential for my mother’s existence that she know the name of everyone I talked to, what courses they were doing, what I ate and drank, what I didn’t drink, what I learnt that day, the benefit of my
newly acquired knowledge and so on. Bombarded by these intrusions I was reduced to one worded answers, further fuelling her curiosity. Desperate for insight into college life she would turn to Gerry Ryan, Joe Duffy and Oprah Winfrey to get further inspiration for things to worry about. My sudden acquirement of a social life also caused controversy in my home. My parents could not comprehend the appeal of going out on a Tuesday night. Who was this Doyle fellow living on D’Olier Street? What’s a Jäger and why was I suddenly interested in getting up to Antics? On top of this I was also being accused of spending far too much time on “MyFace” and “BeBook” in which John Hegarty and my mystery future employers were watching my every move. Fighting the urge to lock me in a cage to keep me safe from the wider world, my parents would fund my social endeavours. However, acquisition of these funds was never easy. Somehow, despite my best laid plans, I always catch my Dad during one of his nostalgic moments. While gazing at my childhood photographs and he telling me what a sweet child I was, it becomes increasingly difficult to ask yet another favour. However, after blurting my request, he obliges with his favourite quote; “Someday and that day may never come, I’ll call upon you to do a service for me...” A subtle reminder that family is important and true to his word I am soon asked to weed the garden and make him sandwiches. A request I can’t refuse. Another shock for first time parents of freshers is the study situation. After watching me sweat over books long into every night for my leaving cert they were a bit surprised to see me engaging in activities like watching television for the first time in months. The idea of continuous assessment seemed like
some kind of hoax and the idea that some lectures were (secretly) optional shook them to the core. Shouldn’t “Reading Week” involve some reading? Looking back, I can see why they were reasonably worried that their diligent daughter didn’t have to get up until 9.30 most mornings, let alone trek into college for one o’clock lectures. The generous Christmas and summer holidays seemed a little too good to be true. The lack of Parent-teacher meetings was also a disappointment. I learnt that there are a couple of simple measures that can be taken to ensure harmony with your parents whether living on campus or at home. First, I always have some piece of information to volunteer over the dinner table. It particularly helps if it’s in relation to your course. In the eyes of my parents not only am I displaying useful information I have gained but also that I am taking an interest in my chosen field of study. Simple and effective. Secondly, always have library books on your desk, in your bag and lying around the house. Reading is not required. The older and more pompous looking the better. Just remember to renew them on time or risk paying the fines. Thirdly, although it is tempting to keep the details of your life to yourself, letting your parents know the work you are doing certainly helps their peace of mind. Although a class test or paper may not be extremely You’ll always be important to your their little Prince/ overall grade, Princess. your parents will appreciate knowing that you’re not slacking off. Also use the college grading system. Although you may be delighted with getting 68%, next to your secondary school Christmas tests your parents may not be so thrilled. Achieving a II.1, the second highest grade you can get, sounds much better. Lastly, thanking your folks never goes amiss. Undoubtedly, over the next four years they will push you to your limits, nag and hound you and give you more motivation to get employed and move out than any guidance councillor could. Nowhere in Trinity will you find a more dedicated, taxi driver, therapist, ATM, laundrette, chef and groupie rolled into one. Tara Monaghon is a Junior Sophister student of Music Education.
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interview : Student Life
On the Up and Up With Suas We’re more cash poor than ever but we’ve more time on our hands and never has it been so cool to give back. Miscellany spoke to Suas about helping those less fortunate. by elaine mccahill
s the new college year begins and the new influx of Freshmen assault their livers for days on end, the air is packed with new ambitions and unrelenting energy. It’s the time where all the societies crave numbers and while getting involved is one of the best aspects of college life, we should all endeavour to give over some of our free time to helping those less fortunate than ourselves and there’s no better time than at the beginning of a new college year to start getting involved. There are numerous charities in Trinity College and they all have an extended history of success in their endeavours. The charity, SUAS is a diverse and well meaning place to start, with programmes to suit those who want to travel and those who have a few spare hours during the week. As well as having a range of programmes to suit many tastes, SUAS is homegrown, having been launched in Trinity in 2003. SUAS is an organisation dedicated to supporting quality education in underresourced communities. Their vision is a world where all young people are given
the opportunity to realise their potential and effect positive change in our society. Miscellany spoke to Evie Finlay, Societies and Programmes Manager for SUAS about the range of programmes SUAS runs and why students new and returning should be getting involved. SUAS is an organisation dedicated to supporting quality education in under-resourced communities. One of their most attractive programes is the Overseas Volunteer Placement. This programme offers students the opportunity to travel abroad to either India or Kenya and work with children (aged from 4 -17 years) and staff in their Partner Schools and Organisations. The volunteers perform a variety of different roles from teaching assistant, to coach, to mentor, to friend, to student. It is a very diverse role and one that requires intense preparation. Volunteers are expected to raise 2,995 euro towards their placement, (this includes a ¤200 donation to the partner schools) and go through nine months of vigorous preparation. Three preparation weekends are held where the groups of students get to know each other, learn about what they’ll be doing on placement and
endeavouring to understand the cultural context of the society that they will be entering. It is a massive commitment but one where the possibilities and rewards are endless. As Evie explains, it’s an opportunity to develop your own personal skills as well as helping and improving the lives of those less fortunate than yourself: “It is a brilliant opportunity to develop your own skills; work in a team; demonstrate leadership...it is a learning process where you are given the opportunity to learn about the world and yourself. Students appreciate the fact that they’re privileged to be given a third level education and want to give something back. There is a great balance between personal development and helping others.” While three thousand euro sounds like a large figure to have to raise in the current economic climate, Evie is adamant that it can be done and that none of their volunteers have failed to reach their target: “Our advice every year to those going abroad is to start fundraising early. Whether you organise three big events or a number of small ones, we encourage our volunteers to break it down into small goals. 9
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Events like bag packs, table quizzes and coffee mornings go a long way as well as the support of family and friends.” As well as being involved in the
preparation phase, the volunteers are expected to go about participating in some self-research, such as spending time in a classroom to get some experience in a school environment. Understanding the context of the community the volunteers are about to entr is vital. The first step towards an effective placement is understanding the needs, challenges and history of the Partner Schools and their local area. Volunteers are expected to build on the lessons learnt from previous placements by wreviewing reports and talking with former volunteers. Of course, no matter how prepared you are before heading off to your exotic and unfamiliar destination, there will narly always be that element of surprise. No matter how much research you do or how many people you talk to, you are almost guaranteed to meet with the unexpected. Applications for the Volunteer Abroad Programme for Summer 2011 will open in November and the application process is particularly comprehensive whereby one has to promote themselves and their skills enough to be chosen in what is described as “a very competitive programme.” The team you travel with is als massive importance, SUAS work hard to make sure the skills and personalities of each group are balanced. It is a very Miscellany also spoke to Carlos Quinn, President of Trinity’s SUAS Stusdent Society. He has travelled to Kenya and India with SUAS and has credited these as being some of the ost amazing experiences of his life. He has worked through the Preparation Phase twice now and greatly believes in it’s ability to instill confidence in the students who intend to travel abroad for the ten weeks of summer. He says it particularly helps in realtion to the pressure of fundraising: “It’s a far less daunting experience when you hear about other people’s plans and ideas and even just knowing that you have so much support behind you is a great booster of people’s moral.” Carlos completely agrees with Evie’s advise in relation to fundraising, urging anyone willing to make the committment and be truly serious about raising the money to start early: “When you start early, it keeps the pressure off and you have time to plan ahead and organise really good events and make sure everyone knows about them. For example, even before you know you’ve been accepted to the programme, I would
Katy Dobey and children from Prayas Girls Shelter, Suas Volunteer Programme 2009, Prayas, Delhi India. Photograph taken by Clare Mulvany. intense experience and as such getpaired up to work together, so being a ting along with your group is essential. team player is essential. If volunteerGroups are usually of ten to twelvpeople ing abroad is not something that lights and while on placement volunteers are your philanthropic soul on fire then advise anyone applying to book out a bagpacking weekend in their local supermarket, the slots fill up quickly and it’s easy to cancel it if you need to. “ Carlos also has never come across anyone who has not met their target so raising the cash does appea to be an attainable goal as long as you put in the hard graft. Of course, once you arrive at your destination, it is a completely different challenge, as Carlos explains: “Living conditions are obviously not going to be like what you’re used to at home; it’s back to basics and that’s what makes the experience really, it makes you appreciate what you’ve got. It’s also very challenging in that the class sizes are huge with nearly over a hundred children in a classroom. However, it’s worth it because it is the children’s best time of year when the volunteers are there; the schools tend to run more efficiently and it’s great to know that you’re making a difference.” SUAS in TCD support and promote the Volunteer Programme but it’s their homegrown volunteering programmes and fundraising efforts that they’re really
all about. The Global Issues Course starts on the 11th of October, is run on campus and costs only ¤20 and is a great way to get involved in discussion on domestic and foreign development. They also run a Mentoring Programme in O’Connel’s Primary School where students help childdren with their homeowrk. The Bridge 2 College Programme encourages teenagers to continue with their education through the medium of technology and the Refugee Football Club gets those in need of some fun out onto the pitch for a game of soccer. If you’re not looking to make a massive committment, volunteers are always needed on fundraising days such as SUAS Day and St. Patrick’s Day. It’s a great way to meet people while doing something to help others at the same time. Carlos insists that they’re determined to make SUAS in TCD more social thn ever for this coming academic year. If you wish to find out more about SUAS in general visit: www. suas.ie and if you ant to learn more about SUAS in TCD log onto: www.tinyurl.com/suastcd.
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Katy Dobey, Ellen Burke, Tim Smith, Jack O’Kennedy picured at ‘Suas Day 2009’,. This was an event that the TCD Suas Society ran in December. Photograph taken by Clare Mulvaney SUAS also offers a range of volunteering options that are run on a weekly or once-off basis. The Bridge 2 College programme works with teenagers from disadvantaged schools in Ireland, encouraging young people to continue with their education, at least until Leaving Cart level and preferably on to university. The programme is IT based and involves projects to do with working with technology and computers, making films with young people. The Refugee Football programme is another programme, which might interest those with a passion for sports, as Carlos says “it’s a good game of soccer and is great fun.” If teaching is where it’s at for you, then the O’Connell Homework Club is a brilliant way of honing your skills. SUAS also hold a Global Issues course once a week for two hours, here in Trinity. For a nominal fee of 20 euro, you can engage with others from different backgrounds and courses as yourself in a six week course to do with issues of global development. These courses run for about six-eight weeeks in term time wiht weeks off for Reading Weeks. A new course starts in both the Autumn and the Spring and the Michaelmas Term Course is startingon Tuesday, the 11th of October. However, if you don’t have that much spare time on your hands, SUAS runs one-off events such as SUAS Day, where they organise hundreds of student
SUAS 2009 Annual Results: »» The SUAS Overseas Partner Support Programme assisted is 7 patners in India and Kenya by providing 91 teachingassistants for 10 weeks and ¤220,000. »» SUAS’s student ociety programme include: Mentoring; Oerseas Volunteer Programme, Volunteerig time and epertise and Fundraising. »» ¤410,000 was raised last year inluding ¤28,000 on St. Patrick’s Day by 327 volunteers. »» 3,500 people attended over 38 events. »» 270 participants completed a gobal issues course with 81% inspired to take further action. »» There were 60,000 visitors alone to www.suas.ie »» SUAS have won many awards and gained significant recognition : »» They have appeared on the R.T.E News, in the Irish Times and Trinity News. »» There have been 6 awards at the Kenyan National Cholar Championships for Gatoto Primary School in Nairobi.
volunteers to run a collection throughout the city for a day. St. Patrick’s day is another of their large fundraisers with SUAS volunteers littering the city painting faces and having the craic. The amounts raised on these is really significant and as such even signing up for one day makes an awful lot of difference. SUAS also run a range of talks called “Extraordinary Lives” where leaders from all walks of life share their personal reflections on how they made a contribution, demonstrating that leadership is a collaborative process and encouraging each of us to get involved. Previous speakers include John Hume, former leader of the Social Democratic and Labour Party and co-recipient of the 1998 Nobel Peace Prize with David Trimble among famous U.N. Ambassadors and Colm O’Gorman, founder of One in Four and head of Amnesty International Ireland. A current campaign being run by SUAS is called Act Now on 2015. It is a campaign endeavouring to make the Irish Government hold strong on their promise of giving 0.07% of our national income to the world’s poorest people by 2015. Why not get involved now and hopefully stay involved into the future and see what kind of contribution you can make? Elaine McCahill is a Senior Freshman student of Engish and History. 11
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studentlife: cutlure
Asylum in Ireland The Ins and Outs. A Sweet-Natured Pakistani Man, a Cheeky Afghan man and a Polyglot Iranian - and that’s all in just one week! Volunteering one’s time with Asylum seekers is a rewarding and diverse experience. by Kate Ferguson
Trinity Suas Society mentoring project run in partnership with the Jesuit refugee Service. Photograh taken by Stephen Murphy.
have learnt about ice cream made from snow gathered in the Afghan mountains. A graduate of nutrition has regarded my nails and accused me of a deficiency in calcium. I have seen images of bombings transmitted through a mobile phone and I have sung the English alphabet with two Ghanaian men. Hatch Hall, just off Harcourt Street is Victorian redbrick and full of stories. Until 2004 it provided Jesuit residence for male students of UCD and it is now a centre for asylum seekers. I know it only on a Wednesday night but each week it is a new place. Each week, at the entrance to the Trinity College Arts Block (as part of the Suas mentoring programme), a group gathers before making its way to Hatch Hall. A security guard buzzes us in and we make the walk through the entrance hall across the lawn and into the dining hall where there lingers in the air canteen curry and orange squash. There is a shuffling buzz as soon as the
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door is opened. Some familiar with the programme are seated already at a table waiting to be assigned a teacher; while the others, new comers, stand alone at the periphery or chat in small groups. There are snippets of French but otherwise I recognise in the surrounding languages only sounds.
At present, an asylum seeker in Ireland receives ¤19.10 a week and ¤9.60 for their children. The system of direct provision, which has been in place since 1999, assigns the asylum seeker to specified accommodation on a full board basis rather than providing them with an allowance to live independently. In October 2009, when I first visited Hatch Hall and for which the statistics are now available, there were 54 direct provision centres in Ireland. The centres with the highest capacity are hostels, hotels, and former colleges or nursing homes - though a mobile home park is also in operation with a capacity of 350. In October there were 6650 people being accommodated under direct provision, which represented almost 85% of the maximum capacity of 7779. The publication of the Free Legal Advice Centre (FLAC) report, on 18 February, revealed that many asylum seekers are spending over three years in direct provision centres waiting for their cases to be processed. In fact the largest proportion of residents (32%) have spent over three years in these facilities. That’s 2156 people. It’s the length of our Undergraduate college years and contrary to the Government’s vision of residence in these centres occurring on “a short-term basis (not more than six months)”. Those in the legal profession are aware that asylum cases represent a lucrative business. A barrister is likely to earn €1000 per tribunal ruling on asylum. The nickname Mr Njet has been given to one barrister notorious for his refusal of asylum. Word outside the chamber is that he has a few politician friends in high places. Undisputed is that he earns per ruling 50 times more than what those, whose fate he decides have to spend each week. The moment you sit down opposite one of these 6650 people, their facts and figures evaporate into the curry sauce and orange squash air. They look you in the eye, they shake your hand, they smile: they are human. They’re no longer seeking asylum but a conversation. Some time ago a bright-eyed Afghan man with a killer white smile produced for me a photo of a gleaming red sports car and a bright-eyed Afghan man with a killer white a smile. I looked at it, then at him. ‘Is this your car?’ I asked. ‘Are you a model?’ I thought. He grinned. ‘I
Suas & Jesuit Refugee Service one-to-one English lesson. Photograph taken by Stephen Murphy. do photoshop’ he replied impishly. He used to work in software. Each week a sheet is passed from table to table where pupils and teachers sign their names. The first day I meet Mark he takes the pen and while he signs it I talk to his friend Dag. I am alking a long time and I sneak a glance over. He is forming the ‘A’ of M–A-R-K. We spend the next half hour singing and writing the alphabet and the following week he connects letters to sounds and a world begins to open up before him. Sometimes I’m asked if I believe in God while other times I have been told that Allah created everything. Quite often I’ve been asked to explain why the Irish drink so much and why so many young girls smoke. I’m still working on an answer. There are compliments too. Nowhere are the people so kind and friendly as in Ireland. Nowhere do they care so much. Rafiq graduated with a degree in
The nickname Mr. Njet has been given to one barrister notorious for his refusal of asylum. Word outside the chamber is that he has a few politicians friends in high places. nutrition in Pakistan and speaks impeccable English. He suffers however from ‘hesitancy’. He had some difficulties in the Ilac Library last week because he arrived 5 minutes after his assigned
booking time for the internet. All he needed, he tells me were 15 minutes, but the computer had been given away by the time he arrived. To overcome his shyness we practise some role-plays and I do my best to inspire confidence with my outrageous rudeness. He notices that I don’t take sugar in my tea and asks if I have a general aversion to sweetness. I certainly do not. Next week, he promises to bring me some Pakistani treats, which he is ‘sure’ I will like. Before Christmas an Iranian polyglot came to the class simply to socialise. He learnt his French from time spent in prison in France and picked up Italian, German and Spanish somewhere along the way. With fluent English under his belt, and TG4 available in Hatch Hall it seems natural that he wants to learn Irish also. In three minutes he has learnt the personal pronouns and is eager to begin the pronominal declensions. He makes etymological connections at alarming speeds and smiles with glee while he does it. In another world he would be working in translation for the EU or in the department of Linguistics at Harvard. The class is over and he bids me ‘Slán leat’. He could have said ‘Au Revoir’ but I have not seen him since. All photographs displayed here were given courtesy of the Suas Educational Development Programme. Kate Ferguson is a postgraduate student in the school of History. 13
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COVER STORY : INTERVIEW
Underfunded and Outdated Our Editor spoke to Colm O’Gorman about governmental accountability and mental jealthcare in Ireland, corporate accountability in India and much more. by Polly dennison
t was last Tuesday that I went to Ballast House on Aston Quay to meet Colm O’Gorman, the Chief executive of Amnesty International’s Irish branch. He led me through the maze of corridors, rooms and stairways until we reached the organisation’s meeting room. Amnesty was founded nearly 50 years ago and has sections in over 100 countries. Ireland was one of the first countries to have a branch of Amnesty and the Irish section now has over 14,000 members. We began by discussing Amnesty’s work at the moment on a global level. Colm explained to me how broad Amnesty’s work is, simply due to the fact that their mission is to defend and protect every right as laid out in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. He told me that Amnesty’s work has developed over the years, since it was founded fifty years ago; from an organisation geared towards helping political prisoners, fighting for freedom of expression and civil liberties; to one which tries to tackle not only these issues, but the social and economic causes of them. Social and economic problems often underpin other issues, such as lack of freedom of expression, O’Gorman explained and argued that if you want to fix something, you’ve got to go from the roots up. O’Gorman explains that one of the key
objectives of Amnesty is to manage their resources in the most effective way possible. With such a broad spectrum of potential work, it is easy to understand why this is such an important consideration for Amnesty. O’Gorman tells me that one of the most difficult parts of their work is not deciding where to work, but deciding where not to work. Colm explains that, quite often, they must simply work on the cases where the violation is the most egregious. What seems particularly difficult is assessing individual cases and often they must ask themselves if this one person’s case is symptomatic of an epidemic. Amnesty must decide whether they are able to focus resources on one or two individual cases or whether they must focus their efforts on a broader issue. On a human level, one can imagine how difficult it is to hear some individual stories and to have to simply turn away due to lack of resources. However, turning away from such cases does mean that they can ensure that maximum benefit is reaped from their work by focusing on the broader problems such as maternal mortality and corporate accountability. Colm explains that Amnesty are particularly interested in corporate accountability in non-state bodies; companies who can not be held accountable in the same way that an elected government could be, but bodies that have a heavy
influence on the running of the country, such as the extractive industries in the Niger delta. O’Gorman tells me that Amnesty simply work to ensure that international human rights law is adhered to. Corporate accountability is particularly important when it comes to Bhopal in India. In December, 1984, toxic chemicals leaked from a pesticide plant in the city. Approximately half a million people were affected, with up to 10,000 people killed in the immediate aftermath and a further 15,000 in the following 20 years. It has been 25 years since the tragedy and yet, the site of the factory is yet to be cleaned up. The health of the residents is still affected. Despite tens of thousands of deaths, and countless ailments as a result of the leaks, no one has been held accountable. Amnesty have been working for a number of years with the residents to ensure that they are given proper compensation, health care and that a full and transparent investigation is conducted. Colm told me that it is only in the last few months that they are beginning to see some response to their work in the region, a quarter of a century after the atrocity. Before 9/11, Amnesty’s major work was focused on the eradication of poverty – believing it to be one of the most significant violations of human rights. However, since September 11th, 15
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closure of the old, outdated, Victorian institutions that do not do enough for the patients. Instead, the organisation wants to see the establishment of community-based care teams. At the moment, government policy on mental health protects those who are involuntarily hospitalised, but not those who are voluntarily so. The Mental Health Watchdog for Ireland has released reports over the summer that speak of “inhumane conditions” for residents. The watchdog has said that the centres in which these people with mental health issues reside, are “unfit for human habitation.” Along with these goals, Amnesty also want to see an end to institutionalising young people in facilities where they are treated like adults.
Amnesty Ireland’s Chief Executive, Colm O’Gorman with Ciaran Cuffe and Joe Costello. Photo courtesy of Amnesty Ireland. old issues have remerged in the western world, such as torture and religious persecution. Those civil liberties, which Amnesty fought for before, are suddenly back under attack. Countries, which were once seen as “the great defenders” of these rights, are now not quite so gallant. While they are continuing to fight for the eradication of poverty, believing it to be one of the major causes of human rights violations, they are now having to I also spoke with the head of D.U. Amnesty, Jane McGowen. Since becoming chairperson, Jane has really expanded D.U. Amnesty’s activities. They will now be holding fortnightly meetings, where members can meet and share their ideas, suggestions and opinions. Jane hopes that by doing this, it will make Amnesty more accessible to its members in Trinity. With Trinity being the biggest university Amnesty group in the country, Jane feels that it’s very important for the students to be able to voice their thoughts and become as involved as possible. D.U. Amnesty will be running a different campaign each month, as well as an raise awareness. Not only will there be flash mobs and protests, but there will also be some slight unorthodox methods used. In October, they will be focusing on the rights of samesex couples and the fight for same-sex marriage. The raise awareness for the this campaign - and for a bit of fun they’ll be staging a mock wedding on the steps of the college chapel in front square. Make sure to come along and
refocus their resources to fight for prisoners of conscious, to stop torture and illegal – often state sponsored – kidnapping and similar problems that now afflict the western world. Amnesty have been working in the area of mental health in Ireland since 2003. They are currently working to ensure that improving mental health facilities becomes part of the political vision for Ireland for the current and future governments. Amnesty want to see the toast the fake nuptials. Another of their campaigns will be to do with the Palestinian conflict. D.U. Amnesty will be running Skype sessions between Trinity college students and Amnesty members who are residents of Palestine. Students are free to ask the Palestinian Amnesty folk anything about Gaza and the conflict in general. Not only will Amnesty be running all these campaigns this year - with many more to come after October but they will also be running many nights out and even a trip away. Last year D.U. Amnesty ran The Mistletoe Ball with great success. This year will be no different with Amnesty’s Freshers’ Week gig, Janmnesty, on Thursday in Crawdaddy, run in association with a myriad of other societies. Tickets will be available from D.U. Amnesty’s Freshers’ Week stand. For more information, there’s a facebook event page too. The Mistletoe Ball will be run again and there’s talk of a trip down the country somewhere - watch this space. Along with all the social events and campaigns, you can also get involved
Colm told me that the situation, for many young people in the institutions, is similar to placing 14-year-old child who has broken their leg in a dark room with no painkillers and closing the door so that nobody could hear them scream. Amnesty wish to see a development in care aimed specifically at young people. The same Mental Health Inspector from the state watchdog has said that detaining young people in such institutions is not only purely custodial, but it is also counter-productive. Colm told me that in the nitty-gritty of volunteering for D.U. Amnesty. With all the events they’ll be running, Jane welcomes any volunteers there are. Volunteers help with the organisation of the events and also help with raising awareness of Amnesty’s work at the event. There are petitions to be signed and information to be §§§spread. D.U. Amnesty is currently allocated one vote at the Amnesty AGM. Jane wants that number doubled. Not only is D.U. Amnesty the biggest student Amnesty section in Ireland, but there also assisting other colleges in setting up Amnesty branches. IADT now has an Amnesty branch thanks to our guys - helping to spread the word and support the work even more. If you want to get involved, simply visit Amnesty’s stand during Freshers’ Week and sign up. There’ll be free fair trade coffee on the stand and lots of information to pick up. If you miss Freshers’ Week, then you can email Jane at amnesty@csc.tcd.ie - or pop in to the D.U. Amnesty offices in House six - that’s the one with SU shop for all you Freshers - on the second floor.
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the situation, for many young people in the institutions, is similar to placing 14-year-old child who has broken their leg in a dark room with no painkillers and closing the door so that nobody could hear them scream. O’Gorman said that we are simply not addressing the mental health problems of these young people who are placed in these institutions. One of the major reasons for this, Colm believes, is the stigma that is still attached to mental health issues in Ireland. It is quite alright to take time off due to a broken bone, a prolonged virus or a short stay in hospital, but it is still seen as embarrassing to take time off to deal with one’s depression or to call in sick due to being bipolar. Poltics in Ireland, Colm argues, is very re-active – it follows public opinion and acts later. At the moment, general public opinion on mental health issues does not warrant any serious work from the government. Not only does this stigma survive, but O’Gorman argues that mental health facilities have been “woefully underfunded” for quite a number of years. Amnesty are happy to report, however, that they are seeing a response, if small, to their campaign from government. The campaign is now working to implement new laws, so that if personnel in the government change, the issue isn’t forgotten. Amnesty would like to see laws implemented whereby the HSE are required to provide certain services and shut down old institutions. It has been government
How to Get Involved »» Write letters and respond to Urgent Action campaigns. It may not sound exciting, but you’d be surprised how much of a difference the letters can make. They are mostly addressed to one person and that one person will receive thousands of letters. It does make a difference. »» Volunteer at events on Amnesty stands. Help raise awareness and spread the word. »» Join D.U. Amnesty. They have loads of events where you can meet other Amnesty members, have a good time and learn about Amnesty’s work. »» Visit amnesty.ie for more details. policy for 26 years that Ireland should have community-based mental health services, however, they have never been required, by law, to carry out this work. Through this legislation, Colm argues, the attitude to mental health in Ireland would surely be felt on a broader level. This would call for active government, not re-active, something that may take time. In keeping with Amnesty’s work for coporate accountability, is a wish
to see state accountability in Ireland. One woman, from Cork, who had been repeatedly raped by her school principle took a case to the high court was told that the state had no responsibility for the actions of the principle as they were not his employer. However, the state pays his paycheque, they set the rules for how he is to be employed, what he is to teach, how his work day will pan out as well as what should appear in his contract. The state refused to accept any responsibility on the grounds that the principal of the school had signed his contract as his employer and the woman received nothing. This means that the state is legally allowed to accept no responsibility for the actions of those who abuse children in any way in state institutions. The state has no legal liability for the welfare of children who are under the care of state workers in state institutions. The case of the young Cork woman brought this flaw to light and Colm told me that he was shocked that the minister of education and science at the time – Mary Hanafin – did nothing to rectify the situation. She publicly accepted the facts, but took no action in response. This lack of legal liability means that the rights of many children could be violated and the state would not have to do anything. Colm wants this to be changed – he wants accountability. Polly Dennison is a Senior Freshman student of History.
Colm O’Gorman with Minister John Moloney at the launch of a report on mental health. Photo courtesy of Amnesty Ireland. 17
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travel
A Passage to India. Playing with Indian street children all day in the streets of Calcutta was not quite as romantic as Margaret Bridge had hoped. by Margaret Bridge
hy would anyone volunteer to spend a month of their summer holidays working with street children in the sweaty heat and inescapable poverty of India when they could be relaxing at home, enjoying the beach and the lack of stomach upsets? This was a question I asked myself frequently as, bored almost to tears and on the verge of self-sublimation, I sat down to play the same bloody clapping game with yet another overlyexcited child for the twentieth time in an hour. Any thoughts of a rewarding experience working with adorable children who would warm my brittle heart of stone with their smiles and laughter were always promptly dispelled by some big-eyed, sweet-faced little angel kicking me in the shins and running away with my handbag. The smile was to lull me into a false sense of security and the laughter was at me attempting to run
Kolkata in a nutshell »» Kolkata is the capital of the West Bengal region in north-eastern India, close to Bangladesh. »» The population of the city of Kolkata is 4.39 million »» The population of the urban district of Kolkata stands at 9.2 million. »» In 1690, The East India Trading began trading from Kolkata - one of their first posts.
after them in temperatures of 35 C and 80 per cent humidity… I was working in Loreto Sealdah, Calcutta, a nominally private feepaying school where half the students attend for free and which also runs a programme for street children, taking them in, letting them live in the school and preparing them for mainstream education. The principal, Sr. Cyril, had been a pupil at my former primary and secondary schools and every other year since junior infants, she had come to the school to give presentations on her school and the myriad projects it runs to help, as she puts it, “the poorest of the poor.” These talks, a naïve desire to change the world, and films and books like The Little Princess and A Passage to India at an impressionable age meant that I grew up wanting to go to India and finally, last year, some schoolfriends and I got around to contacting Sr. Cyril, booking our flights and eventually on 10th June last, going to India. When we finally arrived at the school, jet-lagged, exhausted and in a state of shock following the taxi journey –I would say that Indian drivers have no respect for traffic laws but actually, to be fair, I think there just aren’t any traffic rules– it was to the heart-warming smiles of the young girls who crowded around us. They were surprisingly not shy and wasted no time grabbing us by the hand, demanding our attention and initiating us into the life of the school. Their excitement was infectious and we all looked forward to playing with the
girls and getting to know them better. Our timetable with the children was quite flexible; from 8 – 12 am, the ones who weren’t ready for school studied on their own, after lunch and chores, study time for all the Rainbows (as the children on the street programme were known) was 4 – 6 and then there was playtime after dinner, until bedtime, and we were pretty much allowed to drop in and out at these times as we pleased. While the flexibility may sound appealing, it actually made it quite difficult to motivate ourselves - I don’t think I made it down to the school on time once after the first day (although why break the well-formed habit of a lifetime?) Since we had no fixed jobs or routine for most of our time there, it was hard always to feel any sense of accomplishment in what we were doing. Our task was really quite simple, to give them the
Our task was really quite simple, to give them the two things that should have required no extra skill or exertion on our behalf; much needed love and attention. two things that should have required no extra skill or exertion on our behalf; much needed love and attention, and also English. However, although the girls sometimes seemed excited to see us, it was sometimes hard to believe that they would have minded much if we hadn’t been there and with so many
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to divide our attention between, it was hard to perceive any individual progress in communication. At the end, when Sr. Cyril took us into her office to thank us, she assured us that even if what we were doing wasn’t going to save the world, she could see the difference it made in
I felt as though I had let down some of my friends when I returned just as materialistic and comfort-seeking as ever the girls (each of which incidentally, she somehow knew by name and for each she could tell us their entire family history), the improvement it made in them socially and how quickly their English improved with volunteers around – but that was often hard to see that as we were going along from day to day. For myself, another problem that I discovered somewhat too late was simply that I’m not really a kids’ person… Initially I was enchanted by the girls, all of them so affectionate and so beautiful with their huge dark eyes, their cheeky grins, and their jet black hair but I have to admit that I found long periods playing clapping games and making nonsensical small talk with six-year-olds pretty tedious. There were moments of redemption though – like the time Anju, a parentless, siblingless four-yearold who always looked tragically on the verge of tears, fell asleep curled up under my arm and I suddenly realized that she’d probably never had someone to do that with before. I remembered falling asleep downstairs as a child and being carried upstairs to be tucked into bed by my father and kicked myself for having ever taken it for granted. Similarly,
A street vendor in Kolkata.
On the street in Kolkata. Pinky the hell-raiser, outstripped in her fiendish habits only by her older and eviler sister, once took one of the other girls out of sight up a flight of stairs; J was wondering nervously whether she shouldn’t have brought her shin-pads when Pinky made her sit down on the steps and instead of trying to push her down them, climbed onto her lap and promptly fell asleep. Then there were the older girls with whom we were able to form proper, coherent friendships; seventeen-year-old permed Nevi who, giggling with embarrassment, dragged me into her group of friends to ask me, with promises of absolute secrecy, what a condom was; fourteen-year-old Maya, the sassiest girl I’ve ever met – think a
Hindi Harlemite with an attitude that makes Beyonce look slightly pathetic – and quiet Rashida who explained all about Muslim marriage customs to me before promising to find me a lovely Indian husband and declaring her desire to marry my younger brother. I felt as though I had let down some of my friends when I returned just as materialistic and comfort-seeking as ever. I think everyone expected me to come back wearing a sari and spouting Buddhist philosophy; one of my best friends commented crossly that I hadn’t “changed at all!” but I think I have. Certainly, I have not cast aside the trappings of modern life and all its creature comforts. I am most definitely in no immediate danger of signing my shoe budget over to Concern or Trocaire but if anything it really has made me appreciate what I have. I don’t want ess but the experience has taught me to be truly grateful and of everything i have. Home has never felt as good as when I got back from Calcutta. If I’m not actually a better person, I am at least a happier one. And certainly, learning that I’m not a modern day Mary Poppins or Mother Teresa – we’ll leave the controversy out of it –and learning to accept that has to be good for me. I wasn’t quite lost enough to “find” myself in India but I certainly got to know me better. Going abroad anywhere as foreign as India and working with people so far removed from your everyday life will do that to you, and so it’s worth it if for nothing else. I don’t know if I’d do it again, but I certainly wouldn’t go back and not do it for the world. Margaret Bridge is a Junior Sophister student of Music. 19
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D U LIKE MUSIC?
Join the D.U. Music Society for Concert Trips, Recital Nights and Reduced Tickets for Every Kind of Music! Look Out For Our Lunchtime Recitals During Freshers’ Week! 20
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Student Life
The Cut-Throat Business of Charity Fundraising Spare a thought for those with charity t-shirts and clip boards -it’s a hard-knock life for “chuggers”. by Domhnall O’Sullivan
o you ever wonder how Concern manages to find the cash to fund development projects in some of the poorest areas of the world? Do you think that Trócaire relies on the handfuls of fivecent coins brought in by church collections and the truckloads of two-cents gleaned from their ubiquitous Lenten boxes? Or on the once-off donations whenever Bono feels more philanthropistic than usual? You probably don’t wonder about this at all but, I want to tell you, for most charities bread-and-butter income is provided by the good citizens who subscribe to monthly direct debit donations, which range from anything from five to fifty euros. It’s a well-known fact (at least in the world of charity fundraising) that once somebody is signed up to such a subscription they stick it out for an average of 4-5 years; so even if the amount is a measly couple of quid per month at least it assures a steady and guaranteed flow of income for the charity. But how do these organizations encourage us to discover our inner Samaritan and to actually make the leap from being passive denunciators of poverty to becoming active abolitionists of adversity? We’ve all seen the heart-wrenching ads on tv depicting emaciated African
children living in terrible conditions; but how many of you have ever done anything more than push your bowl of Cheerios away from you and say “jeez lads, it’s awful isn’t it” before flicking to Comedy Central? Instead, charities normally bring home the dough in one of two ways; charity mugging or cold calling. The former, which seems to be gaining in popularity in recent years, involves hopelessly enthusiastic and usually studenty-type volunteers in Concern/Focus Ireland/Trocaire/insert charity here jackets who verbally and occasionally physically assault innocent passers-by on Grafton Street and many others streets in the winding city of Dubin. Hence the charity-mugger (think I’ve heard “chugger” used before, if not then you heard it here first) moniker. Indeed, this species appears to be spawning rapidly and has made entire stretches of the city centre unsafe for peaceful walking. However, people are growing more and more wise to the wily ways of the chugger and more often than not either avoid any kind of eye contact, corss the roas at the earliest opportunity or else make a wide bee-line away from the dangerous creature. Thus, it’s down to cold-calling to convince people to part with their hard-earned cash and donate to charity.
Cold-calling involves calling from house to house in a given neighbourhood in an attempt to sell whatever it is you are trying to sell (in this case well-being I suppose). Through a combination of boredom, lack of money, and basically the lack of job options available in Dublin these days, I found myself employed as one of these unwelcome callers for a (predictably) short period of time this summer.
Any more than three days without hitting the daily target of four subscriptions meant an almost certain sacking. However, I wasn’t actually employed directly by Trócaire, or Gorta, or any of these charities. My employer was a fundraising company which was itself hired by various charities to provide them with donators; something that personally I had never even realized occurred. Thus, it wasn’t a case of “going out there and doing one’s best for a good cause by finding compassionate people to sign up to our benevolent organization”; rather it was a case of “getting the feck out there and doing everything it takes to sign up absolutely anyone so that one can keep one’s job and hopefully earn a maximum amount of commission in the process”. 21
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A “Chugger” on the street. No doubt asking for “a moment of your time”. Photo by Andy Cross. Cut-throat doesn’t even begin to describe it. Although a basic minimumwage salary went with the position, any more than three days without hitting the daily target of four subscriptions meant an almost certain sacking. Throughout the Craig David total of seven days that I lasted in the company, I must have worked with dozens of different colleagues. And it didn’t take me too long to figure out that I wasn’t exactly a naturally born salesman either. A combination of a complete lack of charm and a foolish commitment to honesty does not only make Enda Kenny, it also makes a piss-poor cold-caller. The former defect unfortunately led to several incidents. The most memorable of these was a physical chase from a front porch in Celbridge by an opinionated housewife; while a naive persistence in the latter meant that I was often finished my side of the street before my more savvy and charming workmate had bullshitted his way past his second door. I just couldn’t overcome the fact that if it was me who answered the door to a smarmy salesman peddling Trócaire’s wares, I’d almost definitely tell him where to go. So when people politely (and often not-so politely) declined my generous offer to sell them some wellbeing, I fecked off without argument. However, despite the fact that it was
ultimately a failure, I did gain some interesting insights from my lenghty stint, and not just what I learned about my own character (more specifically, its limits). For example, I realised just how many people in Ireland are currently unemployed. A staggering amount of men under the age of forty, and judging by appearances directly descended from the breakfast-roll generation, opened the door to me during the afternoon. After politely listening to my heartfelt plea to help the more needy of this world they would ask me, again politely, how the hell I thought somebody who sits at home watching The Afternoon Show can afford to give to charity. Before going back inside to Blaithnid et al. I also made an intriguing discovery about the priorities of the Irish population. The company I was working for (which no, I haven’t and am not going to name) had a scoreboard in the employees’ lounge displaying the results of the various teams of fundraisers who were deployed to campaign for either Trócaire, Barnardos or Dogs Trust. Every day, without fail, the latter was the charity which performed best, while Trócaire invariably comprised a sorry collection of solitary sales or indeed, what we call in the business, doughnuts. This led me to the worrying but fascinating conclusion that Irish people seem to care more
about the well-being of stray Irish dogs than they do about the survival of poverty-stricken Tanzanian children. Either that or else all the best salespeople were put on Dogs Trust. Anyway, suffice to say that I wasn’t overly disappointed when I was fired. But what’s the moral of this whole story? Well there isn’t one really, it’s just been me telling you what I did with my summer, or part of it at least. But if there were to be an Aesop-esque conclusion, it would be to realise (if you havn’t done so already) that the world of charity and charity fundraising is not as innocent and friendly as you might expect. Indeed, it is a business which is just as modern and professional as any other, complete with hirings, firings, procedures and targets. Also, the next time a chugger or a cold- caller implores a minute of your time to “raise your awareness” about his charity’s recent good work, remember that the chances are that he probably doesn’t care much for the charity he’s peddling and helping those in need but all he/she is trying to raise is his own bank balance and the prospects of him keeping his job for a while, well longer than a week anyway. Domnhnall O’Sullivan recently graduated from Trinity with a degree in European Studies.
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Politics travel
Kashmir’s summer of discontent Kashmir is still in a state of unrest. Caelainn Hogan spent a summer there, amid curfews and shoot-to-kill policies. by caelainn Hogan
ashmir has been on the boil this summer during what has felt like a massacre in slow motion, with over 80 people dead since June at the hands of police and paramilitary forces. The Valley has been under almost continual shut down for months due to strikes and military imposed curfews and has witnessed the most widespread and vehement protests since the 1980’s. A siege-like stalemate has developed between Kashmiri civilians protesting against what they see as a brutal occupation by Indian forces and severe enforcement of curfew by police and paramilitary forces and even the deployment of the Indian army. The Kashmiri people have been undeterred by the harsh measures imposed by security forces, including ‘shoot to kill’ policies broadcast publically, and continue to come out on the streets across the Valley to make their voices heard, knowing full well the consequences as the deplorable number of civilian deaths continues to rise. For most people July 6th was an uneventful date this summer. Many Irish students were off on holidays, or looking forward to the Oxegen festival that weekend. For the family of Muzaffar Ahmed Bhat this will be a date forever branded in their memories as the day the body of their 17 year old son was released from the local police station in
a plywood coffin. Having disappeared the evening before while out walking in the peaceful village of Gangbug where he lived, on the outskirts of Srinagar, the summer capital of Kashmir, he had reportedly been beaten to death after an unprovoked encounter with security forces. The front yard of the family home was filled with neighbours and family, who upon the arrival of the coffin carried it in a procession down the small village roads and across a wooden bridge to a football field where Muzaffar had often played. His coffin was soon joined by that of Fayaz Ahmed Wani, a 35 year old government employee and father of two daughters, who lived two minutes away from Muzaffar, and had been allegedly shot in the head during police firing. The two coffins were laid on the ground together, surrounded by a crowd of hundreds of outraged mourners,
Civilians are confined to their homes and in many instances even those coming out to seek medical aid are turned which continued to grow. Fayaz’s wife lay unconscious and his two daughters grabbed at their hair in desperation and cried out for their father. The shrouds covering the faces of the men were uncovered and journalists ushered through the pressing crowd to photograph the
wounds, as evidence against any attempt to distort the facts of their brutal deaths. The crude stitches that barely held the flesh of Muzaffar’s forehead together were still wet with blood. Weeks later, it would be reported by authorities that the boy’s death had resulted from drowning. Hundreds of women, who would usually only be present at the final funeral ceremony, crowded the hill above the men, on the way chanting ‘stay with them’, their presence intended as protection from police and the paramilitary Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) who in the past weeks had fired upon funeral processions, as well as unarmed protesters. Indeed later in the day the funeral procession carrying the coffins to Eidgah, the Martyr’s graveyard, was stopped by force and driven back. Photos would later appear in newspapers of Muzaffar’s father trying to shield his son’s coffin which had been dropped to the ground as the crowd was violently dispersed. No matter where they were buried however the devoted promise that Muzaffar’s mother shouted as her son’s body was carried away by a sea of mourners would be true for all Kashmiris witnessing these needless deaths: “We will never forget you.” The undisciplined and excessive use of force by police and CRPF in the Valley is breeding contempt in a new generation who are taking to the streets with an 23
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Kashmiri men mourn their loss. ever strengthening conviction for selfdetermination and freedom for Kashmir. Muzaffar and Fayaz were two of over 60 civilians, a death toll that is still rising, to have lost their lives at the hands of security forces in Kashmir this summer, not to mention the hundreds wounded. The recent unrest began with the death of Tufail Ahmed Mattoo, another student of 17 years, who was killed by a rubber bullet fired by police while walking home through a playground on the eleventh of June. The majority of the fatalities have been teenagers and even young children. In July, nine year old Tauqeer Ahmad Rather was shot dead during indiscriminate firing by CRPF on an unarmed procession. In August eight year old Milad Ahmad Dar died from a CRPF bullet and nine year old Sameer Ahmad Rah was allegedly beaten to death by security forces after going out to buy sweets. During the autopsy a half chewed toffee was found still in his mouth. The Valley of Kashmir has been under almost constant shutdown since June eleventh, either under strikes called by the pro-freedom conglomerate Hurriyat Conference to protest the many deaths, or more often under official and unofficial curfew imposed by police and the paramilitary CRPF. During such curfews civilians are confined to their homes and in many instances even those coming out to seek medical aid are turned back. On a few occasions ambulances were even refused passage to hospitals while carrying critical patients. In many areas there were reports of unnecessary raids on houses, with wanton damage to private property and the harassment of families. A few weeks after the death of Tufail SMS services in the Valley were stopped, meaning no texts could be sent
or received. Young Kashmiris have been turning to Facebook as an outlet and a new forum for protest as well as a way to communicate, share news updates and warn about tension in various areas. During the worst periods of curfew newspapers were restricted from distributing and so the internet was sometimes the only source of information. The situation in Kashmir remains unknown to many, unlike disputed territories such as Palestine and Tibet which gain more press and greater public sympathy. Kashmir has been a flashpoint of political and social unrest, a territory which Pakistan and India have fought three wars over, with a history of conflict between Separatist militancy and Indian forces, which was at its peak during the ‘90s. The ‘Line of Control’ between Indian and Pakistan administrated Kashmir is still a ceasefire line and not an official border. After the ceasefire in 1948 the UN had demanded a plebiscite to decide which country the Kashmiri people wanted to be a part of, but this was never conducted and therefore relations between India and Pakistan remain in conflict over the issue, but more importantly, Kashmiris feel unjustly occupied by India and denied their affirmed right to choose. Article 370 of the Indian constitution in fact asserts Kashmir’s unique autonomy, with its own flag and constitution, preventing any non-Kashmiri to purchase land or property in the state and limiting India’s influence to the field of defense, communication and foreign policy. Due to a history of rigged elections and coerced voting however the Kashmiri government is often seen by its people as little more than a puppet of New Delhi. The main cause for anti-India sentiment among Kashmiris is the record of
human rights violations and atrocities committed by Indian forces in the Valley. An estimated 1,000,000 civilians have been killed since 1988 and thousands of people disappeared, with mass graves uncovered across the Valley. Every Kashmiri has a story about the harrowing torture methods used by Indian forces on suspects, including one method of inserting a live electric wire into the penis. Rape and harassment of Kashmiri women by Indian soldiers is common, the most notable being the Kunaposh Pora mass rape of 1991, where at least 53 women were gang raped by Indian soldiers. There is an estimate 700,000 soldiers stationed in Kashmir today, the denied normal opportunities such as going to school or to work due to curfews and strikes, outraged by the continuing deaths of their peers at the hands of security forces and faced with the reality of homes being ransacked and people arrested at random. The fact is, even in such an extreme situation and with such antagonism in their daily lives, these young people are not reaching for the gun or turning to militancy, but instead are persevering with new and alternative ways of protest. This summer’s unrest has highlighted a particular alternative form of resistance and protest which has gained much attention from media and even from the Indian government. Stone pelting, originally the habit of young Kashmiri protesters as a way to provoke and contest security forces, has become a
An estimated 1,000,000 civilians have been killed since 1988 and thousands of people disappeared, with mass graves uncovered across the Valley. political statement used by Kashmiris of all age and class, men and women. When you see two or three young boys stand up against a line of uniformed men armed with AK47’s and in full riot gear, with nothing more than a stone in their hand to throw, you understand how the act can be nothing more than a statement of helplessness and injustice and a desperate but brave act of resistance. When these stones are answered with bullets, this statement is confirmed. Protests are a widespread and daily occurrence and include people from all occupations and all age groups. Even in the face of curfew people continue to come out on the streets to raise their voices against the recent killings and call for freedom. As well as the large rallies, small sit down protests in the streets and even on the main roads have become habitual in all areas of Srinagar. Peaceful in their nature but passionate in their
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Kashmiri women take to the streeets. cause, groups of women and men would sit in circles on the ground chanting pro-freedom and anti-India slogans such as ‘Azaadi’ (freedom) and ‘Go India Go”. Boys as young as five, unable to go to school due to the situation, stand with their families in the street and shout for India to ‘Go Back’. In all areas of the city ‘Go India, Go Back’ is spray painted on walls and on the surface of the roads. For the Kashmiris, their message is clear. Separatist leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani, who is under almost constant house arrest, states five key demands that need to bet met for protests to end: Kashmir to be recognised as an international dispute, the “demilitarisation” of Kashmir, the release of “political prisoners”, the withdrawal of the AFSPA and the punishment of soldiers responsible for the killings. International support for Kashmir and pressure on India would help to make these demands a reality, but although the Kashmir conflict is one that leaders in the West quote as a top priority, Obama calling it one of his ‘critical tasks’ during the presidential campaign, their ultimate desire seems to be retaining friendly ties with India and allowing it to maintain its image of the ‘soft power’ with a flourishing economy, a liberal nature and the title of the largest democracy in the world. David Cameron during his visit to India this
summer had no comment on a Kashmir that was burning just an hour’s flight from his hotel in Delhi. India it seems will continue with its merciless tactics in Kashmir and Kashmiris will continue to come out on the streets in the face of all threats to raise their voices for freedom and for justice. It seems that many more boys streets of Srinagar punctuated by countless military bunkers and uniformed men sporting AK47s. The Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act, employed in the Valley since 1990, is one of the main bones of contention for Kashmiris, who rightly see it as a draconian, undemocratic law and a violation of their human rights. The AFSPA is basically martial law, giving security forces the power to “fire upon or otherwise force, even to the causing of death, against any person who is acting in contravention of any law”, to arrest people without warrant and to detain them indefinitely without trial and to enter and search any house without warrant, by force if necessary. In 2009 Navanethem Pillay, UN Commissioner for Human Rights, described the law as a “dated and colonial era law that breach contemporary international human rights standards.”, however it continues to be in effect in the Valley. No legal proceeding can be brought against any member of the armed forces acting
When you see two or three young boys stand up against a line of uniformed men armed with AK47’s and in full riot gear, with nothing more than a stone in their hand to throw, you understand how the act can be nothing more than a statement of helplessness and injustice and a desperate but brave act of resistance. under the AFSPA, giving security forces no incentive to practice restraint, being legally immune for their actions. It also means that victims of abuses committed by the armed forces have no access to legal reprisal and thus closure. There tends to be a general misinterpretation of the Kashmiri separatist movement as an effort to join with Pakistan rather than a genuine demand for Independence. Interestingly, Kashmiris have chosen the title ‘Quit Kashmir’ for their campaign, named after Ghandi’s ‘Quit India’ movement which led to Indian independence from the British in 1947.There is an unfortunate trend in the media to focus mainly on associating the current unrest with militancy or influence from Pakistan and the Indian press 25
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even claimed that protesters were being bribed with Afghan heroin to go out on the streets. However, the reality is that the current resistance and pro-freedom campaign is being fuelled purely and voluntarily by the general public themselves. It is not militants or terrorists but hundreds of everyday civilians, from all classes and backgrounds, men, women and children, who are in the streets making a democratic stance and raising their voices against what they see as an unjust regime, armed only with their convictions. Faysal Muhammad, a nineteen year old student from Srinagar, is frustrated and outraged at what he sees as the inhumane and unjust treatment of civilian protesters in Kashmir by both police and Indian forces as well as the negative portrayal of Kashmiris in the media: “We come out on the streets pleading for justice, demonstrating against the occupation of Kashmir. We are beaten with batons, bombed with tear-gas canisters and ultimately showered with bullets. We take stones in retaliation because it’s human nature and then the Indian Media portrays us as mobsters and gunless terrorists”. The constant invasion by security forces into his privacy, the disruption of his daily life by curfew, the military bunkers and swaths of concertina wire on the streets of his city, makes Faysal feel like a prisoner in his own home. He
Young boys joining in the protest.
explains: “It’s like living in a beautiful concentration camp. (...) You must carry your ID to prove your own identity in your own land. You are frisked whenever they like. You cannot argue with Forces and if you do you will be picked up, tortured and your family harassed.” This feeling of frustration and anger is creating a new generation of Kashmiris: they feel alienated and vilified by being associated with terrorists and militants in the media, denied normal opportunities such as going to school or to work due to curfews and strikes, outraged by the continuing deaths of their peers at the hands of security forces and faced with the reality of homes being ransacked and people arrested at random. The fact is, even in such an extreme situation and with such antagonism in their daily lives, these young people are not reaching for the gun or turning to militancy, but instead are persevering with new and alternative ways of protest. This summer’s unrest has highlighted a particular alternative form of resistance and protest which has gained much attention from media and even from the Indian government. Stone pelting, originally the habit of young Kashmiri protesters as a way to provoke and contest security forces, has become a political statement used by Kashmiris of all age and class, men and women. When you see two or three young boys stand up
against a line of uniformed men armed with AK47’s and in full riot gear, with nothing more than a stone in their hand to throw, you understand how the act can be nothing more than a statement of helplessness and injustice and a desperate but brave act of resistance. When these stones are answered with bullets, this statement is confirmed. Protests are a widespread and daily occurrence and include people from all occupations and all age groups. Even in the face of curfew people continue to come out on the streets to raise their voices against the recent killings and call for freedom. As well as the large rallies, small sit down protests in the streets and even on the main roads have become habitual in all areas of Srinagar. Peaceful in their nature but passionate in their cause, groups of women and men would sit in circles on the ground chanting profreedom and anti-India slogans such as ‘Azaadi’ (freedom) and ‘Go India Go”. Boys as young as five, unable to go to school due to the situation, stand with their families in the street and shout for India to ‘Go Back’. In all areas of the city ‘Go India, Go Back’ is spray painted on walls and on the surface of the roads. For the Kashmiris, their message is clear. Separatist leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani, who is under almost constant house arrest, states five key demands that need to bet met for protests to end: Kashmir to be recognised as an international dispute, the “demilitarisation” of Kashmir, the release of “political prisoners”, the withdrawal of the AFSPA and the punishment of soldiers responsible for the killings. International support for Kashmir and pressure on India would help to make these demands a reality, but although the Kashmir conflict is one that leaders in the West quote as a top priority, Obama calling it one of his ‘critical tasks’ during the presidential campaign, their ultimate desire seems to be retaining friendly ties with India and allowing it to maintain its image of the ‘soft power’ with a flourishing economy, a liberal nature and the title of the largest democracy in the world. David Cameron during his visit to India this summer had no comment on a Kashmir that was burning just an hour’s flight from his hotel in Delhi. India it seems will continue with its merciless tactics in Kashmir and Kashmiris will continue to come out on the streets in the face of all threats to raise their voices for freedom and for justice. It seems that many more boys like Muzaffar will lose their lives before anyone listens. Caelinn Hogan is a Senior Sophister student of English Studies.
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student life : Review
Green Man Festival - An Emerald Isle in the Rough. Marcus Mumford of Mumford and Sons, belives that Green Man Festival is “Just what a festival should be. Not too big and not too small”. The author definitely agrees. by Joanna staunton
G
reen Man festival, which took place in August in the Brecon Beacons in Wales, is a real gem. Set in a leafy Welsh valley, topped by bare dramatic heathy hills, with the main stage in a natural, grassy amphitheatre, the setting alone gives you happy camping times but Green Man aims for more. It has a distinctly folky vibe, with certain pagan pretensions, and the line-up of ethereal harpist Joanna Newsom, happy-go-lucky Mumford and Sons, Laura Marling, The Unthanks, the
The Flaming Lips were sensational Flaming Lips and much more makes Green Man both other-worldy and distinctly of the minute. The headliners were almost all excellent. Joanna Newsom was unique, spell binding, her flawless set seemed to have an inner light, while the crowd hardly dared to breathe and mist its glassy perfection. She had to ask the crowd what was going on, because everyone
was silent and still with awe and inward pleasure. Mumford and Sons downright charmed everyone with their joyful tunes, seemingly genuine friendly feeling towards every one of their audience, their obvious pleasure in the day, and the music. Laura Marling’s music was great and she’s clearly talented, but left the crowd a little lukewarm. The Saturday night’s entertainment, the Flaming Lips, were sensational, especially for those that love them. They were perhaps a little alienating for people who didn’t know the music as well and who were just blinded by the bubbles, balloons, streamers and questionable video of a dancing naked girl, alternating with uncomfortable close up of lead singer’s sweat beads but if you like that stuff they were on quite brilliant form. The Unthanks provided some serious, earthy and hearty folk music. They were waving the flag for the real folk thing and keeping the festival from offering too much of a popularised version of what they set out to present, which was good old fashioned ale-glugging earth mother folk. Green Man includes a little blossoming of other platforms to delight and divert the wandering festival goer. Particularly good was the Chai Wallah tent, for reggae/rap/jazz/blues version of the folkish theme of the weekend, chai and Turkish coffee, soft orange glowing lights and heady, herby perfumed air (all emanating from the herbal remedies stand I’m sure).
It would be awful if this festival lapsed into preciousness
Green Man Festival. Photo by Nicholas Smale.
The ‘Far Out’ tent’s grassy, muggy shelter featured music with a more trendy Indie appeal including Girls and Avi Buffalo, and late at night moved onwards and upwards to dub-steppy DJ sets including Metronomy and the smashing DJ Yoda. John Cooper Clarke in the comedy tent was witty as ever
with his punk(ish) poetry, and lapped up by the adoring crowd. His snappy, concise poems and repartee was a pleasing contrast to the hippyish folk vibe without criticising it. Varied and mainly snappy Future Shorts, Japanese art forms, and a previously lost film about Leonard Cohen drew many under the canvas of the cinema tent for an hour or two and there was a constant string of stand ups in the comedy to fill any laughter gaps you might have. The Green Man pub was a tent that faked it pretty well with faux wood panelling and light ales, while the pub stage offered consistently charming and littleknown folk acts. The festival was also a foody paradise with a huge choice (I could go into deep and raptured detail here but I’ll hold back). Marcus Mumford remarked, “It’s just what a festival should be. Not too big, not too small”, and sang its praise repeatedly during their set. The line-up, he said, was “extraordinary”, and indeed it sometimes seemed that way. The festival goers couldn’t have
A Previously lost film about Leonard Cohen drew many under the canvas of a cinema tent for an hour or two been more relaxed, happy and friendly. Children were dotted around blowing bubbles which could only be a sign that this was not the kind of festival to end in a mass bonfire of the pisssoaked tents. Maybe slightly off-putting was the proliferation of copies of the Observer (which somehow struck a jarring note) and Billy Bragg’s appeal to lowest common denominator politics, which brought a slightly uncomfortable, political note to what ought to have been a blissful August escape, in a how-green-was-my-valley rural setting, from the many irritations of British party politics. It seemed too easy a way of winning widespread approval and smugness from the crowd. It would be awful if this festival lapsed into preciousness or pricklyness when it’s so warm-hearted and laid-back now. The folks and the music in particular, and the beauty of the setting let me easily forget the outside world for a while. There are still hints of red Welsh mud under my fingernails as I write and I can only deeply, highly, and broadly recommend Green Man, folky and hearty, muddy but unbowed, smallish and sweet. Go next year before it gets massive! Joanna Staunton is a postgraduate student in the school of History. 27
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Culture
The Irish Festivals of Summer. Pet cows, hares doing the milking, pregnant ladies dancing on ashes, battered seaweed... not quite Oxegen or Electric Picnic, as Ellen Lunney tells us. by Ellen lunney
I
t was a summer of festivals. The big boys: Oxegen, bringing with it rumours whispered through the snugs and alcoves of Facebook of a cancelled Eminem slot; leaving in its wake tales of hand-infections from mud fights, Eminem’s stormer of a gig and how Florence had ‘a great set of lungs on her’. Electric Picnic, everyone’s loudly-brayed reason for returning home from wherever they were summering - a meeting point before college. Daubs of face paint and worthy sounding burgers. The niche festivals: Taste!, Bloom and Dunmore East Bluegrass Festival. It seemed that there had never been such a summer of festivals. No hobby, music style or little locality was worth its salt if it hadn’t a festival to its name. Every town mayor in the country had his or her speech primed for the launch night.
And then they tried something too crazy, too outthere, too insane, (Whatever the problem was I would posit the name of it as the obvious culprit for its failure) the Lovin’ Life alcohol-free festival, with its rather utopian-sounding (if rather lame) slogan of ‘Getting’ into it, not out of it’ belly-flopped magnificently in the attractive surroundings of Mount Shannon House, Co. Sligo. In an Irish Times review of the event, it was noted that at one point ‘there were exactly three people sitting on the grass watching the bands’. Bless. But this will not be a Leaving Cert Irish essay-style admonishment on the ills of the demon drink pervading every corner of our society, not least our live-music events. Instead it will hope to show that actually the festival has always been an intrinsic element to the calendar of an Irish summer. They just didn’t have Kate Moss or Alexa Chung in Hunter wellies
guiding the troops through the mud back then. In a culture of toil and expected seasonal hungers, the “patterns” – from “patron saint” days – and feast days were a happy break from the norm. We were a superstitious people (and perhaps remain
It was deemed to be the day that magic was at its most potent and that witches stole butter and cream to be with the “Eminem won’t show just because he won’t” school of thought). The historian Bríd Mahon observes that “festivals in Ireland were celebrated with a mixture of pagan superstition and Christian rites and beliefs”. This trait can be found in the widely-held and extremely endearing belief that St Brigid and
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Puck Fair’s leading man. her pet cow (her pet cow!) travelled the roads of Ireland and so crosses of straw should be hung in the stable and over the lintel of the door for luck. Mahon notes that a “stone” of wheaten bread in a cross shape was baked and left out. Butter was freshly churned for the day.May 1st was one of the madder festivof days gone by. The reason for all this was that the people of the Sí (the fairy folk) were said to change their residences at this time of year (spotting a gap in the holiday property market, no doubt). Witches assumed the shape of hares, and according to Mahon, stories were told all over Ireland of a hare sighted milking the cows on a May morning. Which I think you’ll agree is a fairly odd mental image. Farmers stayed up all night on the eve of May day to protect their cattle and a touch of salt or a drop of holy water was added to milk to fend off bad luck. Ireland’s May Day festivities included the dressing of a May bush with eggshells, May bonfires and Maypoles. The 23rd of June, St John’s Eve, was typically celebrated as midsummer. Bonfires were lit on hills and cattle were driven through the gnósach, or ashes, young men leaped backwards through the fires to prepare themselves for marriage and pregnant women stepped through the ashes to ensure a safe delivery (hardly HSE approved, one imagines). An interesting date in traditional Irish calendar was Garland Sunday, also known as Fraughan Sunday
and Bilberry Sunday, which fell on the last Sunday of July or the first Sunday of August. To celebrate Garland Sunday, also known as “Lúnasa” (or “Lammas” in Britain), the people climbed hills and spent the day playing games and bilberry picking. All rather idyllic, really. The famous Lammas fair is still held in Ballycastle (since1612, according to one source) but is not held at the start of August (at Lúnasa) but at the end of the month, due to the change of the Bank Holiday date. Odder still, contrary to my long-held imaginings, no llamas are involved in the festivities. Other specialties of the fair are “Yella Man” (a confection similar to the honeycombed interior of a Crunchie) and Dulse (a popular edible dried seaweed) When I typed the phrase ‘Lammas fair’ into a popular search engine, a YouTube video came up for ‘Battered dulse’. Not one for the purists, perhaps. Another festival that bridges the gap between Brigid’s picnic of wheaten bread (eaten on the hoof, as it were, if you’ll pardon the pun) and our own Electric version is the rather daft but somewhat disarming annual Puck Fair in Killorglin, County Kerry. The origins of the event are hotly contested: some say it honours the he-goat who broke from the herd to warn the inhabitants of Killorglin that the “Roundheads” (Parliamentarians during the English civil war) were en route, others say it is connected with Daniel O’Connell’s claim
that the Puck Fair was not to be tolled as a typical livestock fair. To prove it was a goat fair the goat (this year’s was called Oisín) was raised onto to the stage and, as the official Puck Fair website suggests, “Killorglin gained a king”. For this King Puck a queen is found, usually a 12 year old local Killorglin girl who dons a Celtic dress for the crowning. This year’s queen is a pretty brunette called Kathlynn Coffey. The King Puck watches over the festivities from a 15m platform in Killorglin’s town square, until the third day, when he is lead out of town by two of the town’s young boys. Two features of the festival (as reported in the Irish Times on the 7 July and the 11 August respectively) prove that the festival is indeed very much bang up to date. Firstly, in July organisers of the event were worried that an animal welfare-related hold-up would leave the event without a Puck King for the first time in 400 years. Secondly, although no decline in merriment was to be seen, the effects of the recession on equine sales were evident to all involved, as horses that once would have sold for ¤3000 or more a few years ago were going for about ¤1000 on the day. It seems that the phrase: “a feast or a famine” remains to be a guiding principle in the Irish psyche.
Ellen Lunney is a Junior Sophister student of History and Geohraphy. 29
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Travel
From Student to Doctor in Guatemala Andre Mendonc Madaleno travelled to Guatemala to impart his medical knowledge and help those far less fortunate as well as learn a few life lessons in the process. by Andre Mendonc Madaleno
here are always two lives to a book: before and after it’s published. After a month in Guatemala I think the same applies to travelling. It was a very surprising trip despite planned for almost a year. The prologue to my summer musings was a year fundraising for Medical Overseas Voluntary Electives (MOVE), a 3rd year Medicine charity that every year allows for over 50 students to do an elective in a less developed country. Whenever I recall it, it is still uplifting to see how a group of fun and - though we don’t admit it study craving med students turn out to organize themselves pretty well, year in, year out, to run such a demanding fundraising operation. We collected as a class, through a tough recessionary year, but in the end each group got to support a hospital of their choice in a total of over 65000 euro. Most of my classmates chose an English-speaking African country. I wanted something different. Being a Portuguese I had some rudiments of our neighbours’ idiom – Spanish – and interest in building up on that knowledge. Moreover, I was keen to help an organization that wouldn’t stick solely to “emergency” medical care. FUDI (Fundación para el Desarrollo Integral) seemed to provide the right blend: located in the Guatemalan mountains, just off the InterAmerican motorway, it provides a wide range
of services, including medical and dental Of course nothing came up to my mind, care, to over half a million people living exam season was looming near, there in Chimaltenango, one of the poorest were other things to do and I tried to departments of the “country of eternal believe that “the more you think about spring”, as Guatemala is known. Anit the worst”, but in retrospect 5 emails other characteristic that interested me and a phone call were the mainstay of was its focus on a global perspective of logistic preparation – and they were the health issues concerned. Along the enough. It seems that even if the clinic’s routine mobile medical clinics it also orstaff had forgotten we were coming all ganizes under nutrition screens to detect was destined to be smoothly dealt with emergency cases of under-five year old whenever we arrived (a group of medical malnourishment and demands effective students landing into a hospital where governmental action. Similarly, it runs everybody has forgotten they were comclasses on how to cook, grow up crops ing is a MOVE classic). more productively, sell your products in The travelling plan was simple: me the local market, etc. and my friend Killian Murphy (1st Year One or two months before I left, I Science) where travelling from Lonrang Dr. Michael Keaney,a friendly SHO don to Heuston (Texas) and then from working in Derry, who first mentioned this organization to me. After 10 minutes of advice I realized there was nothing more he to add: “Say hello to Dr. Leonel [the director of the project] for me. I can’t really think of anything else to mention. Do you have any The author with friends Mynor, Killian and Javier Arana. questions?”
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Heuston to Guatemala City. Never having crossed the pond even the transatlantic flight experience meant novelty and challenge. Novelty since food was almost proper and challenge since I can find no better word for trying to sleep in a cubic meter… and then there was Guatemala City: huge, poor, simultaneously planned to the last street and messy in every corner. A named street was the exception - most addresses had a 3-numbers postal code. While people were friendly and relaxed many earthquakes and other natural disasters (such as the recent Tropical Storm Agatha) turned the city’s architectural landscape into a patchwork of temporary, destroyed and generally ugly buildings. Exceptions include the exclusive Zone 10 and a relatively small historic centre, mostly reconstructed. The 2 million plus city spreads over the Valle de la Ermita and while temperatures are always comfortably warm, July fell within the 4 month long rainy season. Henceforth, rain was always on the schedule for the afternoon. We where (moderately) lucky to arrive on one of the (many) governmental holidays, the “Dia del Ejercito” (Army’s Day) which meant that not only was nobody working but also that we got to visit the city avoiding its infamous rush hour traffic. We stayed in Centro Universitario Ciudad Vieja, a 130-rooms residential college for university students near the universities area that despite the limited resources, provided not only rooms but also a familiar community of learning that has helped thousands of students to strive in college – I hope TCD decides
to support something similar, instead of promoting an ivory tower culture and ripping off students as much as possible. Rants apart, we met many fellow students who have the same worry for their future as many Irish students do: a choice between unemployment, immigration or working in a completely different area from the one they studied for basically half a penny. Two days afterwards we left in a pickup truck to Tecpan, where we would stay for the month. The InterAmerican road led us to this historic indigenous town which was the local hub of commerce of the region and the first capital of Guatemala. However, the only remaining XVI century building is the cathedral; a Spanish Colonial building presiding over its central square. Amongst the locals it is said that strong men asked to be buried alive on its walls but whether this is true or not, it stroke me as a symbol of the painful but ultimately very fruitful symbiosis between the new religion, the primitive ritual practices and the bloodthirsty nature of many on (probably) both sides. It is encouraging to see that, despite everything, this past has left a mostly benign and colourful mark: in clothing, music and dance, in the local catholic liturgy and family life and in the way everybody seems to be that bit more unassumingly connected to the realities of nature than in Europe. We quickly settled in, though felt like middle-aged men now, since with an average 20 years and a small stature, the typical Guatemalan seemed much younger than us. Also, the endless
streams of children going to school at 7.30am turned a quiet walk before leaving to the clinic more like swimming against the tide. The schoolboys and the street sellers filled the dusty streets of the cold mountain mornings with a sense of hope but also with many questions: What have they had for breakfast but some tortilla or maybe atol (a local hot drink made of cereals)? When was the last time they had meat? Will these boys and girls ever go to college? Luckily, Dr. Renato picked us up every morning and the 15 minutes trip was always an occasion for a joke or two and sometimes complaints about the government and the mudslides. Brought up in Tecpan, Dr. Renato was also an amateur cyclist with an acutely “irish” sense of humour that could very easily cross idiomatic frontiers with a gesture or laugh. He directed the data collection process and organized contacts in each village we went to, as well as drove the minibus with a total of 14 voluntaries, including us and a big group from the University of Navarre, in Spain. Even though the foundation’s finances where such that this was probably his last project after over 10 years working there, he seemed always relaxed and jokeful and even invited us to meet his family. In each village, he held a small briefing that quickly yielded groups assigned to explore all its areas, in search for possible malnourishment cases. Most mothers seemed very welcoming and besides some cries of “gringo” by the boldest boys in the streets, only the local dogs caused any scares (human rabies hasn’t
View from a temple. Photo by the author.
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been observed in years but despite vaccination campaigns some of the dogs we found had the rabies characteristic look about them). I particularly recall meeting a mother on the outskirts of a village who, with a resigned face, took us back to her house, walking 15 minutes mostly uphill. We ended up in this tiny patio surrounded by little wooden huts and populated by dogs, chicken and a very fat pig, lying at the entrance. We commented on how the view over the valley, the dense vegetation and the mountains was so beautiful. She acknowledged it somewhat surprised but View of Antigua from Cerro de la Cruz. politely hushed us out – she was busy - mums are all the same… and I realized that they in the unambiguous Latin American also take some things for granted. style and constantly playing slow-paced In fact, the worst nutrition problems romantic songs we got an open door (litwe met were really social or educational, erally) mini-bus. Then, we got a short and this is often so even in poor counconnecting trip on the back of a pick-up tries like Guatemala. One of the handful truck and shared a local taxi: a tricycle cases of very severe malnutrition we met best known as “tuc-tuc” that carried four happened in a family where the mother of us to S. Pedro. This village is in fact a had died and the father left the children hotspot for bagpackers from all over the to be taken care of by other relatives. world and probably the most laid back Even more disturbing is the widespread place in the universe. The landscape is issue that the parents already expect to dominated by the lake and by the inachave thin and small children and cannot tive volcano overshadowing it however cook properly even the few vegetables we decided to “postpone” the 5-hour they have. Hence, the people at the clinic climb for a next opportunity due to believed that a long-term solution for “weather conditions” and after a motor the issues has to include a certain deboat trip and a few more bus rides we gree of practical education to the rural made it just in time for nightfall back in housewives that can only be developed Tecpan. through a network of indigenous loIn the last few days we stayed in Guacal teachers – and that is what FUDI temala City and visited Tikal National has been developing for over a decade. Park. If there is a place where human Similar methods, incorporating local construction seems to be even more chieftains or religious leaders, have been natural than nature itself this is it. Tikal already applied to spread the use of bed was rediscovered in 1848 and since then nets for the prevention of malaria in this Mayan city lost in the rain forsub-Saharan Africa. The key for longest since the X century has impressed term development seems to be, at least in anybody who has visited it not only by these cases, in already established social its magnificence but also by the mysterinetworks. ous circumstances of its ruin. A handful In the weekends, we metamorphosed of temples towering above the trees and into low-budget tourists and this turned thousands of other ruins including road out to be in some ways more exciting systems and fortifications, water reserthan the usual tour-guided expeditions. voirs and squares mingle perfectly with In one of the weekends we visited lake the trees and animals such as the spider Atitlan with one of the hotel staff. The monkeys, the oscillated turkey, and yes… day was horrible: cold, damp, slightly even jaguars, present in the National windy and terminally dull – just like Park. It has become a global touristic home. Still, all the “fun” seemed to be in attraction in itself and on top of the 70 getting there. After a trip in a 1970’s (my meters of Temple IV, the highest one, guess) American school bus, redecorated we could hear not only Spanish but also
German, English, Japonese, etc… In the movie Motorcycle Diaries, depicting Che Guevara’s trip across South America as a medical student, he goes back home saying “all this time spent on the road something happened. Something I’ll have to think about for a long time. So much injustice…”. However, after 50 years of bloodshed in Latin America I can no longer conclude with him “A revolution without gunshots? That’s crazy”. If the injustice I observed made me think so did the amount of good that is being done, in the midst of the worst conditions, by locals and foreigners, in the social, medical and political fields even though there is still a very long way to go. I do believe, though, that there is a quiet revolution going on despite momentary setbacks and sometimes undue international pressures from those who have always considered their neighbour’s house as their backyard. This revolution will probably never show up in the news or declare new republics or follow any leaders. It is a revolution of good-will, of people who want the best for their children, of (some) honest businessmen and politicians who genuinely want their country to go forward, of many volunteers who decide they want to spend a year helping not a week travelling. The minimum everybody else can do is not stifle but help these incipient signs of development and try to do the same with their own recessionary countries… Andre Mendonc Madaleno is a Senior Sophistoer student of medicine.
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travel
Good on English Bad on China. Teaching is said to be a calling, but teaching English in a foreign country is definitely a calling, as a Trinity Grad student discovered this summer in the far off land of China. by Conor james mckinney
Y
ouTube’s celebrated “Gap Yah” skit does rather a good job at demolishing the credibility of students who go off to save interestingly exotic areas of the world and return thinking they know anything about the local culture. I watched it only this month, and so climbed aboard flight KL 893 to Shanghai back in July, smug in the knowledge that soon I would be both an expert on China and responsible for teaching English to a small part of it. Facilitating this worthy goal was the Amity Foundation, a Chinese NGO, which places teams of volunteers in impoverished areas of the county. Paying for it was the Dublin University Far Eastern Mission (DUFEM), which provided bursaries for me and another student to join Amity’s 2010 Summer English Programme. This is a course in oral English for Chinese teachers, who in rural areas often lack the training and motivation needed to teach English to 70 unruly farmers’ sons. It is not, despite the Christian credentials of all involved, a prolonged explanation that the road to salvation runs via Jesus Christ, if only
On the back of my hotel room in Binyang, a dusty provincial city in Guangxi, the fire safety instructions implored the would-be escapee to “Please Profess Your Excellency Seat”. because attempting to proselytise in China can bring down the clunking fist of the Communist Party’s fearsome security apparatus. Reluctantly, therefore, I laid aside my Bible and concentrated on teaching English. Signs that China could use a bit of help in this regard were widespread. On the back of my hotel room in Binyang, a dusty provincial city in Guangxi, the fire safety instructions implored the
Festival in Binyang, China. would-be escapee to “Please Profess Your Excellency Seat”. One is constantly being warned to guard against being stolen, where presumably the real danger was being robbed. (Neither crime, nor indeed any other crime, was much in evidence in a country where there are some 68 offences punishable by death.) The bane of my existence as a language teacher was the query “How to say…” It does take a certain arrogance to poke fun at these indiscretions while swanning around without a word of Chinese, which working through English with English teachers rather encourages. The Amity Foundation, as part of its meticulous orientation programme, did provide us with a crash language course, and the fact that I retain only the words for “hello”, “thank you”, “one”, “two”, “three”, “five”, “eight”, and “dumplings” says more about my own linguistic incompetence than any failure on their part. The fact that Chinese is a tonal lanuage often intimidates potential learners, but for me it was the lack of any warm, cuddly Indo-European roots that put the kibosh on my self-tuition. We were warned about mentioning sensitive political issues like Tibet, Taiwan and Tiananmen Square, which might cause offence and more clunking fists. For all that, there was really no sense that mentioning it in the classroom would cause all hell to break loose, and I would tentatively venture the opinion that the political climate is marginally less repressive than commonly represented in the West. In any event, the Chinese seem a pretty apolitical bunch, which is fairly understandable when the economy is growing at about four million percent per annum, the cost of living is low and it’s not your sister breaking rocks in the gulag.Whilst apparently devoid of political opinions, our students (all them older than us and qualified teachers themselves, but there
you go) had opinions on pretty much everything else and the classes themselves were highly enjoyable. They were quite insistent, for instance, that most of the class be devoted to playing Blockbusters, which vocabulary building game I had plucked from my own hazy memories of Ordinary Level Irish with Mr. Murray. Upon mature reflection, it should perhaps have been saved until at least the second week, since the return to more prosaic work led almost to mutiny. The middle school premises in which we taught were a wonderful concoction of contrasts, with peeling plasterwork and no air conditioning but a serious IT system installed in every classroom. The general educational infrastructure was light years ahead of that I’d seen previously in India and compared pretty favourably with the Portakabins that made up most of my old primary school. It was occasionally tough going –temperatures in Binyang of a muggy summer’s afternoon tend to loiter in the high 30s – but the positive attitude of the teachers and the excellent teaching resources provided by Amity made each morning fly by. The month’s teaching didn’t hang around either, and the closing ceremony was upon us before we knew it. Whatever about getting to know China, we got to know Binyang and its people pretty well, and in addition to improved English, the teachers there definitely know more a hell of a lot about rugby, The Frames and Irish independence than when we arrived. It remains only to thank DUFEM for the opportunity, and to encourage any Trinity students with an interest in teaching and a high tolerance for sweat to take it on in 2011. Conor James McKinney graduated from Trinity in 2010 with a degree in Law. To find about more about the Dublin University Far Eastern Mission, email dufem@csc.tcd.ie. 33
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In Conclusion...Fintan Mallory
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too have been thinking about charity over the last month and it hasn’t been pleasant. Through the weeks of contemplation, the only thing that has really become clear to me is the utter insolvency of my own two cents on the issue. I’ll try and salvage something from this initial futility but I know a noble burning humanist heart often gives off little heat. For all the intensity of one’s intentions, their value is in the actions and at some point over the last month, the credit-bubble of my conscience burst. –‘What!’ you say, ‘you can’t build a metaphor on a metaphor like that!’- ‘Ha!’ I say, ‘you’re probably right actually’-Schopenhauer once claimed that a philosopher no more has to be a saint than a sculptor has to be a beautiful person. True to form, he later pushed an old woman down the stairs. He also said that, ‘to live is to sin’, and at the moment I’m slightly less willing to dispute that. A few weeks ago I was talking with a friend who asked if I would have like to live as a grand Prussian aristocrat in a grand Prussian house much like the one we happened to be outside at the time. I could live a gentleman’s life with robes and fine whisky and maybe a grand statue of Bismark on a Hippo trampling a Frenchman on the lawn. Count von Madadh Bán I’d be. After a few moments of noble reflection, I had to say no. Transported back then, with a contemporary moral sense, it would be unbearable. Surely, I couldn’t tolerate a world of slavery, oppression of workers, of the colonialism, racism, and the new blooming spread of industrial destruction. I could never be comfortable in such a world I thought. In this hypothetical situation I’d have to dedicate every waking moment of my days to helping people. Spreading whatever ideas of reason and tolerance I could and, like some Wilberforce on crack, exhausting myself in a life’s combat against injustice. As you may have guessed the parable had done its job and I began to see the
difference between my own self and my moral self. On reflection, such a simple world seems enviable. Cities could burn and be rebuilt, yet we still can’t build in Chernobyle now. The lingering capacity for a sudden end has only really been around for a few decades. Where we’ve ended up is simply terrifying. We have driven the planet to a new mass extinction. Over a fifth of species we know of are currently threatened. Half the world’s languages are expected to die in the next century. While it may have always been a popular pastime, the old penchant for eschatology has never been more apt. I soon began to sink amongst these thoughts. They grew and leering down on me projected their images. The last 700 mountain gorillas waiting for the death sentence to be passed on their species. Ice-shelves shrinking in the warming seas. Then the tea-time TV tapestry of terrors; flooding in Pakistan, crop failure in West Africa, aside from the regular violence. Then all facts well known by now 24,000 children dying a day from poverty, over 1 billion people not having adequate access to water, the remaining rainforests being pulled down. The more I tried to think of something to write, the more real these abstractions became and the more incapable I was. For all our whiggish laurels, things still seem to be getting worse. The question then followed, what kind of self-indulgent villain must I be to remain passive in the face of this? I grew disgusted and aware of my wasted time and the shame of my inaction. I felt like some wealthy aristocrat just before the French revolution; he likes the idea of rights, he has read Voltaire but really, he just doesn’t get it. Needless to say, amidst this fecklessness and misery I couldn’t write a word about charity. These thoughts wouldn’t spare me the judgement Guided in the gut by guilt I tried to scribble something out, but it made no sense. Words seemed even less valuable than my ‘good intentions’. The whole
affair was a complete non-starter. A Copenhagen Accord of an article. My words were ‘non-binding’ when action was required. So, there seemed to be two directions to take. I could go small, consider my personal interactions and say, ‘sure I’m a good man, I don’t lie, cheat, push old women down the stairs, I’m doing my bit’. Except due to the nature of our world, even getting from A to B involves poisoning C and invading D to fuel it. The other way is to go large, ‘The universe is ultimately indifferent, it doesn’t matter how I act, ‘duty’ is an outdated concept, sure God’s dead and further nihilistic drivel.’ This kind of solipsism could also give a kind of solace. At this time though, I was walking the middle realm where I had to meet the planet face to face and see myself as incredibly privileged, ignorant and on top of the iceberg of injustice. I am one of the incredibly lucky ones but if this is the world that favours me, I don’t think I want it. Steeped in self-disdain I sat surrounded by false starts, shards and sheets of words, thought shrapnel and half-finished sentences. I’ll write a little and while doing so, people will die from hunger, the forests will recede and an unnatural sickness continues to spread. The blank page became insurmountable; my words would be ‘a drop in the ocean’. Bog-standard student procrastination became a metaphor for my own life… But charity begins and I think I get it a little better now. It’s the first gloss in an imperfect world. The taking hold of the pen. That first stab when something starts to happen. In both charity and language we have our commitments. Both acknowledge a principle which undermines all solipsism. As the coming year begins I will vow to act and understand. Whatever has been of worth before arose from this. Sin agaibh mo scéal, I hope you can be charitable. Fintan Mallory is a Junior Sophister student of Philosophy.
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Photo by Melanie Burger 35
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