Photo Project, continued

This afternoon we took four yp from the Catholic side of the wall and six from the Protestant side on a tour of both neighborhoods. Before we started, we heard from two women who lived on the peaceline during the height of the conflict. They told us their stories of raising children before the wall went up, when the Catholics would hang out at the Protestant bonfires without incident. They remembered the violence, the people killled on their street corners, and the building of the wall. It began as barricades, and then filled in and grew taller and taller as people perfected the skill of throwing. We asked what it felt like to have the wall go up and they said it was like taking matters out of their hands. There was nothing more they could do, and now, they couldn't even see what was coming. All they would know was the stones, bricks, paint bombs that came flyng over the top. They told of how when the wall went up it bordered the Catholic ghetto, and now, it borders a Protestant ghetto instead. And both women were insistent that the young people in the group grab hold and change things. They urged them to dream for their community, to move forward and to be willing to Live for Belfast instead of the holding onto the mantra of the past: Die for Belfast.

From there we boarded a bus and drove through the streets of Woodvale and the Shankill (Protestand neighborhoods) and then through Ballymurphy, up the Springfield Road and the Falls Road (Catholic neighborhoods). Staff from Blefast Exposed brought nice cameras for the yp to use (they took, at least, hundreds of photos today) and we had tour guides give us tons of historical information. We saw murals, memorials, cemetaries, both sides of the wall, drove past mills and the old courthouse that connects to the Crumlin Prison. Of course, my personal camera was sitting at home on my dresser.