Mitchell Scholar Blogs

As classes end and summer nears, I have had to face the harsh reality that my Mitchell year will soon come to an end. With this as motivation, I have spent the past few months hastily accomplishing everything I said I would do when in Ireland – from visiting some of Dublin’s most magnificent museums to trying new restaurants in Cork and, yes, even kissing the Blarney Stone.

As I’ve been checking off items on my Ireland bucket list, I’ve begun to reflect on what all these memories of Ireland will mean to me and what I will remember about Ireland when I return to the US.

Before I arrived in Ireland, I thought my Mitchell year would be like travelling to a foreign planet. I would marvel at the foreign customs and traditions for a year, and once I’d return home, I would tell my “real world” friends and colleagues just how different it was. Indeed, at first, I was enamored by the differences. I learned a few Irish words, tried the blood sausage, and counted the number of sentences my professors would end with the word “like”.

But over the course of the year, I discovered that Ireland isn’t some foreign land to visit and then leave behind – Ireland is everywhere! Ireland is central to global commerce, innovation, arts, culture, and academia. Of course, there are well-known examples of Irish influence – like Guinness beer and friendly pubs. But spending a year here has shown me just how much more  pervasive Irish influence is. Irish trad music formed the basis of American folk and country music. Gargantuan businesses such as Google and Facebook have their EMEA Headquarters in Ireland (in fact, Apple and Pfizer’s EMEA Headquarters are in Cork!). Halloween can be traced back to a Gaelic harvest festival. Ireland led the way in social health by introducing comprehensive workplace smoking bans. Irish academics like George Boole developed the theories that guide the digital and information age (and he did it just minutes from my accommodation!).

When my mother and brother visited me in Ireland, we spent an inspiring afternoon in Dublin’s EPIC Irish Emigration Museum which houses dozens of exhibits depicting how profound and  pervasive Irish culture is. The Irish gave us labor unions, boycotts, and whiskey. Jonathan Swift, George Bernard Shaw, C.S. Lewis, Oscar Wilde, Frank McCourt, and Edna O’Brien are all Irish. Ireland was the first country to legalize same-sex marriage via popular vote. Flute, fiddle and harp music came from Ireland, as did U2, the Pogues, Van Morrison and Enya. In the US, 11 signers of the declaration of Independence were Irish and more than half of the Union army was of Irish descent. Irish immigrants built the railroads and the Brooklyn bridge. Perhaps Barack Obama said it best when describing Irish influence on the US: “Never has a nation so small inspired so much in another… There’s always been a little green behind the red, white, and blue.”  And he should know…since he too is of Irish descent.

Indeed, it seems to me that Ireland is the world and the world is Irish. So many of my favorite things in life would not be if not for the Irish. The Mitchell year did not expose me to Irish culture; instead, it opened my eyes to the Irish culture that had surrounded me my entire life. I hope that, upon returning to the US, I won’t “remember” Ireland as much as I will recognize and appreciate Irish influence wherever I am. I won’t need to board a plane to “return” to Ireland, nor will I need to swipe through old pictures to reminisce. I will be in Ireland every time I read a study from an Irish university or enjoy a night of camaraderie at an Irish pub – even if that pub is technically located in Boston. Heck, if I’m ever really missing Ireland, I might even bend over backwards and kiss a rock.

I’ll be seeing you, Ireland. Everywhere I look – there you’ll be.

“So, how are you finding it?” My Irish friend squealed in reference to my first few days at UCC.

“Well, at first I was using google maps….” I rambled on despite her puzzled look, “but now I don’t really need the map because I just know where to go.”

Laughing, she explained that finding something doesn’t literally mean locating that place or thing, but instead how are you finding the experience of it.

I have inadvertently taken this phrase to heart this year, after learning what it actually means, of course. Rather than just questioning how am I finding my time in Ireland, I have begun noticing how I am finding myself through this experience. What parts of myself am I uncovering here?

From the classroom, to the local prison and community centers, sitting around having tea with new friends, and everywhere in between, I am finding pieces of myself are being returned to me. Pieces I didn’t even realize went missing. I am softer. Lighter. Freer. More open. I am learning and still growing. Grateful. I am so incredibly grateful.

The Jesuit Priest and activist Greg Boyle, SJ uses the saying “Now. Here. This” as a constant reminder to live in the moment and find joy. He urges everyone to “embrace perfect presence in the moment in front of us.”

Ireland has a way of doing just that, of revealing simple joys in each moment. Of making me stare directly at my goals, fears, and doubts, put them in perspective, all while finding a sense of comfort. I am starting to learn that maybe, just maybe, at the end of the day everything will be “grand, like.” From walking alongside the Giant’s Causeway to sitting around a table chatting about the future with my Mitchell Scholar family or Irish friends, there is no shortage of “how did I get so lucky?” moments here. Living, breathing reminders that in the right here, right now, this life sure is good.

During our first month here the Irish singer Nóirín Ní Riain read the poem, “For a New Beginning” by the poet John O’Donohue aloud to the Mitchell Scholars at Glenstal Abbey. One section reads:

Hold nothing back, learn to find ease in risk
Soon you will be home in a new rhythm
For your soul senses the world that awaits you.

When I first heard this poem, I was moved by it but couldn’t predict the ways in which it would take shape in my life. Yet, here I am nine months later and I am at home here. Ireland has taught me that there is a real difference between finding a place and finding yourself within that place. I look forward to uncovering what else awaits me here, in the place I am grateful to have found myself calling home.

Giggling alongside the Giant’s Causeway

It was the first week of 2018 and I found myself stumbling to the window of an emergency department in Cork. In a disoriented manner that definitely warrants mockery with his friends over drinks, I half-explained/half-sobbed my symptoms to the attendant. I knew I was probably experiencing kidney failure; however, Cork was in the middle of a massive flu outbreak and I fully expected to be turned away to make room for EU citizens.

Four days later, I regained functional consciousness in the ICU and was met with unspeakable kindness and Irish hospitality. Once graduated from the ICU, I befriended one of my roommates in the renal ward. We spent the next few days chatting between naps and needle stabs. I told him the hospital ice cream reminded me of the ice cream parlor I worked at in high school; he told me about his experience waiting for an organ transplant and ranked the hospitals he had visited across Ireland based on the quality of their food. We discussed the differences in our respective health care systems and I admitted I had been floored by how little I had been asked of my accent or home life. “Health is a good equalizer,” he mused. “From my experience, when you’re in the hospital, it’s where you are that matters; not where you’re from.”

Where are you from?

It is a question that has followed me for most of my time in Ireland and one I have found hard to answer accurately. Colorado raised me; Nebraska developed me, and Kansas… Kansas has the advantage of being my most recent place of residence (I kid, of course). As the answer, “America,” usually results in a push for location, I typically pick one of the three states at random knowing the subtle taste of a lie will linger on my tongue. Technically, I no longer hold official residency in any of these places. Lacking a defined home in my own country, I grappled with a lost sense of belonging early in my Irish tenure. Months later, introspection following my hospitalization has revealed that my answer does not – and should not – harbor the significance I once thought. Not without a nod to the various levels of privilege I am afforded for my age and skin color, I was alone and vulnerable and desperately ill when I surrendered care of my body to a hospital in a place I did not yet consider home. It should have been lonely; it should have been terrifying. That it was anything but speaks volumes of the quality of Irish care and culture. Ireland is home; if not for forever, at least for this moment.

I recently made the trip back to the States for a few follow-up appointments. Regaling my US doctor of my time in the Irish hospital, she remarked, “Well, they took impeccable care of you. Probably saved your life.”

She has no idea how right she is.

“We’ve covered the stage in flowers and lights,” the emcee says, “because we want our poets to feel appreciated in this space. The way you’d decorate your house before the arrival of a cherished guest.” I’m at a Poetry Marathon for Repeal. The room is small but packed. Many people in the audience have been tirelessly canvassing and campaigning for weeks; here they can still participate in activism, but in a warm, supportive, and restorative environment. It is a space for healing. It is a space for friends to convene. “When female poets bring politics into their work,” the emcee notes, “they are expected to do it in the most apologetic way possible.” Tonight is about rejecting that expectation.

Fifteen female, trans, and gender non-conforming poets read their work. Their poems are funny, angry, whimsical, melancholy, political, contemplative, and hopeful. Listening to these voices, I was reminded of one of my favorite pieces of writing, and one to which I return again and again, “Poetry Is Not a Luxury” by Audre Lorde. In it, she argues that “poetry is not a luxury” for women, but rather “a vital necessity of our existence,” because writing poetry allows women to shape their emotions first into words, and from words into action. For Lorde, emotions have profound political power: “within structures defined by profit, by linear power, by institutional dehumanization, our feelings were not meant to survive. Kept around as unavoidable adjuncts or pleasant pastimes, feelings were meant to kneel to thought as we were meant to kneel to men. But women have survived. As poets.” The fifteen poets who read in this marathon spoke from a place of vulnerability and deep feeling, but, rather than apologizing for what they felt, they channeled these emotions into powerful critiques of Irish society and hopeful visions for what a more equal Ireland might look like.

This poetry marathon represents everything I will miss about Dublin when my Mitchell year comes to an end. People who care deeply about their country and each other. People who make daring art and create platforms for their fellow artists to share their work with a wider audience. Women who lead grassroots initiatives to fight for their bodily autonomy and men who support them, quietly but wholeheartedly, with warmth and active listening.

I don’t know which way the referendum will go. But I do know that, even if the pro-choice movement does not succeed in this present moment, it will not have been for nothing. My studies of American and Irish history have taught me that it takes decades for profound societal change to take place, and progress never occurs without its setbacks. Whether or not it achieves its goal in this referendum, this movement has brought new art, new ideas, and new communities into existence, and has carved out space for them in the public sphere. These are meaningful achievements in and of themselves. The Irish discourse on women’s rights has pivoted on a social and cultural level, and I believe there is no going back. Whether or not the Eighth Amendment is repealed this month, I am optimistic that future generations will learn about this movement, and will read the words of these poets or other young Irish artists from this moment. I have faith that the art will endure long after May 25.

I have often told an anecdote about the first time I heard the words ‘conflict resolution.’ I was in the process of separating from the military after nearly six years, attending a transition course that would fall woefully short of equipping me for the civilian world. Surrounded by young tough Marines, we were given lessons in the basics: the college application, veteran benefits, making a budget. It was during the tutorial on résumé writing that our instructor, without a hint of sarcasm, explained that we should list conflict resolution as a resume bullet. We laughed at ourselves, trading real bullets for resume bullets, not giving a second thought to the irony behind the idea of resolving conflict with bullets. Today marks the fifth anniversary of this story’s origin, and, as I write this final blog post and approach the completion of my master’s degree in conflict resolution, it seems an appropriate entry point into a conversation about what Northern Ireland has taught me about the future of resolving conflicts.

My introduction to the idea of conflict resolution came from a world in which conflicts were ‘solved’ by violence, speed, and intensity. Tactical combat is a zero-sum game, which we won by maneuvering elements to subdue a threat before they could subdue us. As we were the bearers of force, did that logic not also make us the resolvers of conflict? Wasn’t that what our nine-month deployment to Afghanistan was all about?

Five years after my time in the military ended, I still find myself searching for examples of a successfully resolved conflict. Studying conflict resolution in Belfast, I’ve spent the last year looking to the resolution of The Troubles in Northern Ireland for answers. As my studies progressed, this case contradicted what I was taught in the military; focusing on the tactical logic of winning battles, rather than the strategies that would remove the causes to fight. I found that conflicts are rarely resolved with the timeliness and simplicity of the tactical level. Learning about The Troubles has not given me all the answers; this case study is anything but complete. The reality is a tenuous peace, struggling to deal with its past and prevented from realizing its future because of a collapsed government, political mistrust, and a divided society. Although it maintains a veneer of stability, as our program scratched the surface with conversations amongst victims and prisoners, terrorists and freedom fighters, we learned that the problems of a post-conflict society are incredibly complicated and often have no easy solutions. However, this time in Belfast has illustrated that the nature of conflict is fundamentally changing and underscores the necessity that conflict resolution adapt accordingly.

Conflicts have evolved in step with modernity. In a world convoluted by globalization, they no longer tend to follow the old styles of ‘state on state’ wars over ideology or colonial conquest. Instead, we’re faced with conflicts of identity, where compromise is akin to sacrificing your cultural values and betraying your people. These new conflicts are deep and messy, relying on non-state actors, multinational coalitions, international orders, a global economy, and insurgencies – all with competing interests. In this context, peace processes often get a mixed review with expectations demanding they address every individual problem for each actor. But when it takes decades or centuries for divisions to metastasize into a conflict, perhaps it’s unreasonable to assume that root causes can be resolved within anything less than a similar timeline.

The great paradox of our time is that the more technology we invent, the more educated we are, the more diverse our opinions become. The most important lesson I’ve taken from this year has been that different groups of people need to find creative ways to live alongside each other, together, instead of clustering around a singular ethnic identity. This process can only begin when the violence ends and the combatants do so voluntarily. Otherwise, the only other way to resolve a conflict is to annihilate those who hold an opposing worldview, a dubious prospect given the growing plurality and our reluctance to commit crimes against humanity.

In 2018, there is no shortage of conflicts to resolve in the world, and after 17 years of continuous war waged by the United States, maybe it’s time to acknowledge that most conflicts can no longer be resolved with bullets.

It is not lost on me that my 8-month experience in Dublin has largely been shaped by being the only African-American Mitchell Scholar this year and in my course at Trinity. That compounded with the majority white population in Ireland only made that fact – albeit obvious – even more non-ignorable. However, my reality here has pleasantly surprised me in a way that I will never forget.

I can remember first receiving the Mitchell and informing my parents of the wondrous opportunity. I was met with bewilderment and pause as my parents tried to understand what the Irish could possibly teach me about race – it is interesting how the fight for racial equity is inextricably linked solely to the African-American plight. They, like many others, made the common mistake of seeing Ireland through the lens of its colonialist and degraded history and not as an equal to their nearby neighbors, equipped to educate and influence.

As I approach the end of my time here, it is funny the things that come back to memory. I am reminded of the privilege it has been to live abroad in Ireland. I can recall sitting in a Dublin wing restaurant waiting to order with a friend. In the background carried the muffled sounds of Drake, J. Cole, and Kendrick Lamar. Customers were blithely unaware and undisturbed; it was beautiful. I cannot remember a time where such a clash of cultures was ever unnoticed in the US. I will miss that.

Countless times in class a certain fascination with the US civil rights movement arose. For a country whose own fight for independence stoked its embers from the fight for racial equality in the States, a special relationship exists between African-Americans and the Irish that is storied. In my research, I stumbled upon an unpublicized fact: Before Frederick Douglass became a renown abolitionist, he found comradery here in Dublin with Daniel O’Connell – the Irish liberator who was a political leader in the first half of the 19^thcentury. President Obama relished in this same fact during his Irish address in 2012. And to be honest, being a pseudo-expatriate has only increased what was already a distinct pride I had in being African-American – our struggle is famous not just for its success but for its resilience. I will miss that.

My last intracontinental trip was to Geneva, Switzerland, increasing my total number of visited countries to fifteen. After that, I swore to no further travel and to spend my last month and a half in Dublin to deepen my experience – a great decision in retrospect. Classes end at Trinity unusually early in April and students are then free to study and write their respective dissertations. I have an incredible wealth of unstructured time to read, pontificate, analyze, rest, socialize, and repeat. Every day recently is filled with exploring sociological journals/books related to police brutality, white policing, social movement effectiveness, stereotypes, methodological queries, South Carolinian history, etc.  I will definitely miss that.

I define amazing years by towering highs and ghastly lows. This year meets that criteria. From the joys of traveling with fellow Scholars to the anxieties of figuring out next steps, this year, ironically, has been the most restful year of my life. 

I am eternally grateful and will definitely be returning to this spiritual land. I have made lifelong Irish friends, and Dublin is yet another home. I cannot thank the Mitchell program enough for providing this needed outlet. Nevertheless, in the words of Chris Cuomo, “Let’s get after it” – however ‘it’ may be axiomatically outside my own control. Slainte.

While March saw Ireland looking with wonder at the largest snow storm in decades, April and May have seen Galway flaunting daffodils and tiny white flowers and producing shades of airy greens as sunlight scatters through the trees that would leave any painter (or any rushed masters student hurrying to campus) suddenly, inescapably in awe. Some of my earliest memories involve gardening and watering house plants with my mother and grandmother, and my love of plants always reminds me of them. Any of the Mitchell Scholars who were with me in the gardens around Blarney Castle, or near the mosses close to Giants Causeway, will tell you that I am constantly pointing out plants.

It came as no surprise then when the first addition to my room in Galway was a small bonsai tree. As my mom took care of my bonsai from college in the states, I gave her updates about my new one as we grew together into our Galway home. Over Christmas, those updates switched from FaceTime to face-to-face time as I went home for the holidays – a trip that restored me but brought draught and panic to my Galway tree. Unfortunately, as I returned to Ireland, I found myself also struggling with several health issues, some new, some old and exacerbated. Prohibited from fencing, sleeping more than ever, and nearly always exhausted, I was suddenly spending a great deal more time in my room. Looking over towards my plants, I remember holding my breath as I scratched a small area of bark on my bonsai’s trunk – still green, still alive, just in need of care. I continued to regularly fill her water basin underneath (fun fact – always water bonsais from underneath), to spritz her with water, to tell her she was doing the best she could (unproven fun fact – always tell your plants they look beautiful and are doing great).

Although I continued to require much rest, I often pushed myself too far, failing to acknowledge my own needs and limitations. I was incredibly frustrated that I seemed to be making little progress, not meeting recovery goals when I thought I should. I was encouraged to go to mindfulness sessions at the university, and I soon found my (literal and figurative) head in the hands of Martina, my mindfulness therapist, listening as she repeated advice about accepting the state of things as they are; about allowance, openness, and softness. She challenged me often to accept my current conditions, my natural pace, and that progress could be made even when it wasn’t apparent. Meanwhile, she also taught me about the power of compassion, asking for help, and allowing others to assist. Just this past week, my bonsai tree began to show signs that she may regrow leaves. That night, as I drank tea on my balcony looking out at Galway Bay, I reflected on how my time here in the past few months has altered my ideas of strength and care. Just as I continued to care for my tree even when she appeared beyond hope, my fencing team continued to invite me to any events I could partake in, my friends kept checking in and bringing me out, my professors provided help, flexibility, and extended deadlines, my family encouraged me from afar, and I attended mindfulness sessions and doctor appointments. Standing on my balcony, I realized how all of those things had quietly fostered recovery even when the progress had been unrecognizably slow – for my bonsai tree but also for me.

Sometimes the test of strength isn’t pushing beyond limits to accomplish everything perfectly and as quickly as possible. Sometimes it’s care even when care is the hardest to give, when conditions are bleak, when the roots seem dry. Sometimes it’s continuing even when growth isn’t recognizable for months. Sometimes it’s allowing others to shower you in empathy, love, and kindness as you grow into yourself again. And I am forever grateful to have received these Irish showers that I hope will bring about many new flowers.