1999 Derry Diary #4 12 June

Diary #4 June 12, 1999', 'Saturday June 12th, 1999', 'Failte from the second floor of the Derry Library...overlooking the attractive Ulster Bus Station...it's actually MOnday morning...do you know where you are?
Saturday June 12th, 1999
Everytime I come out of the Parish Hall, where we are encamped I see the observation tower on the city walls...This tower is loaded with hi-res TV cameras all pointed at the Bogside. I wave at our RUC friends. It's 'Big Brother' watching, always watching...The girls slept until noon today, nobody stirred. Although I can not carry on an intelligent conversation in the morning, I do like to get up early. With everyone asleep, there was no one to play with...It was a beautiful sun-shiny day too...oh well, too bad....', 'I noticed that the workmen have almost finished with restoring all the broken windows in the renovated flats across the street. I hope they last the week...We tried to get transport to Donegal but it turned out to be too expensive, we are going to try another source tomorrow...Plan B was to go into the city for the Carnival-Festival thingie...the city center was packed with people...music, face painting, baloons...and the sun came out...very cool. We walked part of the walls of this walled city, stopping at the Apprentice Boys meeting hall for a picture, infront of the RUC watchtower for a picture, and in front of the Sinn Fein office for a pciture....one of these, I hope will make it into the school yearbook...or not...This eve was the semi-annual dance for big people upstairs in the parish center...not that you have to be big, but older more mature group....this went on until 1.30 am so we all retired then...actually we are getting used to the Bingo-Irish Dancing-Disco evenings over our head...I was told that the Millenium Dance at the Parish Hall is sold out for Dec 31st @ £50 per couple...in fact there is a waiting list I am told, just in case some ticketholder is called to their final dance with the creator...
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Sunday, June 13th 1999
Lashin' rain! The old saying about the weather holds true fro this town..."If you don't like the weather....wait a minute"...We found transport on the PDF mini-bus (Prisoner's Defense Fund)...and off we went to Co. Donegal...Our bus driver, Paddy, took us way up the Donegal coast to Dungloe were the beaches are pristine and the Atlantic is blue...took a number of pictures there and will show them on the BlackShade web site when I return to California...it's hard to describe because any words would fall short...the whole adventure was a ramble...we wound up at Donegal Town for a bite to eat and a tour of Donegal Castle...back at home we did the mac-'n-cheese dinner and went off to spend the evening with Mary Nelis of Sinn Fein, at her house...She told the kids how, because of need, she got into politics...She had 9 children, 8 boys and one girl and lived in a two room flat in the Bogside with toilet's outside in the back garden....through her humor some of the tragedy of the civil rights movement came to light. Nights and early mornings when the Paras would break into her home and search for weapons and guns, not finding any of course...she showed us the messages written on cigarette rolling paper in a tiny hand that were smuggled out of Long Kesh during the hunger strikes of the late 70's early 80's...these were touching messages full of news and requests...2 of her sons were imprisioned for long stretches of 9 years and 14 years for their association with the IRA...the boy who was in the longest wrote on one of the tiny papers that he did not have bad feelings about the prison guards and that he forgave them....this was one of the most moving of all the many messages,,,this is the message of course we try and bring home to our kids and this was a perfect object lesson...the conditions in the prison at that time was horrible, and tourture was not uncommon, especially during interrogations...the emergency powers act lacks a certain civility from a nation which taught us about democracy...the boys were 17 and 19 when they were arrested...there is much more to this story and to Mary's story but I am limited in space and time here....perhaps one day soon I'll publish these letters and oral histories on the web-site....we finally crash landed after evening prayer about 1.00 am....again... ==+==+==+==+==+==+==+==+==+==+==+==+
More tomorrow....when its back to work... Slan, Paul (BlackShade)