Peacebuilding: Architecture in Belfast

Update: I returned to the US last Saturday, applied straightaway for a UK visa, and after a huge headache of paperwork, now I am waiting to hear back from the embassy. I should hear by Tuesday. Lesson learned: always tell the border control that you are just traveling.

I met with a few architecture/planning professors at Queens University before I left Belfast. I got a few new ideas for ways to focus my research. I learning that social housing can no longer be isolated as an issue, but is rather part of multiple social processes. The main focus for architects and planners in Belfast now is on “shared space,” or spaces shared by both Protestant and Catholic communities.

So exactly what will I be researching? The architecture of new post-conflict spaces in Belfast. How does the relationship between architecture and identity affect both conflict and reconciliation? How can new architecture denote peace or a break from the past while still relating to the identity of Belfast, which itself is rooted in the various identities of polarized communities? More specifics on this later…

Until then, here is a photo about waiting… not waiting for a visa, but rather waiting in a traffic jam caused by cows crossing the road on the way to my great-aunt’s house in the Irish countryside.

Before telling the story of the bad debacle with the UK border control, here is a photo of a rainbow I saw today while driving. This is definitely not a wannabe rainbow, but a full-blown-pot-of-gold-leprechaun-type-rainbow:

Alright, and on to the bad news…

At 8:57 am Monday morning (3:47am EST), I stood in a long line at border control.

“What are you doing in Belfast?”
“I am a traveling student.”
“Where are you studying in Belfast?”
“I have contacts at Queens but I’m not an official student there. I’m doing independent research.”
“Well then you are not a student. Do you have paperwork?”
“Uh, yes.”

I scrambled to pull out my folder with all my contact info.  On top were papers from Habitat for Humanity, “Here is email from Habitat for Humanity… I’m going to volunteer there a few days per week as part of my research.”

She examines the papers with a scowl and then with a condescending flavor says, “So you’re actually a volunteer worker.”
“I guess so? I’m really just a student. I’m only volunteering part-time.”
“You need a visa to be a volunteer worker.”  She loudly stamps a few papers with ink. “Sit down in the corner.  I will have to ask you a few more questions.”

She hands me a paper stating that I am liable to be detained. I wait in the corner for about half an hour with three other people including an autistic woman who is confused and angry, a younger girl unclear about whether she studied in public or private school, and a boy cursing about everything because he just came over to work for his uncle.

She calls us each up again. Eventually I am the only one left.  I sit for another two hours.  Finally she called me into a back room.  “You have been denied entrance to the U.K. because you are a volunteer worker, which means you need a Visa.  It is clearly stated on our website.”

I had poured over their website for hours and had never read that!  The websites just said over and over again that US citizens are allowed in the UK for up to 6 months without a visa… and somewhere I read that it included volunteers! (Later I found out that they changed the law in late April and my Habitat contact did not let me know because she had been on holiday) I felt my eyes well with tears.  She fingerprinted me so thoroughly that it took about 15 minutes.  Then photographed me sobbing.  Then sent me away with my bags on a 24-hour temporary allowance until a flight home the next morning.

After a few frantic phone calls, I checked into the hotel next to the airport.  Then my cell phone rang.  It was my Great Aunt Renee.  She insisted that she pick me up from the hotel and bring me to her house.  She had even called the airport and convinced the Chief Immigration Officer to allow me to stay in Northern Ireland until Friday on a “Compassion Allowance.”  Within an hour, I found myself driving through the Irish countryside with two women who were at least over seventy… and the entire way, they were arguing over the directions and laughing, or as they would put it: “fighting the peace out of each other.”

8 cups of tea, one bowl of porridge and 3 homecooked meals later, I was being hugged by multiple Irish students in my Great Uncle’s meditation and healing class.  Who knows which country I will be in next week, but one thing is for sure: Excluding the one woman at border control, I have never felt such warmth and comfort from strangers in my life.  To me, this seems unique to Ireland.

So what this experience attempting to teach me?  New views of inclusion and exclusion?   The dichotomy between the Irish people and the British border control?  How bureaucracy’s growth can demolish common sense?  Watch out for the fugitive charity-worker… Or perhaps, this represents how many people often feel trying to enter the US even just to visit?  Despite a few traumatic moments this past week, I feel very blessed.  Now the question is: how can I return to Ireland ASAP?

It turns out that this summer I will be living ten blocks away from where my grandmother grew up.  I showed her a map the other day of the route between her old house and my summer apartment.  She poured over the map with a magnifying glass shouting out street names as soon as she recognized him.  Pure delight seemed to cross her face as she reminisced over her youth. About an hour later, her face suddenly went cold.  She sternly requested that I NOT share any information with anyone in Belfast about the neighborhood in which she was raised.

Why was she so ashamed?  Why had she lied to me a year before when I asked her where she grew up?  When I asked my grandmother where she actually had lived, she wrinkled her nose and replied, “some poor Catholic area.”   This was my grandmother, a strict practicing Catholic. I was slightly in shock.  It was not until I looked at the address on her marriage certificate that I found her actual address…  It seems like a lot of secrets are slowly coming out, but it’s almost more intriguing to figure out why they were hidden in the first place.

Belfast, a place of extreme turmoil and violence for centuries, is divided by religious identities that are strongly tied to territory.  My grandmother, having to interact with the physical environment of her neighborhood everyday,became embarrassed of her home. When bigotry and segregation is manifested in physical environments such as dilapidated neighborhoods, that we have to interact with every single day, what happens to our own concept of self?  Our identity as a community?  In the case of conflict, how does this affect the tension between two communities?

Below is a photo of the wall next to my apartment.  I thought the “stamp out racism” graffiti creates an interesting first taste to the summer ahead of me…  Side note: My flight was delayed, so I won’t arrive in Belfast until Monday, so courtesy for this photo goes to google maps street view…

Meghan McAllister ‘10 will be blogging about her research on the architecture of social housing in Belfast, Northern Ireland.