I don't blog any more.

I've been driving for two years.

From time to time people ask me why I don't blog, and they tell me they'd like me to. I feel like there's a new development, a Web 2.5 maybe, rather than Web 3.0. And I don't feel comfortable there. I get facebook, and blogger - but I'm a shy, self-conscious tweeter, a non-RSSer; I don't quite know how to drum up interest in my dusty little corner of the net.

Still though, I liked blogging. I like blogging. Maybe I can just stay in this corner and witter away to myself, and maybe that's fine. The implicit audience - that was always a bit of a barrier anyway to me expressing myself honestly.

The Field

I am a development professional. I work in Ireland, advising people who work in poorer places. There's lots of jargon involved, and lots of euphemism, and one of my least favourite euphemisms is this one. "The field".
Among development professionals, "the field" is anywhere poor, and in receipt of well-intentioned aid money (like my agency's). A wise academic once crankily dismissed my use of the term, saying "fields are for cows" - but what better to say? If the agency I work for was active in community development in Ireland, then I would live in "the field", a relatively deprived neighbourhood with lots of NGOs and social workers milling about (though not nearly enough). But we don't work in Ireland, so "the field" is located inconveniently at the end of multiple long-haul flights. That's where I'm going next week. Sierra Leone in West Africa, to be exact, for one week.

Since they were born 17 distant months ago, I've left the twins overnight on two occasions - both blessed escapes for me and their father; in both cases thanks to the immense generosity of my sister. Now I'm leaving them for 8 nights. It's not very long, and I'd be lying if I said I was terribly anxious about it. Simon is fabulous: he's laid back and fun and completely on top of things with the boys, and a week is hardly a long time for him to be on his own with them. I'll miss them - but the time always passes incredibly quickly on field trips, and I'm looking forward to the adventure.

There it is. I'm a development professional. When I wasn't an anything professional, desperately trying to break into the NGO sector, I dreamed about having a job like mine, with regular international travel, casual familiarity with airports and slums across three continents. And when this job frustrates me, I do remind myself that I'm still living exactly the dream I once had.

I don't know if it's still my dream. I don't know if I want to be that breezy chick on the back of the pick-up whose husband is at home with the kids. I have a manager who used to live in Mozambique and travel frequently in Southern Africa. She told me about her two year old son strapping on his little backpack and marching out into the back garden, with a cheery: "bye bye mummy, I'm off to Angola!" When she told me that story, it made me sad (I was 6 months pregnant at the time, and to be fair I was easily saddened). The poor boy had such low expectations of the people nearest to him: normality for him was departures, separation, parents being available in shifts, never both at once. Once, I would have seen it as exactly the kind of glamorous life I wanted.

Now, I don't really know how I feel about that story.

This Sierra Leone visit is an experiment. To be effective in my work, I believe I need to travel way more than I ever have before. To be happy and content as a parent, I'm not sure whether I believe that's possible. Maybe it is. Maybe the boys will grow up with their backpacks on, confidently striding out to Africa, just like their mum. Or maybe they'll just miss me, in an unglamorous, uncomplicated way. Maybe I'm just being self-important and self-indulgent.

I will probably have thoughts about this on my return. With any luck, I'll make the time to blog about them.

Tiny Despots

The babies parade about the living room on their adult chariots. For pre-verbal creatures, they're pretty effective communicators. If one of their minions stops walking, stops bouncing, or - god help us - sits down, the commanding baby screeches until full service resumes. From their perches draped on our shoulders, or sitting up on an adult arm, they survey the wreckage of our adult lives, and finally,imperiously, they smile.

And goddamn them, the smile gets us every time. Our indentured state is assured.

I feel wholly bullied, and there's not a soul I can complain to. Last night, I passed an important milestone. At 6AM, wrestling with Felix while trying to keep a dummy in Max's mouth, I finally and utterly dropped the analysis. No more spinning rationalisations: they slept less than usual today/ perhaps if I hadn't drunk 2 coffees/ Felix is teething/ if I had picked Max up first maybe I'd have got him down before Felix woke... There is no logic, no system, no cause and effect. They are just unpredictable, adorable bullies. And all the bedtime routines, early weaning, dietary adjustments, baby massage courses and special songs I throw at them won't make them quiet placid babies who sleep through the night. But it won't always be like this.

Some day, when they're willful pig headed toddlers who won't do a thing we tell them, we'll look back at this time longingly. Strangely, that knowledge doesn't quite help.

Dispatch from Dingle

We have moved to Kerry for 2 months, to avail of a loving grandmother, a bigger house, and less rubbish-strewn streets. The babies are having their first encounters with nature: with beaches, cows and hedges. And though I love Dublin 8, it would be churlish not to seize the opportunity to move to the country when we can, while I'm on paid maternity leave (and I do know how fortunate I am to have this), and Simon can work from a little broom cupboard downstairs.

But let's be honest here. A baby is a lot of work, and two babies is a lot of baby. I miss the support and solidarity of other mums I know in Dublin. It's all a bit of a gilded palace: I look out at the magical light, hard and clear on the hills climbing behind the house - but I can never leave the babies, so I can't get beyond town.

Both babies are teething. Felix lies on his playmat, a menagerie of jungle animals suspended just above him; Max wails helplessly in my arms. Felix is remonstrating loudly with a favourite toy, the one we call Colonel Giraffey. Pacing the kitchen, I interpret his crescendoing acks.

"Your time is up, Giraffey! We will institute a no fly zone!" (Felix has been mandated to negotiate with the Colonel by Nelson Mandelephant).
"Screw you baby!" replies the Colonel. " Our plan is to live and die in Libya. You will never secure a UN resolution in time."
"Well at the very least I'll have you indicted by the International Criminal Court" insists Felix, whose grunts are growing more urgent.
"Ahahahahahaha!" The giraffe laughs evilly. "But Libya does not recognise the jurisdiction of the ICC!"
Felix responds with a shriek of pain. "We'll get you... in Switzerland!" he protests weakly. By now though he is crying uncontrollably, and can't be left any longer.

I put Max down, to continue the negotiations, and pick Felix up.

Simon appears to make coffee. "I suppose if you're going to go stir crazy" he says, "you might as well do it somewhere with a view."

Nothing to say...

I promised myself I'd blog weekly, but I find I have so little to say. I sit on the sofa feeding. I eat an indecent amount of cake. I marvel at their solid, doll-like bodies.

This is close to happiness. I'll try to come up with something worth writing about though.

The X-Men

And yet, in spite of this, you want to know what they're like. And surely I must know, I spend 24 hours a day with them. There is a paradox here: how can we possibly love two creatures so profoundly, and yet be incapable even of telling them apart? It's a fair question.

The x men were 9 weeks old yesterday; not quite 6 weeks if you correct for the fact that they were premature (and you do, apparently). They are infants, and infants, unless they're you're own, are essentially guts with faces. Profoundly beautiful faces in this case, but hopelessly inefficient, ineffective guts. Since ingestion and digestion are all that babies do, it seems reasonable to expect they'd be able to do these things quite well. But no: pooing causes immense physical pain; burping and farting are impossible without adult assistance. For their first few weeks, to know them was to burp them.

9 weeks on, they are becoming more face and less gut. Mostly eyes. Both boys have deep indigo eyes, almond shaped, huge in their small silky heads. Perhaps Max's gaze is deeper, more thoughtful-seeming; perhaps Felix is cheerier. These comparisons seem inane. Their personalities are inchoate, flickering in brief glances out of those faces before they crumple again into wails brought on by basic wind or hunger.

I am incapable of describing them with any greater sophistication - although I feel like we have a more sophisticated relationship with each of them. We do know them individually, and yet it's indescribable how. I have a sense of each boy, yet when I try to put my finger on it, it dissipates: I know it best when I mistake one twin for the other, and then correct myself: the individual personality is there fleetingly in the moment of realisation of my mistake.

Between them we see a collection of traits, a bag of possibilities from which will eventually emerge two personalities. Among these are stubborn, miserable (the little-boy-devastated face just before it explodes in a wail of despair), pensive, tenacious (clutching at the giraffe above their cot; grasping for my breast), sweet, adoring (gazing up at either parent -this not nearly often enough), jealous, impatient.... They are in a process of becoming. They are becoming people. For now, still guts with faces, but less so every day.

Identical

I've been wanting to blog for a very long time, but it's hard to get to it, you know? Simon's better than I am at typing with two hands while holding a crying baby. Babies are less likely to stop crying if you're typing anyway, that's what I've found.

People always want to know how we tell the babies apart. I met a twin mum before the x men were born, who glanced down at her 3 month old identical twin boys (they looked like adorable little frogs - but then, most babies do) and said "I don't think they look that alike, really". They were the graven image of one another.

I assumed that I would be similar, that there would be countless subtle signs, invisible to all but me, the Mother, to distinguish them. There were, initially: a burn mark from the suction that brought Felix into the world; replaced by a small bump on the side of his head. We began to panic when the bump started to subside: how would we ever tell them apart? I waited for the maternal intuition, the innate certainty of who-was-who that would come from spending 24 hours a day unseparated from the little creatures. It didn't come.

Now we dress them differently, according to a rough code: Felix in colours, Max in white and cream. I have no idea whether I'm able to tell them apart on sight or not, since I never need to.

Other people are terribly interested in the individual nature of the boys: who is bigger, who is bolder, who is sweeter? But their looks - and their characters - are ever-changing. Nothing is fixed, nothing is certain. I have a subtle sense of who my boys are, but I can't define it, certainly not one in opposition to the other.

Snow Babies

They're here! They arrived on Wednesday evening, when the whole of Ireland was suspended under snow, the doom stuck up somewhere in the messy ice drifts and under the snowmen; and we were suspended in a fug of epidural and the ancient art of midwifery. Our two boys pushed into the world, observed by a room worthy of an ER set (2 paediatricians, a registrar, how many med students, medics, midwives), and a mother, drifting deliriously above it all, elated beyond belief. Two baby boys, tiny but fully alive and well, 4 pounds 15 ounces and 4 pounds 12. If you don't know what that means, google it and let the rest of us know. I can't talk to Europeans about baby birth weights.

That was a million years ago. And a few epochs later, we escaped from the post-natal ward and Evil Olga the night midwife. At home, we satellite around their cots (whether upstairs or downstairs): Mummy, Daddy, and Amazing Auntie Ollie. We discuss breastfeeding, at length; we discuss nappies. We drink tea and eat cake. Simon cooks and cooks and plays jazz for his sons to develop good taste. This strange honeymoon is perhaps the happiest I have ever been. Outside, there is still snow on the ground; the light bouncing off it blue on our babies' faces.

What are they called? People are so anxious to know. Time to start comparing the twins (are they identical?)! They are called our snow babies. For the season that's in it, I thought Fintan and Vincent might be a good pair of names - but it won't be that. All in good time. They have a whole lifetime ahead of them.

We are happy. Our babies have arrived.

Thanks everyone for the messages, which made me cry again and again. I will try to get in touch over the next few weeks. Forgive me though, I'm a bit delirious.

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes

I have slowed down. I have grown, immensely. I'm like a ship now, as wide as I am tall, navigating ponderously down the street, incapable of quick or sudden movements. What a strange feeling, for an impatient person, to suddenly inhabit the body of a slow person. It has all sorts of knock-on impacts: I think more slowly, talk more slowly. I'm sitting here, typing slowly, with my woolly hat still on an hour after I came in from outside. I even remove my clothes more slowly.

Is that it? The sum total of pregnancy: I have become - slow? Of course not.

I have been feeling well, throughout, and exercising, and eating and generally not suffering. I am - I've remarked on this before - the luckiest girl alive. Physically at least. Emotionally, it took me about 4 months (and numerous self-help books of the kind I scorned even as I kept buying them) to come to terms with the reality of expecting twins.
I'm given to self-doubt, and there seemed so many things to doubt, in addition to myself. I worried that nobody would help us. I worried that I'd get post-natal depression. I worried that our relationship couldn't survive the strain. I panicked that I wouldn't be able to breastfeed - and I wouldn't have any bottles to bottle feed - and how would I know what to buy? The books only tell you how to breast feed! I lost sleep over car seats and cars, prams and buggies, cots and mattresses and safety standards and oh my god! How do stupid people have babies? It's so complicated!!

Now though, now I'm just slow, and heavy, and expectant. Two little boys. Any week now, they'll make their appearance. And if stupid people can raise babies, surely two neurotic freaks like us can.

Simon comes downstairs, and looks at me, surprised. "You're still awake?" This is the joy of late twin pregnancy: slow-moving, sleepy slothfulness. It won't last for long, of that we can be sure.

Photos to follow. I know I owe you photos.

Pregnant in Mozambique

I decided long before I left for Mozambique that I'd write a blog post about being pregnant in Africa. I'd assumed there would be plenty to say, in a cosy, sisterly, down-homey kind of way. I've spent five years now intermittently visiting poor countries, where women of all sorts tend to pity my ageing childless state. By now I've reached a ludicrously advanced age - I should by rights be nearly onto grandchildren - but all the same, I am at least finally acknowledging my womanhood and fulfilling my god-given purpose. And I seem to have expected to have something heart-warming and life-affirming to report from this experience.

Of course few people were bothered. I was in Maputo for five days, working with an exceptional organisation dedicated to transparency and participatory governance, along with some of the representative structures they support. In all that time, two women took note of my pregnancy, both what you might call "local people", probably politically well-connected, elected to represent their communities or associations before local government. I chatted to each of them in halting portugnol. The best conversation went something like this:

Her: Is this your first baby?
Me: Yes. (embarassed smile. I can't say a great deal in portugnol).
Her: If you're lucky it'll be a girl.
Me: MmHmmm.
Her: Do you know what you're having?
Me: Actually there's two babies. They're twins. (more embarassed smiling)
Her: Oh dear. (she looks sorry for me). Well, maybe you'll have a girl and a boy.
Me: No, I'm fairly sure they're two boys.
Her: Oh. How far are you gone?
Me: 5 months.
Her: And is the father here?

That's about as far as it got. Funny. She told me to come back so that they could see my babies. The other lady had said that too. She was astonished when I told her I was having twins. How could I possibly know such a thing already? All the same, I think they both felt sorry for us foreigners that we live such mobile, rootless lives.

I had thought of pregnancy as a very fundamental, basic thing, an experience that runs beyond barriers of class or education or wealth. I had thought the strangeness, the newness, the utter physicality of it all would somehow incite a sense of common cause with fellow women. Of course there is as much that divides us as unites us, even in this thing. Here I was on the other end of 3 flights, the other side of the world, carrying so much knowledge about the lives growing inside of me already. Advising this group of people on how to include women's perspectives in their campaigning to local government. Advising them on strategies to tackle the fact that women walk to health posts only to find them closed for the night - and then give birth on the road outside.

There really aren't any experiences left that transcend inequality.

Twins

I might as well come out here: I'm pregnant. Not just that, we're expecting twins. That's two babies. Extraordinary.

We went for our first antenatal appointment on the 10th of June, just shy of 12 weeks into the pregnancy. This is a purely extractive event, an opportunity for the hospital to populate your file with data about your medical history, vital statistics, immunity and so on - and to verify that there really is a baby. It's not the sort of appointment where a "practitioner" talks to you about your feelings - physical or emotional; nor even the sort where they make recommendations relating to vitamin intake or exercise. Extract the information, build a file, then cheerio until week 20.

So it's all very efficient, quite cheery, not especially personal. The last bit is the scan - medically required to "date" the pregnancy, but probably really an incentive to make couples show up for what is otherwise an endless round of queues and samples.

I'm lying on a table with jelly on my belly, and Simon's sitting on a chair at the end of the table, holding my foot, tenderly. The sonographer is very quiet, white noise blurs indecipherably across the screen in front of us. "Emm", she says at last. "Do you know you're expecting twins?"

Our initial reaction was to giggle, both of us. I absolutely did not believe her. I think I replied to her utterly ridiculous question (how would we know?) with an equally ridiculous denial: "no I don't think so. There's no family history." I was quite sure she was wrong.

But she wasn't wrong, and I was terrified. There's no space really in a maternity hospital for terror. No space for confusion or worry either. It's all resolutely cheery and efficient. For the first time in my life, I felt my gender weigh on me as a burden: I had visions of myself tied to my house (now tiny in those visions), never returning to work, never excaping from the pressure of simultaneous breast feeding and the most enormous pram imaginable. I felt traitorous for fearing it, but I was terrified.

When I went to the office to book my next appointments, the girl took my file back from me and replaced all of my identity stickers with new ones: Multiple Births Clinic. When I returned two weeks later those had been joined by additional stickers detailing all the procedures and investigations I was no longer eligible for. The sausage machine had ground to a halt, and I'd been lifted speedily out of it: you're no longer part of our efficient, cheery practise: you go over here. So much for the midwife system. So much for the most natural thing in the world.

What's amazing isn't the system - which is, fundamentally, a good one. What's amazing is how quickly you get over all those feelings of exclusion and panic. I'm having two babies! Proper order! By now we've had a second scan, seen the two of them squirming around, waving at us, much more this time than unintelligible white noise.

I promise faithfully not to use this blog to bleat on about motherhood and goo - I know how dull that is. But I do think that twins merit a special mention. It is rather unusual, don't you think? And really rather exciting.

Penneys and human rights - what the campaigns don't tell you

There is a small and highly effective Irish NGO called Frontline Human Rights Defenders: it works with people around the world who fight in one way or another for human rights.

Human rights activists are often bolshy types, argumentative and stubborn. But it's a big wobbly title, and encompasses lots of people. The Corrib gas protesters are human rights defenders and so are Niall Crowley and Mary Robinson. Crusties, technocrats and lawyers: could be just about anybody. My work involves supporting numerous people around the world who found themselves at the Frontline Dublin Platform this year. It was a good opportunity to show colleagues and friends around Dublin.

Here's where Penneys comes in. There was a good article in the Irish Times recently about the controversy that has surrounded the dirt cheap prices charged by Penneys. The reasonable assumption is that if a dress costs 12 euro, the chances are that the people who made it didn't see much money; and that the conditions they work in aren't great either.

Penneys made a killing this weekend, out of human rights activists from Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe and Latin America. I brought Lucia from Bolivia there, along with Berta from Honduras. I can't begin to express what these two women showed me or told me about their lives - which is, I suppose, why I'm writing about taking them to Penneys instead. In the past year, 3 attempts have been made on Berta's life. I sat humbled over breakfast as they talked about the exhaustion they feel at never being heard, never believed; how their governments, the media, down to their own communities set out to discredit them and undermine their stories. Lucia comes from Pando in Bolivia: she lost her husband because she agreed to go to La Paz to tell the full story about the massacre that occured there on the 11th of September 2008.

So: two women, typical human rights defenders. Angry, self-righteous, demanding; but also warm and funny. They both needed gifts for their daughters. We spent one entire hour in Penneys on O'Connell St. I mainly hovered outside the changing room, keeping an eye out for Berta (no, I don't think that really suits you - is there one in pink?) while intervening on Lucia's behalf with the understandably cranky changing room assistant (she just wants to change the size 8 for a 10: I promise this will be the last time. Sorry). Neither of them speaks a syllable of English. Worse: they don't speak a syllable of sign language either. That's why they have me.

I pointed out the signs all over the walls that explain how Penneys is committed to the highest labour rights standards throughout its supply chain. We discussed how this probably means that labour rights standards are atrocious in supply factories. But it's very hard to argue with 3 bikinis for 10 euro. They were beside themselves.

It never fails, that's the strange thing. It's one of those unmentioned things about working in international development or human rights. You bring people to Ireland from the most awful places, who have experience the most awful things, to tell their stories and maybe to influence somebody in Ireland who has power. I spent a wonderful Saturday with them both, we went to the National Gallery and wandered through Trinity. But the unquestionable highlight - the one can't miss moment of every trip I escort around Dublin - is the visit to Penneys.

Should I feel morally compromised?

Gaeilge, part II

This is a perfunctory post, intended to ensure that I don't in any way slander the good name of Conradh na Gaeilge. After a disastrous opening class with a teacher who inspired rage and self-hatred in me, I called up and effected a change of teachers. It involved moving up a level, which was daunting but preferable.
My new teacher is spot on. He's fun, he's relevant, he likes people. Sure, he's lazy: it's very easy to be a lazy language teacher. I know I always was. But that one disastrous class made me see very clearly how many things are very much worse than laziness in a teacher.
So I'm happy learning the gaeilge now. And I heartily recommend it.

Gaeilge

I know now why nobody in this goddamned country can speak our native language.

I enrolled for an Irish class in Conradh na Gaeilge, and I started last night. They told me I could pick my own level: I was fairly good at Irish in school, and I like to jabber away from time to time, so I signed up for intermediate 1. Even so, I was nervous on my way in to town for the class, and more nervous still when I faced a room full of people who had taken courses here before.

I'm comfortable in classroom settings: I'm not a terribly capable or resourceful person, but I was a precocious 8-year-old, so put me in a classroom and I'll revert. Even so, Irish is different. I tried to explain this to an English friend last night - she told me I was over-thinking it, which of course I was. But there's a sense somehow - I have it at least - that Irish should be part of our DNA, and that those of us who don't speak it fluently are somehow responsible for that fact. Slow learners. Or ideological failures. Since this is our native tongue, it should be innate, and if it's not then..... put it this way, it's not like being bad at science.

Ok, so I'm nervous and uncomfortable about learning gaeilge, but also buzzed, because like I said I can jabber away, and I get a kick out of it. And here it is January and I'm doing something wholesome and self-improving, and that can only be a good thing.

I hated my teacher. After 2 hours, in a quiet, unobtrusive way (on a chair in a semi-circle of chairs arrayed with adults with pencils and notebooks), I managed to gather a sense of antipathy and hostility towards the man unmatched since I had my last ever row with Sr Louisa in 6th year. I am astonished how this man replicated so exactly the smug, self-satisfied, supercilious indifference to my ability or my learning experience that I experienced from every Irish teacher I ever had in my life.

He was such an complete, unmistakeable, irredeemable MUINTEOIR.

He plucked students' names off his attendance list - alphabetically, so that Aoife got put on the spot every time (poor Aoife), and thrust questions at them, then sneered at their answers and showed how he would have answered better.
He seized randomly on obscure grammar points and tackled them with lengthy photocopied pages with lists of words and no rationale.
He ignored questions, or dismissed them loftily - a sneery version of "that's just the way it is", only that he was meant to be explaining the rules.
He lectured us on why our Irish was dull, lifeless, limited: "why would you use a boring phrase like that when the language has a wealth of curious, inventive, beautiful phrases" (answer: because we don't speak Irish very well!); then he listed off all the words we could have used instead of the lousy one we'd offered - too fast, too virtuosic for anybody to write them down.

I learned nothing. I enjoyed listening to his fluent North Kerry Irish and his way with an anecdote - but I can hear that sort of thing on the radio and it won't cost me 200 bucks. I really enjoyed chattering away in Irish to other students - and maybe I should just do that with my gaeilgeoir colleagues.

The thing though was the way the man managed to instantly whip me back to 6th year, to the sense that no amount of Irish I speak will ever be right, that this language is an insurmountable challenge and that, given that I can never hope to conquer the tiseal ginideach, the mo coinnailach, the urdu, the seimhiu or any of their like, I should just crawl back under my sasanach rock where I belong.

I love Irish. I'm good at Irish. And at the end of 2 hours I wanted to run a mile from learning Irish. Course I'm not going to do that. But can anybody tell me what I should do?

The Meeja, again

I screwed up. Hardly surprising, given the horrible conditions, and nobody will notice, but nonetheless. It's never a good feeling.

It's been raining for days, and I've been post-Christmas hibernating, gradually disappearing under the piles of seasonal detritus (books, DVDs, packaging: soft plastic, molded plastic, cardboard everywhere. Not to mention the food). Today's one and only task was to clear the rubbish out of the house and the car. The final related errand was a trip to Oxfam Home on Frances St.

The one way system in the Liberties was confounding, so I ditched the car halfway between my house and the shop, and walked to Francis St in the rain. Arrived, with 2 coats on, drenched, with a soggy box full of soggy tat. And the nice beardy man in the shop is being interviewed by a lady and a man with a very large camera. The lady sprang on me, delighted; the spongy bit of her microphone says 3. They're filming a fluff piece for tonight's news about charity shops. Oh shite. Do I mind if they film me arriving (again) with my box of tat? They have lots of shoppers, but no donors. Sigh. When will this be on? I don't want my Aunty seeing me on the telly giving away all my Christmas presents from the last 3 years. Ok.

I walk down the steps again, still dripping, with a box of junk that I've never owned. Hand it over. That's great, now can we interview you? You know, the irony is, I work for Trocaire. Ho ho ho and out with the mic.

I made a show of myself. I said daft things like "it's all for a good cause", and "we bought our wardrobe here." Here was the perfect opportunity to express, articulately, in the guise of an ordinary Irish person, the importance that international development has to me. Here was my chance to use the meeja as a worthwhile mouthpiece, to talk about the connection I feel with my counterparts in Africa, to explain how important I think it is for Irish people to continue to fund development aid, even in recessionary times. And what do I do? I open my mouth and say exactly what I would expect any eejit on the telly to say. Utterly dumbfounded, I blew my chance.

It will air at 5.30 on TV3 news tonight ("and finally...") Hopefully nobody will see me. Oh god. Hopefully nobody from work will see me.

Stories of Africa, stories of dignity

Lately I've been regularly running into questions about how to tell stories, and of whose stories to tell. My good friend Bryan Mukandi in a recent blog gave the perspective of Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie, who gave a talk to Ted.com about the danger of the "single story" of Africa which makes people in the West unable to empathise with African problems because they have such limited, immutable ideas of what African problems are.

Apart from writing prize-winning, Oprah-friendly, book clubbish novels about African lives in all their joys and complexities, how can we make people leap from that single story to something more reflective of reality? Adichie's experience of being Nigerian in the US was that what people expected of her was some mix of grinding poverty, tribal dancing and mysticism, and a Lion Kingish relationship with nature. Not universities, pop music and hair dos. I'm perfectly familiar with this limited view of Africa: I'm more than a little prone to it myself, since at this time of year my favourite song, for all its political incorrectness, is still Do They Know It's Christmas.

Working for a development NGO, I encounter the problem of the single story regularly, and I'm not always satisfied by how we address it. Enough with the negativity: here's where I think we got it right: three audio-visual stories from Sierra Leone told in the words of the individuals who received our help. What's lovely about these stories, I think, is how transparently they show rural African life in all its simplicity and complication.
If I could only achieve one thing as a result of working in "development" for a living, (and I'm not convinced I can even do that much) it would be this: illustrate to Irish people how communities in the rest of the world are not unlike communities here. That means messy, close-knit, politicised, bitchy, determined, self-interested and endlessly resourceful. Is that more negative adjectives than positive? Well, I'm fairly cynical. That's pretty much how I view humanity, but it's also what I love about it.

The Sierra Leone stories got me thinking a lot about how badly we usually communicate something as simple and as incommunicable as Rural African Life. I found myself in a series of email exchanges, with wunderblogger/ wunderkind Jane Ruffino, and with miracle filmmaker-photographer Michael Kelly Kelly. Michael Kelly made a beautiful video about a community Trocaire supports in Malawi recently, which achieves much the same effect as the Sierra Leone stories, and so makes me equally proud. Which brings me to what I'm really thinking about: more than just African stories, but stories generally, stories that are hard to tell, and hence, oral history.

I've spent this evening wandering the internet guided primarily by Jane and Michael, and half memories of my own, looking for tales that are similarly dignified and motivating, that can make us connect with the lives of others. I was incredibly moved by this one: a Ugandan man who had been abducted as a child, told with spirit and hope through (his own?) child's illustrations. I was touched by this story of a teenage mother in New York: beautiful photos tracing the difficulties of a girl who thought that she had no alternatives when she got pregnant, because this may be her only opportunity to have a child. I was enchanted by this tale of a lesbian woman who confronts the fact that her family is racist, that the Klan is part of her own personal heritage.

The idea of oral history isn't exclusive to the audio-visual media. It's ancient, and one of its best proponents (thanks so much to Jane for this insight) was Studs Terkel, an American broadcaster who broadcast interviews with the ornery people of Chicago for more than 45 years from 1952.

What these stories have in common is that the subject of the story controls the tale. So often, particularly in the NGO world, we won't let go of that control. I'm guilty of it myself; so delighted by my own desire to storytell, to wordsmith, that I can't allow my ego recede into the background. And I am conscious that I've told Nana's story over and over, but I never worked out the technology to let her tell it herself.

I'm a fan of The Hub, a forum for sharing videos about human rights; but I think it highlights a problem that we in the development/ human rights community run into all the time. In our advocacy, in our campaigning, but most of all in our fundraising, we're pretty urgently required to communicate how awful life is for poor people everywhere. (This is true whether you're the Simon Community in Ireland or Unicef in the Ivory Coast or Amnesty International talking about Zimbabwe). It's not always constructive to give the voice to individuals, who invariably find themselves sorting out their own problems. And yet, to overcome the single story, that's what we need to do.

And that's what I'm most interested in doing right now. I don't often do this, but on this occasion, I'd really like to ask for comments on this (overlong) blog post, and more importantly on the links. Am I on my own in thinking that these are the stories, the insights, that might change the world?

The meeja

On Sunday, our doorbell rang unexpectedly. This doesn't happen often: neighbours tend to knock, and friends phone before dropping in. The only people who use our doorbell without advance notification tend to be kids doing nick nacks. We don't always answer.

On Sunday, Simon answered. It was two researchers from RTE's Prime Time Investigates, weathered Irish male types, poorly dressed for the nasty conditions in thin fleece jackets and no raincoats. Poor chaps, I thought. They were calling door to door to gather information about crime. They had heard "heartbreaking" stories, they told us, about "what's called petty crime, though it's anything but petty".

I don't respond well to these moments; I rarely remember what I think or why when confronted by the meeja. We gave them a small bit of information and pointed out the neighbours they should talk to. Later I sent them an irritable and more informative email.

There is crime in my neighbourhood, and it's maybe naive to add "there is crime in every neighbourhood", because probably it is a bigger problem where I live. But I am infuriated by the thought of the national broadcaster pouring its ever-diminishing investigative resources into the tale of how ordinary decent people are terrorised daily in Dublin 8. From our brief doorstep chat (they haven't responded to my email), I gathered that the spin these guys will put on their story is this: "the economy is going down the drains and now, driven to desperation, working class youths are resorting to preying on the innocent residents of (name streets) for the few bucks needed to fuel their drug-addled lifestyles."

Forgive me for getting ahead of myself, and I promise to apologise publicly and even maybe eat a hat if I'm wrong. But I'm pretty confident that I'm not. I suggested to the chaps that they talk to some of the longer standing community activists in the area, to social workers and even (imagine!) the gardai. The fact is that what disaffection there is in this neighbourhood is deep seated, it never went away since the heroine epidemic in the 80s, not even as the economy grew. There is no decent community policing in the area (I don't believe there's any in Ireland, certainly not in urban Ireland), precious few services for young people, and no connection between the gardai and the social services. So you can talk about petty crime, and innocent victims, and reigns of terror. And in so doing, you can reinforce the perception - a pretty dominant one - that Dublin 8 is peopled by drug dealers and thugs. And as long as people think that, the marginalisation and disaffection continue.

Incidentally, here's our experience of crime, in three and a half years living here:

• Our house was broken into once, all our shiny technological stuff nicked. The back door was open - but that doesn't make it ok. We got everything back on the insurance too - but that also doesn't make it ok. It's a shit thing to do, and nobody should do it. I felt neither victimised nor terrorised though (partly because I wasn't living in the country at the time. Ahem).
• This August, my car window was smashed, randomly and viciously. That same evening, a large number of windows were smashed in the immediate vicinity, and my friend was chased down Cork St by a big gang of kids. Very very distressing. Nothing like this ever happened before or since, not even at hallowe'en.
• Last week, my car door was unlocked for 5 days, and my ipod visible on the dashboard. Nothing touched.
  

I dunno, crime happens and it's shit and of course Something Must Be Done. But I have no confidence in RTE, or those two nice men going door to door on a filthy Sunday afternoon, to tell a story that will shed any light on the reality of living in a mixed neighbourhood of social deprivation in the midst of an economic downturn. Silly me though. Why would I think they wanted to?

Kathleen Carroll, RIP

Nana died on Friday the 6th of November.

This is a post to mark the fact, to complete the story that I started here. I have always been a fan of the Irish Catholic wake and funeral, in spite of my own sturdy atheism. Over three days from her death to her burial, we had the opportunity to reclaim something of the woman that her stroke had stolen from us. For 9 whole months, we were unable to miss her because nominally she was still with us. Our discussions about her centred on the hidden code (imagined or otherwise) behind her blinks and head movements, the adequacy of her medication, the quality of her care. I can barely express the luxury of days on end devoted to talking about the real her: her tastes, her interests, her exploits.

I didn't mean this to be a long post, but maybe there are one or two things I should recount.

I brought Simon to the Muintir Na Tire hall, to show him where I had spent hundreds of evenings as a child. One of Nana's old friends told me that without her, the hall would never have been built. She and two allies had raised the money to build a community hall (they were convinced that the town needed it), secured the site, and then backed the purchase with their own homes. This in 1950s Ireland; the two allies were men, while Nana was not, and didn't own the house that she mortgaged for the Muintir Na Tire hall. I doubt my granddad had a say in the matter. I am charmed and astonished by her determination; when you look at photos from that period she's a smiley Irish housewife in ugly dresses and hair fixed with curlers. But she made things happen.

Playing cards was one of Nana's great pleasures later in life, and over the course of the weekend the house filled with her card buddies. People come to funeral houses ("corpse houses", they're called in Roscrea) for so many reasons: when our mother died my siblings and I identified a category of "die hard funeral junkies" who came for the company, the sandwiches and the tea. One of the most touching visitors was one of Nana's cards partners. Billy is in his 80s, and doesn't drive; so not only was Nana a treasured partner, she was also his lift to cards 4 nights a week. They were great friends. Billy broke down and wept like a child at the door of the room where Nana was laid out. "She wasn't just my friend," said this conservative old country man, "she was my best friend".

Nana only took up cards (she played 25, mainly) after my grandfather died. Danny was a great man for the cards, a great man for the pub too, and neither was appropriate for his wife. He used to tell her that she wouldn't be able to play; she'd be no use. Nana wasn't one to protest - she accepted the things she couldn't change, and this was a strong willed man - but after Danny died 17 years ago, she learned to play, and she developed a whole new lease of life. Said one of her partners, she was a far better player than Dan ever was.

I spent much of the weekend manning the phone, keeping my aunt insulated from the pathological bores and the nosy. One man phoned from his home Miami Beach in Florida - neither a relative nor a particularly close friend - and told me simply that he had to phone to tell us how much my grandmother would be missed. Without her, he said, the community life of Roscrea would be much much poorer, and traditional music would never have gained a niche.

The tributes of others reaffirmed the cruelty of the stroke in wiping out such an extraordinary woman. But more than that, they reassured us that out of 88 exceptional years, 9 horrific months were nothing more than a blip. And I felt I got my Nana back.

Driving (part II)

So I passed my driving test on Friday. Then I proceeded to spend the next 3 days driving.

First, I drove to Roscrea, for the guaranteed gratification of sharing my news with my aunt. This is a prodigal daughter situation: like most adults in the developed world, my brother and sister have been qualified drivers since their early 20s and nobody has ever found this fact remarkable. Since it's taken me 32 years to get around to the feat, I am lauded like a Nobel prize winner. Honest to god, my aunt burst into tears when she saw my little car without the L plates. She barely batted an eyelid when I was conferred with my first class Masters degree.

From Roscrea I drove to Cork on Saturday, and spent Saturday and Sunday driving driving driving.

It was something of a rite of passage, my weekend on the road, albeit a well belated one. I am so used to arriving in Cork by train, rushing through the rain to the bus stop, losing shreds of time throughout my weekend to half hours waiting for various types of transport or for my lift to arrive; newspapers and bags of crisps consumed in waiting rooms or on low walls in the countryside; desultory shops mooched around. Now I am my own chauffeur, and I can pack my weekend with as many visits and trips as I choose, limited only by my absence of a sense of direction, and exhaustion at night driving. Over and again I would pat the dashboard of my little car, congratulating us both on our remarkable achievement. After decades of motor disempowerment, I had joined the ranks of the true citizens of this country: the drivers.

When the dizzying exhileration passes, I'll have to weigh this situation rationally. Driving's not cheap, and it's only getting dearer in the coming budget. I have also put in 32 years being a smug eco-git, considering myself better than my colleagues because - by force - I took the train to work. The text I got from my boss when I announced my news said it all: "the real test is if you keep taking the train to work". In such a long time as a non-driver, I learned to navigate Ireland by cadging lifts and negotiating public transport. It was slow, frustrating, and even infantilising (I always felt somehow childishly dependent because I couldn't drive myself places) - and yet I have always had this deep belief that we must move beyond dependence on cars. I was proud of not needing a car.
Now that there's an alternative, we'll see how serious I was about that. There is a difference after all between not needing something, and simply not having it. So now I have a car, what do I do with it? I was allowed a one weekend binge, now I have to find out how to be a responsible driver.

Housework: Quitting facebook links

This is just to say I won't be linking this blog to my facebook account any more. So if you were coming here via there, or more likely just reading my little outbursts in my facebook notes, I'd thank you to come here from time to time instead: www.stillnotdriving.blogspot.com
It's an inane name for a blog, and besides no longer strictly relevant, but there you go. You can subscribe to an RSS feed, or just wander round from time to time to say hello.

All things considered, I think it's for the best. Do keep reading though, if you did before.