Belfast Day Two

Tuesday was a difficult day for me and for the group. In the morning we heard from both an ex-republican prisoner and an ex-loyalist prisoner. While they talked to us we drove/walked through their respective neighborhoods. They were never in the bus together and only quickly shook hands when we changed neighborhoods.

The Peace Wall which separates a protestant and catholic neighborhood
It's 45.2 feet high.

For the past two weeks, I’ve felt like I had a grasp on the conflict, but after that morning, hearing about all the atrocities and seeing where they took place, I’m having a hard time understanding the kind of hate that existed in Northern Ireland that enabled people to kill so many people.

It’s hard to imagine how much anger and hatred existed and the current community is starting to see what happens when that hate is passed down to the next generation.

It was definitely a difficult and overwhelming day for all of us and a few of us even cried when we debriefed later. I think it was the first time during the trip that people started connecting emotionally to the conflict rather than just connecting to it academically.