and it's so green. so freaking green

Oh silly Ireland. what a funny country it is.

i never meant to be in Ireland. It was not a country i envisaged being in and when justifying the choice i suppose i came to that of "Ireland is supposed to be green . and well, i like green". So one day I found myself at the Dublin airport, thinking "Oh. So this is Ireland." I kept on hearing funny lilting accents around me, some nonsensical words that i could only conjecture was SUPPOSED to be maybe some version of English

Strange country, so cold. It's "Summer" now and i am still holding onto hoodies, jeans, shoes an socks. People talk about the weather all the time, if it's warm they say "Ah now, it's going to rain soon" and if it's rainy and cold they say, "ah yes, Summer was short this year, it wil be winter soon."
but. ok let me backtrack

I arrived and was escorted by my Irish friend, Olwyn to her home in Thomastown. i knew she had moved recently but what i came into was something i never expected. She lived in a mill, a big old stone mill, with hall-sized rooms converted into different living areas. for the equivalent of R2000 a month she had a humongous bedroom lounge area, a next door room of similar size, a hall-like play area, a kitchen, bathroom. this place is not a normal place to live, the mill is old, dusty and magical, with a bee hive in one of the window sills and old candles discarded on the floor and a bath that never really gets hot. if it was winter in Ireland this place would be perhaps a portion of hell to live in. the windows don't close properly and the stone restricts all heat. in fact a friend who used to live there said he built a huge tent around the little wood stove and a portion of the room to try keep the heat in and spent most of the winter shivering in bed. its cold alright but. it's magic. wooden secret stairways connects one living space to another and the "mill folk" are all artists, writers and musicians, they eat together, they play music together and they amble sleepily through their days.

this sleepy lifestyle suited me for a while, to wake up slowly, to play the guitar for a while and then embark upon my morning amble through fields of sheep and cows, through nettles and thistles and fording the river. so pretty, the sun was shining for the first two weeks, i was barefoot and cycling and alive.

but the peace couldn't and never does last forever. i had come to Ireland as a waiting period before i was to go to Italy. with a South African passport one needs a tourist visa to go to Italy, something i was aware of but supposed that i would procure in Ireland. not so, there are all sorts of mad obstacles which do not want to give a tourist visa to a South African that is not a resident in Ireland. furthermore, there are insurance issues where travel insurance is only given to a person if they are leaving and flying back to their own country. wow. madness. so many things seemed to be adamant in not helping me. it's a long story and it made me really angry and worried and frustrated and sleepless in the midst of Thomastown peace. after considering all options, even that of flying home and then back to Italy, I got my parents involved and a lot of tricky organisation later, i finally have a visa in my passport a week before i embark towards Italy. anyway all this aside what really struck me about the situation was that for the first time in my life i really felt the absolute ridiculous hell that is discrimination. i know it is perhaps on a superficial level, i want a visa to go to Italy as i am dedicating my life to having an excellent time all the time and i am privileged enough to make this happen BUT again and again through this process i wanted to ask "WHAT is wrong with ME that you will let the drunken Irish lad down the street into your country with no problem but because i was born somewhere else i am not granted permission to easily enter?"

i have learnt a lot about Ireland in being here of course and people keep on talking about the glory days of the "Celtic Tiger," when everyone had everything and could buy fancy cars and go on skiing trips and were the latest outfits and other such stuff. And, well, we all know how this story goes, recession hit and this is not how Ireland is anymore, people don't have money to do whatever they want, most people are steeped in debt with loans and mortgages and still further, it is more lucrative to be on the dol than to get a real job. so i have met many young capable people simply bumming around and collecting unemployment from the government. And it's not like it's a bad living, it's a very very good living. actually it works out, that if you had a job, at least a part time job you would earn a lot less than if you were purely on the dol doing nothing. which in two senses infuriates me, as i watch young Irish men drink the governments money away when i know people at home in South African cannot actually get a job or provide enough money for their children's care but furthermore i KNOW that with an Irish passport the entire world and jobs are open to you, you simply have to go online, fly to Europe, teach a bit of English or get a job on a ski resort or SOMETHING and it's possible to save money and and and ARG! so much opportunity and they. just. don't. want. to. and i feel like every time i go somewhere i have to struggle with my passport to prove that i am not going to come wreck havoc in a country and. well, it is humbling but. it is hurtful. it is frustrating. and ultimately, it is wrong.

But anyway, after sleeping, eating, playing music, listening to music, reading, drinking and all that fabulous holiday stuff i was done! And two and a half weeks later i moved to the farm. The farmer is an Irish lady called Sinead who besides growing and handling a farm all on her own with the help of the current "wwoofer" or volunteer is interested in all sorts of things from herbalism to Shamanism to tag rugby. We get on well, working daily in the fields, hoeing, planting, watering, collecting eggs, driving the tractor (one of my favourite activities) and harvesting the food. It is mainly a vegetable farm with fabulous amazing seasonal vegetables. I have always been a "eat what is cheapest and most available" sort of girl but now i am allowed the chance to eat the finest quality freshly grown from our farm everyday i fear i may think twice about the rubbishy vegetables i will buy at a supermarket. What a change from America! the eggs are REAL, things taste, coriander, dill, onions, SPRING onions. Every week or so a new vegetable is ready to be harvested and eaten. Yesterday we started picking courgettes! and the garlic and carrots have just begun to be ready. I have never really grown things before, the absolute joy and amazement that comes from things that simply grow from water and sunlight and glorious air. that is life. that is magic.

I had been feeling guilty being in Ireland for so long and not seeing any of the country besides little Thomastown and Kilkenny (which are 20 minutes away from each other). So a friend of mine showed up for a visit and all of a sudden i had that travel buddy i needed to do lots of exciting things. So we hooked a ride to Doolin to go visit the famed Cliffs of Moher with Sinead my farmer. Honestly i was somewhat determined to not really be impressed. And when we got there i was further not impressed, i mean WHAT are the point of cliffs when they are fenced off and you can't really feel like you are on a cliff? but presently we walked past the tourist centre and the swarming tourists themselves to the "no trespassing" sign, climbed over it and the real beauty began. After walking a kilometre or 2 or 3 the tourists trickled away and it was just us and the cliffs, the wind, the crashing sea. glorious. We continued our walk another couple k around the cliffs into some unpronounceable town and tried to hitchhike back to Doolin then make our way to Galway to visit a friend.

So let me say another thing about Ireland. So many people have told me "Oh i went to Ireland once a few years back, hitchhiked all around it, Irish people are the nicest people on earth." They were right in a sense, Irish people are really really really nice, in fact they are really chatty, you can fall into a chat with the road worker on the street as you go by or the old lady in the supermarket discussing different types of yoghurts. But they don't pick up hitchhikers anymore. Back to the Celtic Tiger,, no one needed to hitch coz now they had cars and with this everyone became suspicious of hitchhikers. We waited for a long time for a few lifts but, in saying this, it is true that the person who DOES break the mold and picks you up is going to well, either kill you OR be that stellar awesomeness that i suppose i want anyway. In general the latter was true and we were picked up by a Finish girl on her way from Finland to Portugal visiting friends on the way, camping and playing golf. And then a Swiss couple in a lovely green hippie van. A Slovakian who took us to his wife's bakery and bought us coffee, an 87 year old Hotel Owner who had 8 children ("that i know of," he said) and a drummer/ Organic farmer. One of my favourite lifts was from a man with an horse empty cart. From looking into his car it was clear he didn't have space for us, full of hammers and saws and mess of every size and shape. I thought he wanted us to get into the horse cart but no he told us to sit on top of all the rubbish in the back so cross legged on a plastic drum we held onto whatever we could as he roared us closer to Galway. We walked, we sang songs, we got to Galway, and we got back to Kilkenny from Galway, seeing little Irish towns , meeting lovely people in their cars and arriving home very tired after a fabulous weekend.

Ah yes, it's been good, i consistently find it amazing how lovely people are and how well things work out. this country isn't warm, but it is definitely warm in the hearts of people, as drunk and useless as some of them can be. but before i came here i knew Ireland was green. Oh and it's green so green.