Growing up in the shadow of violence

Dave lives in Ballysillan, a sprawling, well-maintained working-class neighborhood just north of the Catholic Ardoyne area where Brenda, a fashionable girl with tumbling chestnut curls, lives. Ardoyne is a close-knit community where most people vote for Sinn Fein, the political wing of the IRA, and want a united Ireland without British rule.

North Belfast is a patchwork quilt of such Protestant and Catholic communities, divided by the many high brick-and-steel "peace lines" built over the past 30 years to give each protection from the other. Despite the peace walls, more than a fifth of the nearly 4,000 people killed over the past 30 years in Northern Ireland have perished in north Belfast.

Whatever good news there might now be on the larger political front, here in North Belfast, the hatred and violence continues.

Since June, Protestants in upper Ardoyne have blockaded parents and pupils from walking to Holy Cross girls' elementary school. The tensions intensified in the fall and have now spilled over into street violence at night, with an estimated 250 pipe bombs thrown at Catholic homes in the past nine months,and Protestants complaining of police "heavy-handedness."

To the outside visitor, the streets of Northern Belfast look like an ordinary urban suburb here, with well-kept gardens, schools, parks, churches, hospitals, and shops. But those who live along these streets are well aware of the dangers of crossing the boundary into the "other side." School buses winding through the neighborhoods are a favorite target for rival gangs. Dave says that "bricking" school buses was a favorite pastime of his school pals.

Dave used to play the cornet in a brass band, marching on "The Twelfth" of July each year, the day members of the "Orange Order" annually celebrate the 1690 victory of Protestant King William of Orange over Catholic King James. And he says he has attended the "Eleventh Night" bonfires on July 11, when effigies of the pope are burned. After one such night, he ambled into the city center, where six or seven Catholic youths demanded that he say the "Hail Mary." "When I obviously couldn't, they began hitting me."

Brenda recalls the most frightening moment of her life, when she missed the school bus and then took a regular bus. She found herself in the middle of a crowd of Protestant boys who spat at her and threw eggs and bottles of soda.

At a part-time job in a boutique, she met young Protestants for the first time. "The atmosphere was great, we all got on fine, but when I went to work for a different shop, it was different, tense."

Brenda says that the sounds of conflict are often the last thing she hears before sleep. "I lie in bed at night and listen to the rioting down the street. You can hear the bangs, and you wonder if they are bombs or just firecrackers.

"I'd love to travel abroad when I grow up - I'd love to work on a cruise ship and see different places," she says. "I went to Germany for a week with the youth club a couple of years ago, and it was great. Most of the people there were Protestants - but it didn't seem to make any difference over there."

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