In the local pub, Biddy’s, the drinks are poured by an elderly bartender. His arms look like they have been broken and wrongly set, stiff and twisted. Here we meet the other students. A lot of attention goes out to Michael Collins from Limerick, a Chicago resident. He looks a handsome 18 year old, but he’s 28, married, runs a software company with his wife, lectures literature at University, wants to set up an Irish school in Chicago and wants to run up Glen Head. He is one of three published writers in our company. He tells us about his first book ‘The Meat Eaters’ which has just been published in Europe. His Canadian companion John doesn’t say anything, but we later learn that he too has a novel to his name. He’s here to write a tribute to James Joyce, before it is too late. John has cystic fybrosis, and has already lived longer than he thought he would. Every day is a miracle to him. We talk about modern Irish literature, and agree on a lot of things: Roddy Doyle’s funny and accomplished but rather superficial, Dermot Bolger’s almost magical realism is the work of a genius and we praise John Waters for his insight in Irish society. And we drink a few more pints. We clique together during tea breaks. Michael tells stories about the time he was an altar boy. What to do when the host is dropped? ‘Get the Holy Hoover!!‘ we shout. It becomes our running gag.

The local people are divided in their opinions on the course. The Donegal Irish are a lot more surly than I’m used to in this country. They seem bitter, abandoned and neglected as they fell by Dublin. Like most conflicts in this country, the roots of it run deep. Wasn’t it Donegal where the O’Neills, the old Irish kings, came from? And now they are forgotten, this strip of land that belongs to the South but lies more to the North than most of ‘Northern Ireland’, the six counties. Dublin only thinks of itself, the TD’s only worry about their next lunch. ‘Dublin 4 rules,’ says the inebriated civil servant in the pub. He is talking about that part of Dublin, named after its postal code, where the ruling class of Ireland lives. ‘And now they want to tell us how to speak our language! They don’t even speak Irish in Dublin. I write them letters, they can’t read them. You can’t standardize our language. Every area has its own sayings, its own colloquialisms. Irish is not a grammatical language, but a proverbial one!‘ He goes on and on, ‘as Gaeilge’, in Irish. Mary translates for us. She disagrees with him. She, an emigrant, wants to have a chance of learning and speaking the language. The man quiets down, but later returns and starts all over again. It sounds like he’s had this same argument many times before. In the end he starts to recite a poem. Mary joins him, she too learned this at school. He buys her a drink, the argument settled.

Mary no longer goes to our classes. She spends her day walking around the area, revisiting the spots she was forced to see in the rain during the archeology course. The weather is still bright. In the evenings there are all kinds of sessions to entertain us, a poetry evening, a lecture on the Book of Kells, set-dancing. But we mostly stay in, sipping tea. Warmed by the turf fire we tell each other stories. Mary knows a good one, about a father and son who ride their horse and cart into town. ‘Son, shorten the road,’ the father asks. The son doesn’t know how. Every day the father asks him to shorten the road. The son can’t figure it out. In the end he asks his mother. ‘Tell him a story, lad. That will shorten the road.’ We smile. It’s a good one. There’s no television, no radio, no newspaper. We know nothing of what’s going on between the PLO and Israel. There is no Bosnia here. No rest of the world.

Mary asks Thomas and me for our motives to learn Irish. Identity crises seem to be the common denominator. Thomas, the Swiss who wants to be Irish. ‘I knew I wanted to leave when I was ten years old!‘ Mary, the Irish woman living in England, who know feels shut out by the Donegal people. Birgitta, the Swedish girl who desperately wants to leave Sweden and I, the half Indonesian from Holland, who seeks the passion my country lacks. We talk about the Whore and Madonna complex of the Irish male. Ireland is a matriarchal society. ‘When your da tells you off, you don’t bother. But when your ma tells you off, it’s serious!‘ Again and again the conversation comes back to the essence: the omnipotent strangle hold of the Catholic Church. We can’t escape it, even in our language course. You don’t just say hello, goodmorning in Irish. You say: Dia duit, God be with you. The answer: Dia ‘s Muire duit, God and Mary with you.

On Sunday, we all go to mass, in Irish, of course. The small church is packed and in the back a few very old farmers sit on the floor, their backs turned to the altar. Toddlers are seated on their mother and father’s laps. Very old and very young, that’s the profile of the population out here. Because the young move away, there is no work for them here, and no future. In the summer, money is made off the tourists that flock to the area in ever increasing numbers. Oideas Gael puts some money in the till as well, and provides the community with seasonal employment: a handful of people can work in the school’s lunch room.