Hopes, dreams and ashes

(The following piece was written in 1993, when Bobby was living and working in London.)

News travels fast in immigrant 'ghettos'. The ghetto has its news outposts and its news carriers. The news outposts and the quality of information imparted vary - from church to pub to disco, to hairdressing salons, crèches and Sunday football gatherings. The ghetto is selective as to who are insiders and outsiders, who gets information and who is excluded. The relationship of the immigrant’s homeland to his country of residence is also a determining factor in the openness and liberty of the immigrant ghetto. The very reason for the existence of the ghetto and the tissue of suspicion that exists in such places is that crossing borders is a bit of conspiracy.

In most migrant ghettos there are twilight zones of illegality regarding identity, work, taxation and leisure. Immigrants do not usually like having their failures known, particularly at home. Neither do they like to hear the failures at home made known to them personally. They know that others in the ghetto know about them but there is an unspoken agreement of not washing each other’s linen in public. Exile is painful enough.

However, it is important to let others know certain things about yourself, maybe offering help or putting out a message of need or telling others about your whereabouts, like going 'home' for a break or going away to look for work or just to visit friends. Immigrants have needs and plans that settled people do not have to bother about. Immigrants have different agendas, networks and contacts that come into play when there is a need that must be taken care of.

      

On one trip from the UK to Ireland I went on the agenda of a few people. I let it be known that I was going for a week and would be taking my car on the ferry. The day after I made the decision to travel I had a call from a young fellow from Donegal who worked in construction. Pat had no intention of being an immigrant for life. His thinking was conditioned by generations of seasonal, cyclical family migration. His plans were to be away for the cold months of the year when there was nothing economically happening at home. When at home, Pat’s time was divided between farming, fishing and bricklaying - when such work was available. He phoned me saying he had heard that I was going to Ireland. His requested that I take an outboard motor, which he had bought at a bargain price. In asking me to take it, Pat figured that I would get an easy passage through customs. I agreed to take the outboard. He arrived at our house and I gave him my keys to place the machine in the boot of the car. He thanked me and went away.

Next call I got was from a young lady by the name of Caroline. She worked in the hotel business and was planning to get married in the summer. Her request was that she needed to get her wedding dress over in time for the wedding and my taking it for her would lighten her load. I agreed and she, like Pat, deposited the precious box in the boot of car. These things were happening days before I left so I was travelling around London for days with those items in the boot. Indeed, I had forgotten all about them.

The day before I left, Christine called me. She said that she had a special task for me the next time I was going by car to Ireland. Her local doctor, who she knew since she came to Britain, had died recently when she was away on holidays. He was Irish, and had come to London during the war years. He always had it in his head to return to Ireland, marry and settle down. But as the years passed the journey home became longer and he kept putting off getting married. So he settled in London and carried on his medical practice. In the intervening years he visited Ireland regularly, keeping an immigrant’s interest in home.

Many Irish immigrants worked in England but mentally and emotionally lived in Ireland. As a result, like the doctor, they ended up in nowhere zones. Dr. Tim, realizing that he was in such a zone, made a will a few years before his death. On Christine’s return from holidays she received a letter from Dr. Tim’s solicitor, requesting an appointment in regard to a special request he made in his will. She met the solicitor and he read her Dr. Tim’s will in which he requested for her to dispose of his ashes in the Irish sea. This was Christine’s special request of me - would I scatter Dr. Tim’s ashes in the sea about an hour and a half after leaving Holyhead? I called around to her house and while I had a cup of coffee she took my car keys and placed the ashes in the car boot.

The next evening I left London at about 8 pm to catch the 2.15 am ferry from Holyhead to Dublin. At this stage I had totally forgotten about the ‘cargo’ in the boot of my car. As I drove up the motorway I thought my car was not going as smoothly as usual. I pulled over and had a look at my wheels. All seemed well, and then it registered that I had ‘cargo’ in the boot. Of course the ashes and wedding dress were light but the outboard motor was heavy. Getting back into the car the gremlins got at me. What was I going to say to the police in Holyhead when they requested, as they usually did, to open the boot? Also, what was I going to say to the customs official in Dublin when I would be asked to declare my goods and chattel?

After juggling these questions about I decided to let it be until I reached the first hurdle at the security check in Holyhead. There was nothing I could say other than describe what was in the boot and let the police take whatever action they felt they had to take.

On reaching the ferry terminal at Holyhead I drove in to the line of cars and waited. Sure enough, about fifteen minutes before we were to drive on board the police arrived. They went from car to car opening boots and asking the usual questions about where you came from and the purpose of your visit as well as requesting some type of identification.

I opened my boot as requested and explained that I had a wedding gown, an outboard motor and the ashes of Dr. Tim. The policeman stood back, looked at me, and exclaimed in wonderment, "Extraordinary! Have a good trip." He was so totally mesmerized that he didn't even ask for a death certificate or anything associated with the ashes of Dr. Tim.

I drove aboard and parked the car. Taking my shoulder bag I dropped the jar of ashes into it, hung it on my shoulder and proceeded to the passenger area. Sitting down in the bar with Dr. Tim beside me, I began to feel a draining away of confidence. To stop the leakage I called for a drink. Settling down I began to plot the next stage of the journey: letting Dr. Tim go to his resting-place in the Irish Sea. The revving of the ferry engine focused my thoughts all the more. I calculated on a three-hour journey to Dublin and decided that after ninety minutes out from Holyhead I would deposit Dr. Tim’s remains.

This was not as easy a task as I had thought. First I decided to do a test run. So, I set off with bag on shoulder towards the rear of the ferry. It was a wild and windy night; thankfully, there was nobody sitting outside. Somehow, I felt a bit suspicious as I moved slowly along the rail of the passenger deck. Reaching the end of the ferry, I again looked around to make sure that I was alone. As for as I could ascertain there was no watch on duty and no passenger eager to take the sea air. So far so good.

Returning to my seat with my bulging shoulder bag I felt I was being stared at. Of course I wasn't. Sitting down I began to wonder what if a member of the crew saw me performing a funeral service? Would he think I was depositing drugs?

As I waited I began to reflect on the ashes, the wedding dress and the motor, their owners and the Irish immigrant community. The cargo in the boot of my car were the objects of people’s plans, some yet unfulfilled. These represented people’s lives, work, planning, symbols of hope with a desire to be at home sometime, somewhere. These things represented the nature of the Irish community in Britain, the female, the male, the old, the young, the past, the present and the future.

It was time to fulfil Dr. Tim’s desire. I set off again for the rear of the ferry. With my back to the west wind I opened the urn of ashes. Saying the Lord’s Prayer I let Dr. Tim’s remains float into the wind and the Irish Sea. Standing there for a while I thought about the many Irish abroad whose desire of return migration would never be fulfilled. Like immigrants in Ireland today, home for many would always be elsewhere. Dr. Tim had a heart divided between the home he left as a young man, and the home he adopted in England as the years passed. I wondered was he at home in either place? He lived and died alone, suspended between home and away.

As dawn began to creep up behind me I turned my attention to the next hurdle, the customs on arriving at the North Wall.

The ferry docked and we were ordered to go to our vehicles. Crossing borders is usually an anxious time even when one has nothing to declare except one’s identity and has the documents to do so. As we crept towards the customs shed and waited either to be called through or stopped, I hoped that my car would not be in the custom’s lottery number this morning. It wasn't. I was waved through and felt a great sense of freedom as I drove away into Dublin. During the week I dropped off the wedding dress and the outboard motor at designated addresses.

The networks of life are not confined by human limitations.

JBFAs, WWWs and BBs: returning after emigration

I left home young and not till old do I come back,

My accent is unchanged, my hair no longer black.

The children don’t know me, whom I meet on the way,

“Where do you come, sir?” they smile and say. 

- He Zhizhang, Chinese poet

Emigrants - involuntary, economic migrants - leave home to find a better life, a life their own countries are unable to offer; they see little future at home. This is the situation in most newly-independent states. For example, Ireland on average has annually shed half of those coming into its labour market since the foundation of the state. Young, energetic, idealistic people do not want to be members of a dole line, so they seek a better life elsewhere.

Leaving home was and still is not an easy task. However, having decided they feel they have to go after informing their near and dear. In this way they leave by the "front door" rather than steal away by the “back door.” On leaving, looking back over their shoulders, a desire to return wells up in their hearts and minds. Their relatives, friends and neighbours try to lighten the departure by saying, "Well, you’ll be back when things get better"; but they know from past experience that the vast majority will return only on holidays. The older generation are aware of the emigrant music from the past that says, "When there are better days in Ireland, I’ll come home and marry you."

With modern communication, today's emigrants can assume that return is easy. That assumption may persist for a time after departure but sooner or later emigrants realise that return may not be possible and, even if possible, is not that easy to accomplish. The development of branch, small-populated island economies like Ireland depends on investment from the trunk economies. If that happens, as it does now and then - as in Celtic Tiger Ireland - limited opportunities of return are possible.

But like emigration itself, return migration is a risky business. Frequently, emigrants return without adequate information. Returning on holidays, generally in summer time, gives emigrants a false economic mirage of home and the possibility of return. There is usually a great welcome for those returning on holidays. Returning on holidays one is asked, "Where are you now, when are you going back?" Mentally, for people at home an emigrant has become an outsider, "away somewhere". They have a tourist-brochure memory of where the emigrant lives now; the emigrant has a tourist-brochure memory of where they have come from and wish to return to. Indeed, an emigrant may still, even after many years, assume home is still where they left. Many work elsewhere but are emotionally "at home" in the country they emigrated from.

So, the experience of return may not be as smooth as one assumed. Returning emigrants will have to describe themselves, just as they had to in the countries they lived in. Emigration challenges one to define oneself, and so too does return migration. In most instances return will be from a developed, trunk economy to a less-developed one. Returning emigrants will define themselves in their conversations as a "Just back from abroad" (JBFA) or a "When we were" (WWW). The locals may describe the returnees as "Blow backs" (BBs) arriving to take advantage of the progress that happened while they were away.

One of the most important aspects of return is the opportunity for returnees to tell their stories of abroad to those who did not emigrate and for the latter to share those stories of what happened at home in the interim. However, returning from abroad brings with it the challenge of re-integration. The country one left - even if only for a couple of years - has not stood still. It may have progressed, or its economy may have regressed as in Ireland’s case. During the settling-in process comparisons are made, irritation is expressed and discomfort with what one thought was familiar surfaces. Usually, differences are seen as irritant inefficiencies. Cultural differences in the networks of life and in getting things done are described in a negative way. Those who have remained at home become irritated by such criticism and may describe such behaviour as arrogant, overbearing and insulting from an "outsider." We returnees should listen to the advice of Chibundu Onuzo, "We are arriving as partners, not lords and masters. So let tread softly and tread humbly."

So, for happy landings:

• Availability of objective information about emigration and return migration
• A general awareness of migration by both returnee and resident
• Initiate a forum of welcome in which a dialogue can happen between locals and returnees
• Local agencies monitor and reach out to returnees
• Governments need to realise that emigration and return are not quirks of human fecklessness.
• As emigrants bring gifts to new economies, returnees bring gifts too.
• Respect, tolerance and humility on all sides helps.

The boy came home from a foreign land,
Weary and wan with his staff in hand;
Five years’ absence left their trace
On golden hair, and on sunny face…
He entered his home with footsteps slow-
His friends forgot him, would his parents know? 

- 'The Return,' Patrick MacGill