A Different View
Modest missionaries must be remembered by all
A Different View with Dave O’Connell
We have exported our brightest and our best for as long as we’ve recorded our history – but you could argue that none have left a greater positive footprint on the planet than our missionaries through the ages.
And at a time when those numbers are in massive decline, it is perhaps opportune to reflect on their dedication and generosity to people and places they could otherwise never have known, over the decades and indeed centuries.
Our missionary priests and nuns were pioneers, bringing relief, education, health and a better way of life to some of the most Godforsaken places on earth. They were professionals – doctors, nurses, teachers – who overcame incredible odds and naivety to make an impact so positive that it defies description.
And most of all, they lived their adult lives among the poorest of the poor, sharing their measly portions of food, almost devoid of worldly comforts or at times even basic requirements like water or shelter.
We knew little of their work because as well as being utterly dedicated to their mission, they were modest – all we knew was that they came home every so often and were rightly treated with reverence before they were sent back on their way with a donation from their native parish that would go towards a school or an agri project in a place that we only knew from a map.
Now, reflecting the drop in vocations closer to home, missionary numbers from Ireland are down to a trickle. And homes established by our priests and nuns decades ago are now being handed over to the native people themselves.
In many ways, this is a very good thing – people should be the authors of their own destiny – but there are repercussions too.
No longer will the missionaries be coming here to provide a visible face of their work; no longer will the collections be going to the priest or nun from the parish to help with their work in Africa or Central America.
Of course not all missionaries are religious to start with, but most are. Ours are predominantly Catholic, while the Evangelical movement provides so many from the United States.
And equally not all who work in Third World aid or relief are missionaries at all – the incredible work done by Trocaire and Goal, Bothar and Gorta has made a difference to the lives of the world’s poorest that we could never appreciate.
Others like Niall Mellon have intervened in a very direct way into a specific area, providing houses with the help of so many Irish tradesmen and women. And even more, like Adi Roche or Debbie Deegan, have given succour to the victims of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune
A Different View by Dave O’Connell
The first home I ever bought cost me £34,000; it was a brand new three-bed semi-detached bungalow in a new estate in the Cork city suburb of Rochestown.
Apart from the first-time house buyer’s grant of £2,000, I hadn’t a penny left for furniture or fittings, but what matter; there was enough in that for a decent bed, a spare bed, a wardrobe, white goods, two rooms’ worth of tintawn carpet, a cheap table and four chairs, and lino for the kitchen.
The excess kitchen lino was repurposed into a laminated patchworked quilt for the bathroom, and the carpet offcuts were sufficient to make a narrow pathway to the front door that looked like the grass growing in the middle of a boreen.
There was no cash for curtains or armchairs – never mind a three piece suite – but none of that took from the sense of pride of owning your own home, even if 90 per cent of it was actually the property of AIB.
That feeling, I fear, won’t be a familiar one to the current generation – or indeed the ones already older than I was when I forked out for my first house in 1992.
Back then, this was the rule rather than the exception; everyone started a job and a few years later they bought a house. Eventually they even managed the curtains.
My plunge into the curtain market came after I’d borrowed a lone old armchair from friends of mine so I’d have somewhere to sit while watching the telly – I’d bought that before the house – without having to get into the lotus position on the concrete floor.
This meant tuning in with the lights off because otherwise you’d look like you were trying to draw attention to yourself through the front windows.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
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A Different View with Dave O’Connell
Journalists, for the most part, will never win awards for their sartorial elegance; the traditional image is less of a person in a well-fitted bespoke suit and more a bloke with the racing pages stuffed into a bulging pocket of a jacket that wouldn’t look out of place buried in a hedge.
The exception has traditionally been television where a suit and tie or a dry-cleaned top would be the norm, unless you’re in a war zone where a helmet and flak jacket with PRESS on the front of it are the outfits of choice.
It’s not that we’re badly dressed as a profession, but it’s more the geography teacher image – clean jeans and a work shirt or jumper – than the cocktail party look. And because we don’t have to appear on a small screen before the nation, that’s just grand.
But you don’t see newsreaders in jeans and a tee-shirt – although some apparently might have shorts on out of camera shot – and television reporters on the road could usually make the switch from their day job to a wine bar without going home for a change of clothes.
This dress code doesn’t just apply to journalism of course; the Dáil used to strictly enforce the shirt and tie rule for male politicians until Tony Gregory arrived on the scene with his Dublin inner city street cred and open-neck shirt to make it all a tad more casual.
Then Mick Wallace came along and went full-tramp, with unkempt locks and pink tee-shirts that all look like a white one that ran with a red one in the wash. And suddenly, you have a whole left-wing cohort without a tie to their name between them.
So the rules were relaxed in the corridors of power – and now the BBC is breaking its age-old rules on dress code too….in an effort to seem more authentic and relevant in this social media era.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App
Download the Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App to access to Galway’s best-selling newspaper.
Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
Or purchase the Digital Edition for PC, Mac or Laptop from Pagesuite HERE.
Get the Connacht Tribune Live app
The Connacht Tribune Live app is the home of everything that is happening in Galway City and county. It’s completely FREE and features all the latest news, sport and information on what’s on in your area. Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
A Different View with Dave O’Connell
Paul Mescal has a lot to answer for – and it’s nothing to do with his Oscar nights or his antics in Normal People.
No, it’s his propensity to wear sports shorts completely out of context and season – football togs, in old money – because he has inspired a nation of copycats.
Everywhere you look there are fellas out on freezing nights in O’Neill’s togs – frequently set off with white ankle socks and sometimes even sliders – as though they were wandering back from the beach for an hour on a sun bed beside the pool, instead of coping with the freezing temperatures sent down here from the Arctic.
Last Thursday night was the coldest night of the year and only an eejit would go out without a big coat, gloves and a hat.
Indeed you could argue that only an eejit would go out at all, but at least we were on our way to a play – so that was a good excuse given that we’d spend the night in out of the cold.
There we were, wrapped up like Eskimos and edging gingerly through the sleet along the Salmon Weir Bridge when who should be happen upon?
A fella in a sweatshirt and football togs as though this was a sun-kissed evening stolen from July.
Perhaps these hardy boys look on with the same sense of astonishment at us wearing four layers, hat and gloves – but you don’t have to have spent time in medical school to know that you don’t die from sweating.
And yet funnily they don’t even look all that cold. They’re not rushing anywhere fast to get warm; they’re just strolling around like superstar footballers who just bought the place.
Their only concession to this being March in Ireland and not Marbella in August is the said sweatshirt they’re wearing over their tee-shirt to stave off complete hypothermia.
Ironically – and this is only from personal experience – as soon as they go home to the old pair’s gaff for the weekend, the first thing they do is hit the central heating so they can shed the oul’ sweatshirt and chill, but not be chilly because the boiler is burning away for all it’s worth.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App
Download the Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App to access to Galway’s best-selling newspaper.
Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
Or purchase the Digital Edition for PC, Mac or Laptop from Pagesuite HERE.
Get the Connacht Tribune Live app
The Connacht Tribune Live app is the home of everything that is happening in Galway City and county. It’s completely FREE and features all the latest news, sport and information on what’s on in your area. Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
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