Originally from Chicago, Rus Bradburd is the author of five books, including “Paddy on the Hardwood: a Journey in Irish Hoops.” He has lived in Belfast for a total of four years and can often be found at local trad music sessions playing fiddle. This essay is excerpted from his newest book project, “Almost Like Belonging,” about immigrants and refugees in Northern Ireland. rus-bradburd.com The fishermen were freezing. Covid had shuttered the coastal fishing village of Ardglass, Northern Ireland, and ... Read more...
Originally from Chicago, Rus Bradburd is the author of five books, including “Paddy on the Hardwood: a Journey in Irish Hoops.” He has lived in Belfast for a total of four years and can often be found at local trad music sessions playing fiddle. This essay is excerpted from his newest book project, “Almost Like Belonging,” about immigrants and refugees in Northern Ireland. rus-bradburd.com
The fishermen were freezing.
Covid had shuttered the coastal fishing village of Ardglass, Northern Ireland, and the boats the fishermen slept on each night were landlocked. When the boats had gone out in search of prawns and whitefish, the cold was bearable, because the men expected the cold then. Being stuck at the docks in the inlet, however, was tough. Being sedentary made everything seem colder.
Locals didn’t find the weather so cold, but these fishermen were from Ghana and used to the tropical climate of West Africa. These were hearty and upbeat young men, generous and quick to smile, but the virus had caused more problems than a potential fever for the men. Loneliness. Boredom. Depression. Most of them had descended from a long line of Ghanaian fishermen, and for many, being away from their wives and kids for nine months had been a grind even before the virus took hold.
Ardglass, with fewer than 2,000 residents, sits 30 miles south of Belfast, and 6 miles southeast of Downpatrick—where nearly everyone believes Saint Patrick was buried. The town’s history as an important fishing harbour, due to its natural inlet, goes back at least two thousand years. A local church and Ardglass Castle date back to the 15th century. The town can boast of more medieval tower-houses (four) than any other in Ireland, an indication of Ardglass’ status as Northern Ireland’s busiest port in the 1400s.
Today, most of their workforce commutes to Downpatrick or Belfast. Ardglass, due to its remote location, mostly avoided the killings that afflicted other parts of Northern Ireland during the Troubles. Today, Ardglass is home to a host of retirees, thanks to the picture-postcard views and world-class golf course. It’s been decades since local families aspired for their children to work on the boats, despite a strong respect for their significance. For a few years, Eastern Europeans worked as fishermen. They socialised in the pubs and didn’t stand out or cause trouble. Some brought their families and settled in Ardglass. Later, Filipino men, more noticeable to the locals, did the fishing and fit in well. Then some of the Skippers got recruitment deals and the work force changed again.
In Ireland anyone in the world of sports older than 50 in might tell you that the first people with dark skin they ever encountered were the Black Americans who played professional basketball there in the 1980s. These long-limbed unofficial ambassadors of diversity did much to build a bridge with locals. Despite its lowly status all over Ireland, basketball, a “neutral sport,” neither Catholic or Protestant, welcomed everyone, with preferential treatment based mostly on height. Things have changed dramatically in the last decade. People of color wait patiently at bus stops. They run specialty groceries and ethnic food restaurants. Or drive taxis. They push a pram with one hand and pull a toddler along with the other.
In Ardglass, when the fishing boats first employed 30 young men from Ghana, well, that was noticeable. Few black men had spent much time in Ardglass, and older small towns had rarely came face to face with a dark-skinned person. For the first time, large numbers of people of color, especially from war-torn Syria and Sudan. The days of new immigrants of color being just African Americans in high-top Nike trainers were long gone. But Ardglass was remote, and until the fisherman from Ghana arrived, people with dark skin were rare.
Pre-COVID, the Ghanaian fishermen were at sea for a week, then back for 72 hours on land, where the men could be spotted working diligently on their boats, or shopping nearby. Even then, for empathetic Ardglass natives, it wasn’t difficult to consider how cold the Ghanaians must have been. Since the fishermen had just a single small washing machine on all the boats, the men often hand-washed their clothes. They shared one shower and inadequate toilet facilities. This wasn’t anyone’s fault: the boats weren’t designed to be a permanent living situation. Usually four men slept on each boat, while the Skippers, locals known as decent men, stayed at home. When Covid hit, everything changed.
Ruth Curran, the Ardglass Gaelic football club secretary, wondered if they might somehow make things easier for the landlocked fishermen. Their Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) club competes in a lower division—a long way from the glamour of televised matches in Croke Park, where 80,000 fans come out to witness the All-Ireland championships. Still, Ardglass club took its mission seriously, and that didn’t mean a quest for championships. Instead, they stressed programs like their “Mothers and Others” group, and most of the matches for the men and women were more for social interaction and fitness. The GAA had a “Healthy Clubs” initiative, and Ardglass GAA took that to heart, too.
Ruth Curran talked to another club administrator, Paul O’Shea about her keen interest in the fishermen. Like practically every GAA coach and administrator, they work for free. “As far as monetary value, there’s nothing in it,” O’Shea says, “but as a volunteer you get so much out of it. And that feeling is worth much more.”
Ardglass had been mostly disconnected from Republicanism during the Troubles, and O’Shea says that most people in the 90%-Catholic town never paid attention to the sectarian divide—Belfast feels a million miles away when you’re in an ancient, peaceful village. “We never had to worry about that,” he adds, “it was all us.” Today, the sponsors for their club come from both sides of the sectarian divide, which is becoming more common in Northern Ireland each year.
History, however, sometimes resurfaced in odd ways. For example, the granddaughter of nearly-mythical hunger striker Bobby Sands once helped out the Ardglass club. As with so many places in the North, you didn’t have to dig all that deep to find a family who’d been badly affected. O’Shea wife’s grandfather was shot in West Belfast in a case of collusion with the RUC police force, and her uncles were politically involved many decades ago. O’Shea had heard rumours that Ardglass might have offered an occasional safehouse for Irish Republican Army (IRA) men on the run, or a place to park a caravan overnight. Most locals today, however, struggle to recall a single sectarian incident during the Troubles. “There was a bomb scare one night in the 1990s,” O’Shea recalls, “but we slept through it.”
Over the years, though, a few Ardglass locals did have mild uneasiness about newcomers from faraway places. Would the Eastern European fishermen who stayed in town gobble up the available housing? Would the Filipinos be too insular? One Ghanaian fisherman had a big scar on his face—how in the world did he get that? For some residents, the Ghanaians represented their first interaction with people of African heritage—watching Bridgerton on Netflix didn’t count.
O’Shea, although not overtly political, was annoyed by the anti-immigrant overtones of the United Kingdom’s “Brexit” vote to leave the European Union in 2016. He believes racism fueled the vote. “That was the saddest part of Brexit,” he says, “and if I think about it too much it angers me.”
Ruth Curran noticed the changing workforce on the docks, and was curious to understand the challenges the Ghanaians faced. In the Spring of 2022, she queried a couple other committee members—Linda the waitress; Claire, who ran one of the town’s two restaurants; the parish priest. Curran, who was also involved with a Belfast group called Beyond Skin, asked what might be done for the fishermen from Ghana.
“I was worried,” Curran admits, “and I began chatting with someone in Belfast who worked with minority groups. I became aware of meeting their cultural needs, so I spoke to a Nigerian man named Israel, who brought out traditional African meals to Ardglass.” Curran and Israel began to work together. Although the fishermen didn’t mind their fish-and-rice based diet, they appreciated any change of pace in their routine—especially getting off the boat for a good meal.
Curran obsessed over the plight of the fishermen, and she asked O’Shea what else they might do. O’Shea reminded Curran that their Gaelic football clubhouse, just a mile from the docks, had 16 showers and three laundry machines. Couldn’t their club start by at least making them available to the fishermen of Ghana until COVID passed?
O’Shea made a point of chatting anyway with the fishermen whenever he could, and he had to get used to two of their traits. First, their bouncy, musical intonation. And no matter how hard it was lashing rain, every single fisherman greeted him with a wide smile— not a typical trait on an island where everyone complains ceaselessly about the weather.
In recent years, the GAA has set up plenty of cross-community initiatives for Belfast children from both sides of the sectarian divide—as well as refugee children, who of course aren’t on either side. The pro-immigrant stance of the GAA, whose slogan is “Where We All Belong,” has meant that clubs have actively welcomed any family with a girl or boy who wants to play, regardless of national origin or race. Ardglass, due to its remote location, has had far fewer immigrants of colour—until the fishing boats got stalled.
“There’s the special thing about GAA,” Curran says. “We want our club to be the hub of everything, not just football and handball, and we thought Here are these people so far from home.”
One day, O’Shea stopped by the boats to share the key to their clubhouse—and to tell the fishermen they could make use of the washing machines and shower facilities at their convenience. But O’Shea and Curran now had more on his mind than the Ghanaians removing stains from their trousers, folding laundry, or using of the club’s shampoo. “Why not bring the fishermen out to have a go on our Gaelic football pitch?” Curran asked O’Shea.
The next day, while the washing machines whirred in the background, O’Shea told a couple of the fishermen, “You guys can’t be sitting around in here all day. Why don’t we get a football game going?”
Naturally, the Ghanaians thought he meant soccer, which they loved. He queued up a video on his phone of players kicking around a Gaelic football. A trio of Ghanaian men watched wide-eyed. “That’s how we got them,” O’Shea says with a smile.
When the video stopped, the men said they were very interested—but if O’Shea wanted to get all the Ghanaians on the same page, he needed to convince a charismatic fisherman named Eddie Dzidzornu.
Eddie Dzidzornu, age 32, is from Tema, a town of 160,000. Founded as a seaport in 1962—2000 years after Ardglass—Tema is known as “The Harbour City.”
As a boy, Eddie raced in the 5,000 meter run, and he played some handball and soccer on an informal basis. His family owned a small canoe, but unlike so many of the other Ghanaians he’d one day work with in Ardglass, he is not the son of a fisherman—his father drove a truck. Enamored from boyhood with the ships, Eddie started by working on the docks as a teen. He stood out due to his energy, attitude, smarts, and the kind of bootstraps mentality that impressed the bosses. “Money comes from hard work and commitment,” he says.
Eddie graduated in his mid-20s from the docks to go offshore on cargo ships and tankers. He’d seen a wide swath of the world before he arrived in Ardglass—Malaysia, Singapore, Namibia. He was known among his crewmates for being astoundingly upbeat and happy—the word he used repeatedly with me was “beautiful.” He is also a terrific photographer—it’s just a hobby, he insisted—and his portraits of the natural world at sea are breathtaking.
Eddie Dzidzornu worked on the big boats in Ghana before he became a fisherman in Ardglass. (photo courtesy of Eddie Dzidzornu)
Because Eddie had only worked on the bigger ships, when he arrived in Ardglass in 2019, he had to adjust. He’d been used to sleeping in his own cabin, but now any claim to privacy was gone. The only television was in the Skipper’s office. The boats went out five days a week, weather permitting. While experienced enough that he quickly adapted to fishing, this was his first time on a small boat. “You can get thrown overboard if you’re not careful,” he says.
The men from Ghana were not on salary; their earnings were dependent on how much they caught. In a good week, a boat might come back with 400 or 500 pounds of fish, and that meant a decent wage.
In December of 2019, after living in Ardglass for a year, Eddie went home to Ghana for holiday. He returned in January of 2020, but three months later, Covid was running wild and the fishing industry was stalled due to government regulations. “Then the borders closed, so we couldn’t sell what we’d caught,” Eddie says. The Ghanaians were stuck on the small boats with no income. They couldn’t afford to fly home. And they couldn’t fish.
His family situation back in Ghana made it all worse. “My mom was all alone,” he says, “and she was very worried about me.” She told him to come home if he wasn’t drawing a salary. But how could he pay for that?
Eddie says his Skipper, perhaps the most generous in Ardglass, tried to help the stranded men. “We all decided to do our best and live with it,” Eddie adds. He didn’t feel the anxious pressure waiting for refugee status and he didn’t need to recover from past trauma like many immigrants. Instead, Eddie and his countrymen faced a dreary, boring waiting game.
Access to the Ardglass Gaelic football club’s laundry machines, showers, and football pitch changed the fishermen’s outlook. “We had somewhere to relax now,” Eddie recalls. “We’d play football, then came inside to listen to our music, do our laundry, and then wash up. Everyone was so happy when the laundry machines became available.” While coaches around the world have constantly enticed young athletes—using the bait of fame and money—this must have been the first time in the history of sport that the lure was laundry privileges.
Paul O’Shea told the fishermen after the first loads were tossed in, “Follow me, I’ll teach you the basics.” So out they went, leaving the washing machines to do their work. O’Shea had a sack of Gaelic footballs, which resemble volleyballs, but this wasn’t the soccer the fishermen had grown up with. O’Shea taught them how to advance the ball by soloing, alternating a basketball-like dribble with bouncing it off your own foot to run down the field, as the rules required. He said you couldn’t take more than four steps before you had to pass the ball, either by kicking it, a hand pass, or fist pass for a short distance. Next, he explained the scoring rules, the difference between putting the ball over the crossbar for a point, or into the goal for three.
O’Shea showed the fishermen other basics, like punch-passing, and how to scoop the ball off the ground, the scoop-and-hug. He demonstrated how to jump off one foot to beat their opponents to a high ball. The fishermen from Ghana drank it up.
“From the first day we all loved it,” Eddie says. “It was an easy game to learn, we thought, so we played each other, and Paul was the referee. Soon he started playing, too, with his son, Gavin, who was actually my personal coach and taught me many tricks.”
Eddie and the fishermen didn’t have the appropriate footwear, but Paul O’Shea quickly came through in that regard, too. “He brought bags of boots for us to choose from,” Eddie says. From that day forward, anytime the laundry needed to be done, a Gaelic football match took place. “I told everyone we need to stay involved,” Eddie says, “we don’t have anything, and Ruth and Paul have come together to give us all this. We can stay fit. And look how they’ve brought us boots!”
The football pitch was too far from the docks to walk unless it was a sunny day, so O’Shea often drove the players in shifts. All 30 of them. “Anybody who comes in through those gates is more than welcome,” O’Shea insists. “If they’re prepared to work hard and learn the skills, everybody’s very welcome. In Ardglass, it’s more than a jersey, it’s a whole community.”
Eddie and the Ghanaians were delighted. Soon, curious onlookers from Belfast appeared to watch the unique spectacle: 30 Black men playing a traditional Irish sport. Each week, it seemed, another community organisation came out with bags of groceries and asked what else the players needed to get through COVID. “Paul and Ruth organised all of them,” Eddie says. The fishermen never played a real schedule of games, but if they had, they surely would have elected Eddie as captain.
After Covid restrictions were lifted, the Ghanaians went back to the sea, searching for whitefish—but Eddie Dzidzornu was searching for more. In September 2021, he made a decision. “I had been thinking, This is it, I’m going home. I’m returning to Ghana.”
The Skipper was disappointed. Eddie went on the internet looking for jobs—he is incredibly resourceful—and found employment on a big ship. Back pain and issues with his feet made him rethink his decision, however. Maybe life on the big boats at this time in his life would have been a hardship. Leaving Ardglass would be difficult enough, yet he had no desire to spend the rest of his life on a small fishing boat. Although Ghana pulled at him, he decided to stay Northern Ireland. He knew that to draw a better salary on the bigger boats, an education was crucial. “By then, I had fallen in love with Ardglass,” he says. “It’s so beautiful there, the whole community.” With his typical sense of optimism and diplomacy, he adds, “I love Ireland, and I love all of the United Kingdom.”
He moved to Bangor, a town on Belfast Harbor, returned to the internet, and came up with a better plan: he could build a more satisfying career with a university degree in Engineering—although he already held a similar diploma from a university in Ghana. He got his paperwork together and took the 20-minute train ride to enroll at Belfast Metropolitan College. “I had the freedom to stay because I’m not married,” he says. Was a romantic interest motivating Eddie? Maybe, because after a pause, he dropped a hint: “I’m hoping to be a father someday and start a family.”
Eddie had impressive aspirations, yet, in some ways his long-term goals were simple. “I would love to live in Ardglass again someday,” he says.
The fishermen from Ghana still play Gaelic football for fun and exercise, and they have retained their joyfully relaxed mindset. They still make use of the GAA club’s showers and laundry.
Recently, Eddie found an apartment in East Belfast, a Loyalist stronghold where Gaelic football would be seen as invasive and even threatening. He wanted to live closer to his sweetheart—Kelly had given birth to a son they named Marcel.
East Belfast, Eddie learned, was far different from Ardglass or Bangor. “Sometimes the old men stare at me when I’m walking down the street,” he says. Once while riding his scooter back to his apartment a man shouted at him, “Go home!”
Eddie stopped immediately, but he wasn’t looking for a fight. “I am home,” he said with a smile and a shrug. “I live here.”
Other times, people in East Belfast have asked, “Where are you from?” which can feel aggressive or judgmental. While returning to his apartment with a quart of milk one afternoon, a group of young teens were passing a soccer ball back and forth when a boy kicked it at Eddie. Hard. He was athletic enough to stop it with his foot. The ball sat beside him for a moment until another boy called, “Don’t you know how to play football?”
Eddie deftly passed it back.
At this time, a circus-like atmosphere was hovering over the U.K., brought on by the Conservative party’s plan to ship asylum seekers to, of all places, Rwanda. Instead of Brexit limiting immigration, the numbers have exploded. In 2022, 750,000 immigrants came legally to the United Kingdom. In the end, the U.K. had relaxed its borders for everyone except E.U. citizens, and Northern Ireland and Belfast got far more than its fair share. In other words, Brexit’s legacy was miles away from what those who’d voted in support had been promised. Britain and Belfast had become, without question, more diverse—racially and ethnically. So has the GAA. Eddie was keenly aware of all this.
On more than one occasion in Belfast City Centre, somebody spit at Eddie’s feet as he walked past with shopping bags. That also happened once on the Shankill Road, another Loyalist stronghold. Eddie remained unwavering in his happiness, though, curious about the world, and an explorer at heart. That’s why he wanted to witness what most outsiders and plenty of Belfast residents try hard to avoid: the July marches and Loyalist bonfires that celebrate Protestant heritage. Drinking can rage out of control at the bonfires, and he’d been warned by Kelly to stay the hell away.
On the night of July 11, 2022, Eddie and a pal wandered from his home to where the wooden pallets were stacked thirty meters high. He had learned that the marching began respectfully enough in the mornings, but by now the sun had set, and drunkenness was quite obviously a factor. Things felt venomous, sinister—although Eddie had no opinion on the effigy of the Pope they flung into the flames.
At one point, Eddie smiled and approached a man on the edge of the bonfire. “We come from Ghana, we just want to see, but we were told not to come,” he told the man. Eddie’s new acquaintance thought it best that they watch from a safer distance, not too close to the bonfire. The trio sat on the hood of the man’s car, a hundred meters away.
“They were chanting, make noises, and throwing more wooden crates into the flames,” Eddie recalls. “And they drink lots of beer, bottles were being passed out to everyone. No wonder they said we shouldn’t go.” Soon, tri-colour flags of the Republic of Ireland were thrown into the fire, and the singing grew louder. He couldn’t make out the words.
Eddie was comforted by the police presence at the bonfire. At first. Soon, though, the festivities veered into violence and that shook him up. “People were smashing beer bottles against the police cars,” he says, meaning the Saracens, the armored six-wheel tank-like personnel carriers the Brits once employed regularly. If celebrants were attacking the police, would assailing an African immigrant be far behind?
His new acquaintance may have sensed Eddie and his friend were getting uncomfortable. “Do you guys want to get a beer?” the man asked, and he offered to take them to a party. “We’ll have a good time,” he added.
Eddie was game, but then he thought better of it. “We thought he’d been nice to us, but we worried that he was setting us up.” He had a built-in excuse, too. “I’m a fisherman,” he said, which was no longer technically true. “I have to go to work early tomorrow.”
The next day, Kelly was shocked by Eddie’s tale. She grew up in Carrick Hill, a small Catholic enclave just on the edge of downtown Belfast. “Listen,” she said, “you don’t go to places like that.”
“Now I’ve seen it,” Eddie told her, “so I won’t go anymore.”
Eddie shared his East Belfast apartment with two other immigrants, but everyone kept their distance and lived separate lives. The situation was more like a boarding house. The kitchen has stacks of his new spicy Shito sauce made in his own kitchen. Kwedix Shito, his new project, was jarred and labelled at his home and now sat on the shelves of select speciality stores in Belfast. The sauce is tasty as a sandwich spread, and the new product was a prime example of Eddie’s constant quest to improve himself, get ahead in life. He was still enrolled in the Engineering degree program. Someday he might use the new degree to get back on the big ships.
For now, though, he is busy employing his electronic scooter to get around Belfast and to classes. Ghana always pulled at Eddie. “When are you coming home?” his mother constantly asked. Naturally, he missed Ghana, which hadn’t been wrecked by war and poverty like the Syria and Sudan. Neither was it overrun with paramilitaries like parts of Nigeria—or as Belfast used to be.
The birth of his son, Marcel, in November of 2022, changed the nature of his longtime relationship to Kelly. The new responsibility pushed Eddie to consider marrying Kelly, but he had trouble committing. His optimistic outlook came in handy for imagining himself to be a father—but not a husband. Not yet. Maybe soon. He ate Christmas dinner at Kelly’s family home, and they were direct with him: “What are your plans, Eddie?” they wanted to know.
Still, Eddie kept hesitating. “Let’s give ourselves time,” he told Kelly later.
In the summer of 2023, Eddie still living in Loyalist East Belfast. No longer playing Gaelic football regularly, his days were taken up helping Kelly with Marcel, making and marketing his new sauce, and studying engineering. He made a point to go to the nearby Gaelic football matches if his Ardglass club competed in Belfast. He wore his Ardglass football jersey constantly, although he understood the risk in East Belfast. “I just feel so proud to wear it,” he says.
Fate kept closing in on him. Eddie was on a Student Visa, but some sort of parent or family visa could keep him in Belfast longer. “Now that a child has come,” he admits, “there is so much pressure.”
Eddie is hyper-aware of the distinctions between life in a village as compared to East Belfast. “I never converse with anybody around here,” he told me. “I don’t know my neighbours.” He invested in a bike and scooter. He avoided trouble—other than sporting his Ardglass GAA jersey.
Eddie never sought refugee or asylum seeker status—just a work visa, and soon, perhaps some sort of parent visa. The huge decision loomed over Eddie, though. Should he get married? He carries the typical young man’s hesitation—his freedom and all the typical stuff. But now he shared a house with two people he hardly knew. What was so great about that? His long-term goals haven’t changed though. “I want to buy a home in Ardglass someday,” he says.
He also wants to get back on the boats. Not the fishing boats, but the big Stena Line ships that ferry back and forth to England, Scotland, and parts of Europe. When Marcel is old enough.
In the meantime, the industrious Eddie had taken on a new side job while he finished his Engineering degree, besides his tasty Kwedix brand Shito sauce. His new venture? He’d bought a vending machine after learning of a health club just off the Crumlin Road in north Belfast where people were tired of lugging their own water. He figured he could supply the gym with drinks and get a consistent, if small, income.
The fact that he had no car would be a major deterrent to most people, but not to Eddie. He used his scooter, bicycle, and backpack. First, he scooted to the Asia Supermarket just a mile away. Returning home with cases of Isostar and Lucozade hydration drinks was another matter entirely. He stacked and balanced the cases, then walked the scooter home. There, he stuffed as many bottles as he could into his backpack and cycled up the Crumlin Road—3 miles, and a tricky commute—to restock the machine and collect his coins. Then he cycled back home and repeated the process a few times.
One day, after restocking his vending machine, he was returning to his bike in the shopping centre car park when a muscled-up man stopped him. “We control this area,” the man claimed, “and you need to start giving us some of your profits.” It was his first real confrontation with a hardcore Loyalist, and this one made his living by skimming off local businesses.
During stints on international ships, Eddie had seen everything from verbal intimidations to hijackings at gunpoint, but he’d never been shaken down so blatantly, so face-to-face, on a personal level. “How much are you looking to collect?” he asked. Before the man could answer, Eddie quickly added, “I’m not making much money on this.”
The man had a vague answer. “You give us some money,” he said, “because we’re trying to protect your job. That’s how we do it around here.”
Eddie thought it best not to ask what specific amount—or point out the lack of logic. What if he didn’t sell many drinks that week? He walked away, hoping the thug wouldn’t follow him to his bike. He wasn’t naïve, though. He suspected his problems weren’t over. The next week, the muscle man stopped Eddie again, this time at the gym entrance—and he had two friends with him.
Eddie said, “I’m a family man, I have a kid. And this almost all my income.” Then he acquiesced. “I’ll give you 20 pounds today. But that’s it.”
After the man agreed and took the twenty, Eddie thought to add, “Anytime you buy a drink from me now, I’ll give you discount.”
Eddie still feels the pressure of trying to make a living, finish his degree, and deciding on if and when to get married. One dependable way to relieve that pressure is to return to Ardglass each month. First, he buses from Belfast to Downpatrick. He knows to go the SPAR convenience store there, or the hospital, to catch a lift. There’s plenty of traffic between the towns, and invariably somebody recognised him—a plumber in a work van, a farmer in a truck.
To Eddie, Ardglass remains a magical place. The first thing he did upon returning to Ardglass was go straight to the boats. “A few of the fishermen that I knew remain,” he says, “but they’re mostly new guys.” Still, he was practically a legend, both to the fisherman and the townies. After checking out the boats, Eddie finds Paul O’Shea and Ruth Curran from the Gaelic football club. “I owe them a lot,” he says, “because they saved my life and made me understand that giving up was not an option.”
It took Eddie over a year to open up about a single isolated incident he still thinks about, the only bad thing that ever happened to him in Ardglass When he first arrived in the village, a six-year-old boy rolled down his window and shouted at him, “You stink!”
This one inconsequential yet uncomfortable interaction still hurt. “Initially living in Ardglass wasn’t easy,” he admits, “but we all grew together, and then I fell in love with the place.” When the fishermen started playing Gaelic football, that’s when the town began to feel different. “It just took some time. Gaelic football changed so many things for us, changed so many narratives.”
Once, on his way to play Gaelic football, he heard the young son of the boat’s Skipper ask his father, “Why is Eddie black?”
The captain stammered an answer about human genetics, melanin, and how Africa gets so hot in the summer and maybe the heat combined with—
“In the summertime,” the boy interrupted, “am I going to be black, too?”
Before his father could respond to that one, the boy blurted out, “I want to be like Eddie!”
