Manchan Magan's tales of a travel addict
MAGAN'S WORLD:A CALIFORNIAN of Russian descent wrote to me recently asking why Ireland doesn't have a network of cultural institutes such as Alliance Française or the Goethe-Institut. She had read in the Los Angeles Times about the difficulties I had had on a trip around Ireland trying to speak only Irish and decided that as Ireland didn't seem keen on keeping the language alive the least we could do was to set up a network of cultural institutes abroad so that others could learn it. She had written firstly to the Coimisinéir Teanga, whose reply was simply that there weren't any such institutes. "I know that," she wrote. "I want to know why."
It’s not a bad question. Some form of international network might help not just the language but tourism too, a form of touristic alcopop that would get people addicted early, sparking a craving that would eventually lure them over. It could also be a gathering place for all the Hiberno junkies who need more than the occasional night in an Irish pub to satisfy their craving. There is an ever increasing number of bodhrán-obsessed Bolivians, Riverdancing Russians and Jamaican Joyceans, and they need a focus for their infatuation. All of them would probably take Irish lessons if offered.
In the absence of such places, I’ve often sought sanctuary in various British Council or Alliance Française centres – even an Instituto Cervantes on occasion. I remember when I was living in Ecuador, sitting in the wood-panelled British Council library in Quito reading old copies of the Guardian during the initial peace talks in 1994 and the librarian asking me why I was crying as I read about the first glimpse of hope in the North.
I had tears in my eyes again in the Goethe-Institut in Delhi after a particularly wonderful Obstkuchen mit Sahne und Zimt that brought me right back to my childhood and my mother’s German baking bouts.
The fact is that we all become more home-focused when we travel, and not just the expats who have Enya on constant replay, Riverdance DVDs on the shelf and Donncha O’Dulaing live over the internet. Even on short trips one finds oneself suddenly admiring the elegance of a well-stitched Aran jumper or considering acquiring an Irish wolfhound. All of us need somewhere we can call our own.
The new government organisation Culture Ireland is taking some steps towards providing experiences of Irish culture abroad, and our embassies have done their best in the past.
I’ll never forget the wonderfully debonair consul general who turned up in my hotel lobby in Shanghai an hour after my brother and I had crawled in grubby and bleary from weeks surviving on mutton fat and goat eyeballs
in the Gobi Desert, and insisted on bringing us out to dinner.
He was the perfect example of everything an Irish cultural centre could offer and more than made up for the diplomat in Ecuador who I think might have put the phone down on me when I told him I had rabies – no doubt he had endured a slew of imbecilic Paddies in similar crisis, but nonetheless.
The consul general in Shanghai brought us to the Blarney Stone pub on Dong Ping Road, where I almost cried again when a Tipperary man in a bulging GAA shirt placed a pint of Guinness in front of me and asked did I want shepherd’s pie or Irish stew. (I promise I’m not normally so lachrymose, but that night I would have gladly sung Mother Mo Chroí.)
Best of all, Irish centres might provide a stay of execution for our condemned language; they would be a generous gesture to allow others to adopt it if we really are determined to reject it ourselves.
manchan@ireland.com