Gonchigkhand and Briege by Rebecca Lively
Parallel Story #3
Gonchigkhand Byambaa & Briege Kearney
Mongolia & Northern Ireland
This parallel story was put forward by Herstory and AkiDwA for Movement
Gonchigkhand Byambaa grew up in the North-Western Mongolian countryside in a traditional nomadic family where the land belonged to everyone. There were no fences and mother nature was respected and appreciated always. After marrying an Irish man, she moved to Ireland where she has been working with various migrant rights’ groups to help translate and share information with the Mongolian-Irish community. Growing up in Northern Ireland during the Troubles, Briege Kearney experienced conflict, discrimination and displacement on a daily basis. As a teenager she emigrated to the UK to escape the conflict, and then to the USA where she worked in the Northern Ireland Consulate. While both women experienced very different childhoods, their lives were impacted massively by the land and their place on it, and both went on to work with migrants and aspects of migration in their new homes.
Gonchigkhand’s Story
I was born in the North-Western Mongolian countryside. I am the youngest of 4 girls and my family are nomadic. My father was a horse wrangler, and my mom was a milkmaid for the Soviet Union. I grew up as a traditional nomadic girl in a portable, round yurt which is called a ger in Mongolian. My parents taught me how to live and survive alongside nature during the hot summers and freezing winters (in unforgiving nature and disasters). I grew up with horses. I learned to ride at the age of 5 and from then on helped my dad to tame and herd the wild horses. I learned make a bond and communicate with them. Horses were my friends, teachers, guardians yet also adversaries at the same time. Horses and cows were our wealth, transport, pride, and food supply.
Our lifestyle was very different from western culture. We didn’t have fencing on our land. The land belongs to everyone. Our cows, sheep, goats, and horses were free to go anywhere. We herded them all day and only in the evening did the animals come home. Where I grew up wolves and other predators always challenged us. During summertime my sisters and I used to sleep outside near our home to guard the sheep. I learned to read my animals’ behaviour to the weather and other danger warnings. Nomadic people respect mother nature, and we are grateful for its offerings. Because our life depends on natural circumstances, we know when to hunt and when to share our food with wolves. Predators such as wolves play a big role for the ecosystem.
Our food and dwellings come from natural resources, are recyclable and environmentally friendly. In the countryside everyone is a valued member regardless of their gender.
During summertime I used to spend all day by the river near our home. I used to swim and play with stones and sand. When I got hungry, I used to fish. I always carried a knife with me. Carrying a knife and a gun is very common in the countryside. Those weapons are only used for survival. I have never heard about someone shooting someone else. I would make a fire and cook the fish. After my meal I would bring some fish to my neighbours. It is one of our traditions. Mother nature generously offered food to me. I shall share that kindness with others.
My parents valued education. My older sister and I went to a school located 30km from our home. Since there was no public transportation, we stayed in the dormitory from the start of junior infants until the end of secondary school. We came home every holiday and school break. In the Winter we used to ride horse to go back home and, in the Spring, and Summer we used to walk. Most of the time strangers who met us on the road gave us a lift home.
I have been living in Ireland since December 2016. I met my Irish boyfriend (now husband) in Mongolia. We lived together in Mongolia’s capital city Ulaanbaatar for 3 years and then moved to Ireland. I had never heard about Ireland before, and I knew nothing about Irish society. I just trusted in our love and hoped to build a life together in Ireland. Moving is part of my life. I didn’t expect anything. My parents believed in my husband. Their only worry was that if Ireland didn’t exist! My Mam asked me to google about Ireland before I made any decision. My plan was to come here, see the lifestyle and if things weren’t working well for me, I would go back to Mongolia. I was a social worker and had a well-established career in Mongolia.
We came with my 5-year-old daughter. I realised that the Irish education system is recognized worldwide, and that this society is very child friendly. We decided to stay in Ireland in order to give a better opportunity for my daughter.
My husband’s family were incredibly supportive of me from the moment we met, and I never once felt like I didn’t belong in his family. But it probably took about 3 years for me to feel truly ‘at home’ in Ireland. The cultural and language barriers were tough to overcome. So many things are different to my country and the way I grew up. Customs, food, body language, expressions, politics, almost anything you can name is different to Mongolia!
There is also a small but tight-knit community of Mongolian people here in Ireland, some of whom have lived here for 15 years or longer. They helped me a lot to understand Irish society and the way things work here. I would have been completely lost without their support and the support of my husband’s family.
My experience of being an immigrant has been very positive overall but my life in Ireland had a rocky start. In April 2017 I suddenly lost my Mam and then my Dad. They were both gone within 6 months. I was stunned by the double loss. My people are nomadic, and, in our culture, we don't keep our loved one’s body for very long after their death. I didn't have a chance to say my final goodbye to either my Mam or my Dad. I simply didn’t have enough time to go back to the Mongolian countryside. It hit me very hard.
My parents were right to believe in my husband. He inspired me when I lost my confidence, encouraged me when I felt lost, embraced me for who I am and supported my work and nourished my dream. He healed my broken heart with his love and gave me wings to fly. My mother-in-law Deirdre was always there for me too. I couldn’t ask for a nicer person than her. Despite our cultural and language differences she became my Mam in Ireland. I realised that although I had lost my Mam, I had gained a Mam as well.
While I was grieving, I found out that my education and work experience was not recognised in Ireland. I needed to re-build my career but also mind my mental health. It wasn’t easy. There were many days I felt like the sky was too far to reach and the ground was too hard to walk on. But I made it through because of the enormous support I received from so many strangers, both Irish and Mongolian. These people became my Irish family and friends. I’m so grateful to the people of Ireland and their hospitality. Without your warm Irish culture, it would have been a very different story.
I didn’t want to stop my volunteering and community work in Ireland. So, I started a blog for Mongolians in Ireland about life in Ireland. I also decided to join a campaign for undocumented people. I encouraged Mongolians to join this campaign and other projects like it because by doing so would help us to connect more into Irish society.
During my volunteering time I emailed many NGO’s working for minorities’ rights and women’s organizations in Ireland to ask about their services and translate them into Mongolian for the community. It was a way of dealing with my grief and trying to continue my passions in Ireland. Only a few of them emailed back and just 3 wanted to meet me.
The Immigrant Council of Ireland’s Integration Manager Teresa Buczkowska met me in her office in 2017. Since our first meeting she has never forgotten me. She included me in many trainings and called me into their meetings and introduced me to other activists in Ireland. From 2020-2021 she mentored me for free and gave me references to other organisations that I applied to for a job. I relied on her knowledge and benefited hugely from her kindness and integration skills.
The warm culture of Ireland and the kindnesses of Irish people have given me strength and helped to make me a better person. I am grateful that I dealt with one of the most challenging times of my life in Ireland.
Ireland is giving me tremendous opportunities to be myself and embrace who I am and I am very grateful to be benefiting from this country’s integration and inclusive policy.
The Southside Traveller’s Action Group accepted my knowledge, valued my experience, and trusted my passion. Their Director Geraldine Dunne has given me the chance to show my appreciation to Irish society by working with them. As a nomadic person I’m delighted to work with fellow nomadic people. In spite of many barriers, Maynooth University opened a special application for me to apply and offered me a place on their Community and Youth Development master’s program. Skein press publishing house has accepted me into their new fellowship program to mentor my writing. Stinging fly magazine offered me a scholarship to enter their summer school for fiction writing. The wonderful author and activist Melatu Uche Okorie nominated me to become a peer panelist for the Arts Council of Ireland and incredibly I was deemed eligible.
While I do believe Ireland has great integration laws, I didn’t always feel that I was included. I felt welcome to the door but not to the room. If Ireland wants to build a more inclusive and diverse society, it needs to promote and give more chances to migrant people who want to enter employment. There are many barriers to migrants to enter into decision-making roles and senior job positions. Even NGOs working for migrants’ rights are all lead by Irish people who have never immigrated.
Since arriving in Ireland, I’ve been involved in a few voluntary and community initiatives:
2019 Migrant against exploitation (MAX) Project, founded by The Migrant Rights Centre in Ireland
- Worked with the Mongolian community in Ireland.
- Learned and disseminated information regarding human trafficking, labour exploitation and employee rights.
2017- 2020 About Ireland Blog.
- Translated current affairs and other news relevant for the Mongolian community into Mongolian.
- Connected people in need with the appropriate organization/authority.
- Met Irish experts, learn about their social care and protection services.
- Translated these services for the Mongolian community.
I am one of the founders of “We are here too” campaign and Migrant Women Na hÉireann, which seeks to raise awareness and provide support to victims of domestic and gender-based violence. I also write about Mongolian culture in an attempt to honor my parents’ legacy and illustrate the beauty and hardship that comes with a traditional nomadic lifestyle.
My hopes for the future? I want to get involved in decision making and want to be part of an inclusive, vibrant, environmentally friendly Ireland.
Briege’s Story
TW; violence
Growing up in Northern Ireland (NI), I went to school in Belfast but spent all my holidays in Annaclone at my Aunt B’s house. I never really took to Belfast. Oldpark Avenue was a mixed street to begin with; we were Catholic and as I got older, I noticed that around the beginning of July the Protestant neighbours stopped speaking to us and put out their Union flags. In the summer of 1969, many Catholic houses were burned in Ardoyne and the B Specials were known to be very anti-Catholic in that area. All that summer there were riots and they were getting closer to us. A lot of Protestant families left. We heard shooting most nights and one of our neighbours told my father to get himself a gun to protect his family. Dad decided to pack us all up and take us to safety in Cabra near Hilltown where we stayed for the rest of the summer. Dad went to work and came up at weekends. From 1966 – 1971, I attended Our Lady of Mercy Secondary School off the Ballysillan Road. From about 1970 most of the Catholics in that area moved out - the school had been broken into, Holy statues broken, and paint daubed on the walls, and there were riots in the area. We were told not to leave the school grounds at lunch time, not to walk home and if we must, to remove our ties. You did feel nervous leaving school and we were always told to be careful at assembly each day.
In 1971 I started working at the Law Courts in Belfast – it was a mixed group and we all got on reasonably well, but it was my first time coming across Protestants who all seemed to have the senior jobs and the biggest say. I felt like a second-class citizen, that I was lucky to even have a job. I was shocked one day when a Protestant co-worker came in shouting that she had got her vote. She was 17. I was 18 and still waiting for mine. In 1972 - my cousin Patrick was shot and killed as he worked in his father’s bar on the Springfield Road. Two UDA men had come in and just opened fire. On the night of the funeral, we came home, and my mother had just pulled the curtains when there was a massive explosion. Every window in our house was blown in. There was a hotel called the Imperial nearby and a bomb had been planted. There was a Convent next door which had to be demolished due to bomb damage. Around this time my father, who was a self-employed builder, had all his equipment taken out of his storage yard on the Oldpark Road and used as barricades and set on fire by the local Catholics/IRA to stop the army gaining entry to the area. He lost his business practically overnight.
Before all this, in 1971 three Scottish soldiers had been drinking with a couple of girls in a bar and went back with them to their flat off the Antrim Road. All three were murdered by the IRA. The RUC at this time had a Confidential Telephone that people could call and give a name. I’m not sure when exactly but maybe a year or so later someone put my name forward because I looked like one of the women. Two policemen turned up at our house and took me down to the police station to give a statement. It wasn’t until it was signed and dated that they explained why I’d been questioned. They took me home and I never heard from them again. At that time people were being accused in the wrong and interned. It wasn’t until later that it really started to frighten me - how easily I could have ended up in prison for something I didn’t do. My parents were very upset.
My solace at this time were the monthly trips to Portaferry. My then boyfriend (and later husband) Hugh, who lived there, very rarely travelled to Belfast as his parents didn’t want him anywhere near the place, understandably. By 1974 the tension in NI was unbearable and Ian Paisley called an Ulster Workers Council Strike in May. Hugh and I had gone over to Liverpool for the weekend to get away from it all. When we arrived back, the ports were closed, and we couldn’t get a bus or taxi. Belfast was in complete lockdown. There were loyalists with their flags, balaclavas and uniforms carrying guns on the streets and I felt that this could be a massacre. Never had I felt so frightened to be Catholic in my life. This was the straw that broke the camel’s back; Hugh’s parents (who’d moved to England) wanted him out and safe with them, so he went. After a couple of months, he asked me to come over. I was 19 but I decided to go as I also had had enough of the Troubles.
As an immigrant in England, one of the first things I felt was freedom - not being body searched every time you went into a building or got on transport. Hugh by that time was working in a bank and a couple of nights a week in a pub. His parents and I would go down and have a drink and got to know the locals who were very friendly and never made any bad comments about NI. The Birmingham bombings happened at the end of 1974 though and suddenly if you had an Irish accent at all you seemed to be included in any conversation about it. Nothing was really said to me but, being Catholic, I felt I had nearly done something wrong. I felt uneasy - but was also ashamed that such a thing had happened. Overall, the English people were generally very nice, but I felt that they reserved judgement on you - coming from a war-torn country and being Catholic why would I want to come to a British country? I never really felt at home in England, I always thought that if the Troubles had died down, I would have come home to NI sooner. One of the things I think about now was how little news about the atrocities in NI was on the news, so people in England really didn’t know the half of it.
I moved to the US sometime after and straight off the bat I was introduced to several Irish people who ran the Irish pubs - they had great music and you could get a hot whiskey just like back home. My first secretarial position was at the British Consul and the NIO office one summer. It kept me up to date with what was going on at home. Unfortunately, some days there were IRA supporters outside and we’d have to go in a side door - especially if there were any Royal or Political visits planned.
I moved back to NI in 2015. One thing I now have is a vote which was not the case when I lived here in the 70’s. I use my vote every time. When thinking about how we can improve integration and inclusion for migrants … I think most good people in this word would rather be friends than enemies. If we fail to integrate, if we indicate by our behaviour that we only want to mix with certain people, then we will find racism. In NI, I would like to see less of the Catholic/Protestant parades and flag waving - it just keeps the old wounds open. I think we should change our politics from Orange and Green and work for the good of all.
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