Habitat homeowners Martin and Ellen Taggart, with sons Martin, Lewis and Samuel, will move into one of the last Habitat houses built in the Protestant neighborhood of Ballysillan.

The Twain Shall Meet (continued)

In his book, Interface: Flashpoints in Northern Ireland, Colm Heatley writes that "Nationalists say the peace lines act to hem in their expanding community in North Belfast, while unionists, whose numbers are declining in North Belfast, prefer to see them as a necessary fact of life, providing some element of security."

They have produced wastelands, he writes, "which would otherwise be used to build public- sector housing. This has created a housing crisis, particularly in working-class nationalist areas, which are characterized by overcrowding;...in short, they are bursting at the seams, while houses in nearby Protestant areas lie empty."

Entire generations have grown up not knowing their peers from the other side, remaining unfamiliar with their culture. "What is fairly clear is that there isn't even a realization among each community of the other's needs," Heatley points out in his book.

The conflict is really about identity, Blake says, and it's not only about being Catholic or Protestant; it's also about being Irish or British; it's about being nationalist or unionist. In other words, it's at once an issue of national, religious and political identity. And the division has exacted an immeasurable economic and human toll. Healing is taking place, however, forged in part by residents' refusal to return to "hell on earth"--and in part by groups like Habitat for Humanity.


Bridging people across such profound chasms is exactly what Habitat is doing in Northern Ireland.

The organization has built 47 houses since its 1994 inception, but numbers are not what drives Habitat's efforts there--or Habitat staff and volunteers themselves for that matter.

"Habitat's work is so wonderfully about bringing people together," Farquharson says, "and I think as a movement that's probably our greatest achievement. I think the numbers of houses are insubstantial, and I think the work in terms of building community and getting the community together on a global level is just phenomenal."

Farquharson quickly concedes, however, that such work would not be possible without support from so many individuals, churches, businesses and other organizations.

	Bridging the divide between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland is what drives Habitat for Humanity construction supervisors Danny Burns (above) and Rab Branney.

One of those organizations is the Northern Ireland Housing Executive, a government-funded housing agency whose purpose is to ensure that housing is provided on the basis of need. NIHE works indiscriminately with families from both communities to help resolve substandard housing issues and build cross-community relations. Not too surprisingly, then, Habitat partners with NIHE to foster both decent housing and community cohesion. Elma Newberry, who heads NIHE's Community Cohesion Unit, says HFH-NI is helping research, develop and promote mixed-community housing.

"Housing in itself is a social good and central to the development of stable, cohesive neighborhoods," she says. "The NIHE recognizes that Habitat is a politically neutral organization with experience and expertise in developing relationships in diverse communities."

While the scars presently run too deep for an integrated Habitat community in Northern Ireland, the organization is successfully building houses with both Catholics and Protestants in single-identity neighborhoods. Volunteers and prospective homeowners from each side travel to and work on site in the other's community--a practice virtually unheard of only a short time ago. In November, HFH-NI dedicated the last of eight houses in the Protestant Ballysillan neighborhood of North Belfast. In the coming months, volunteers will build and dedicate the last two of eight houses in the nearby Catholic neighborhood of Ligoniel. All of the houses will have been built with cross-community volunteers.

Some Habitat staff and volunteers in Belfast, who grew up amid the Troubles and for whom sectarian conflict is a life context, tell of their initial uneasiness about entering, let alone working in, a community on the other side. Large murals depicting militants with black guns and black masks can be intimidating, not to mention the history of random abductions,mutilations and killings that remains entirely vivid. Yet they continue their work because they believe in the outcome--which they see, experience and foster every day.

As a measure, perhaps, of Habitat's credibility in Northern Ireland, apart from some relatively minor vandalism from "bored kids," Habitat actually has experienced very little resistance in the neighborhoods where it works, says Rab Branney, a construction supervisor. "They know we're coming in to do a positive thing in their community, and people recognize the importance of decent housing," he says, reiterating at the same time that Habitat doesn't work for  one side or the other, but rather for everyone.

In talking about his work with Habitat, Angus Beck, who serves on the board of HFH-NI, references scripture in the Book of Matthew imploring one to "love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you."

"I thought, 'Well, that's great, but how do you practically show that?'" he says. "Here's an organization that gives people an opportunity, if they want it, to step out to the other side of a community, to practically do something for people who, historically, have been seen as your enemy or you've been seen as theirs just because of where you come from. This gives them an opportunity to step outside their comfort zone, to cross that divide ... and that's what's so exciting."

Never has that been better exemplified than in the experience of Michelle Hamilton and Jennifer Crockard, Catholic and Protestant respectively.

The two women, both Habitat homeowners, grew up amid the Troubles and have seen firsthand the hostility and violence that can so thoroughly infect a community.

"I decided I wasn't going to get caught up in all of that," Crockard says, sitting on the sofa in Hamilton's home in the staunchly Catholic neighborhood of Ligoniel.

Jennifer Crockard (left), Protestant, and Michelle Hamilton, Catholic, first met on a Habitat build site and since have cultivated a true friendship, defying an identity barrier that otherwise might have separated them.

Hamilton and Crockard met on a Habitat build site in the Protestant neighborhood of Ballysillan, a mere stone's throw from Ligoniel.They worked hand in hand then, and they walk, figuratively, hand in hand still. Each watches the other's children; they take vacations together--to Scotland last year--watch movies together. Even more revealing, perhaps, is that their young children look at one another not as Catholic or Protestant first, but as friend and neighbor.

"It's so important to take people as they come," says Hamilton.

"It doesn't matter to me who or what people are," Crockard echoes. "A person can embrace an identity, but still think beyond the walls of a particular community."

In Northern Ireland, Catholics and Protestants live in close proximity--in Crockard and Hamilton's case only a half-mile at the furthest point--but entire worlds divide them in terms of personal interaction. So each time Hamilton and Crockard visit in their respective neighborhoods, they bridge a divide that decades of hostility have carved in the hearts of people throughout the region and particularly in a city where some of the more intense conflict surfaced during the Troubles.

By coming together in true friendship, Hamilton and Crockard personify the very purpose for Habitat's work in Northern Ireland.

"With Catholics and Protestants building in each other's communities ... to engage everyone like that is very significant," says Blake, especially in light of decades where many people were concerned more with burning the other's house than with building it.

"Habitat talks shop and then does shop," Crockard says. "It doesn't pick sides, and it regenerates communities by giving people hope."

Hope is what has come to Northern Ireland in the form of peace-building organizations, in the work of individuals and churches, in the outreach of official agencies and cross-community groups, in the same conciliatory spirit shared between Crockard and Hamilton.

And it's come to neighborhoods throughout Belfast--where people are building houses and peace, no matter which "foot they kick with."