Marc de faoite in the Pyrenees
Marc de faoite has lived in London, Brussels, France, India and Malaysia. He has found himself and lost himself around the world, and moving back to Ireland is not in the plan, he writes.
“Would you ever move back to Ireland, given the chance?”
I’ll think for half a second before I answer that.
No. Not now. It’s been more than 22 years. My life is elsewhere now. Maybe in the early years, but even then I was enjoying my life abroad too much. Though there were no jobs to be had in Ireland, I was a willing emigrant.
June 1989 Aer Lingus Dublin- Heathrow. The flight attendant recognizes me and my best friend. “Youse were in Cathal Bruagha Street,” she says with a smile and so we sip Champagne on the house. A final parting round. One for the road. Airborne, the roads rises with us.
In London I immersed myself in culture. Wet autumn afternoons spent waiting in the rain for the cheap tickets at Covent Garden Opera. La Traviata and the smell of wet wool from the sweater my mother had knitted for me. The yarn chosen from Arnotts on a Christmas trip home. Do mammies still knit sweaters for their emigrant sons? And would they wear them if they did? I explored museums, never missed an exhibition at the Tate. I boated on Hyde Park’s Serpentine and ate food from Bayswater’s Arabs and Greeks.
I lived out in the suburbs. All my neighbours Hindus and Sikhs. I learned to tell the difference and to eat their spicy food. My housemates were Greek and German. They taught me their swearwords. All I knew to teach them was “póg mo thóin.” I told them a really good one was uachtar reoite, but never explained that it just meant ice-cream. My colleagues were French. I knew their swearwords already, so they taught me gutter slang. It stood me in good stead.
Five years living in downtown Brussels in a North-African neighbourhood. Pepita from Andalusia runs the shop downstairs. She always keeps me a slice of tortilla, oh heavenly omlette. She tells me her ‘esecret’ – a spoonful of Dijon mustard mixed in with the eggs. Cultural integration.
Refuge in the Pyrenees
I knew more Irish in Brussels than I knew in Ireland. Most of my class from Cathal Brugha Street had left Ireland’s shores. We all lost touch. Or maybe it was just me. In a fit of patriotism I tried to learn Irish from a Belfast man. I had no more success than I’d had at school with that befuddling tongue. Brussels weekends and the live music scene. Gigs and concerts. Pub quizzes at the James Joyce. Kitty’s was cleaner and nicer, but full of Eurocrats. We were the other Irish in Brussels, for a while at least. Some still had cement on their hands as they sank their pints. Those with degrees graduated to cushy commission posts. My mere diploma kept me in the airport hotel. Weekends away – Paris, Amsterdam, Trier, the Ardennes. Christmas shopping ship to Canterbury. Would you step this way sir. A statement, not a question. Closed rooms and body searches. What is the purpose of your visit? The following years we chose the Christmas Market in Cologne. German border guards a much friendlier crowd indeed.
I lived in French-speaking Brussels where I learned to curse and count in Arabic. I worked in Flanders. A linguistic divide crossed every day. It took me years to learn French. Flemish came easy to me. Closer to English and more down to earth. Night classes and love affairs, the best way to learn. (Maybe there’s something in those Gaeltacht romances). My colleagues all astounded at my progress. But that’s nothing in Belgium. Even the train conductor reads newspapers and speaks to passengers in 4 different tongues. The Waloons think I’m Flemish and so do the Dutch. I don’t correct them. Integration and disintegration. Cold winters were hard though. I’m made for the heat. Fly south like the winter’s geese.
I hitch-hiked instead. A cold, cold winter’s week standing on the hard edge.
Belgian French and Pyrenean French read both the same. But what comes through the eyes is not what comes through the ears. It took time to tune in to new sounds and expressions. No Irish here. At least not at first.
12 years in France. I almost lost my mother tongue. I spoke with a distorted accent, just like Stephen Roche. I hiked in the mountains two days a week. I bought cheese from shepherds and strayed across the border. I learned enough Spanish to get my face slapped. I learned enough Basque to be bought a drink. I learned that you could drink and eat at the same time. Much more civilized around a good table than in a smoky pub. Winters were cold. I was made for warmer climes.
Work was hard to find. Even for the French. Odd jobs, a year or two here, a year or two there. Teaching English in the school year and seasonal summer work. Castrating corn. Early morning work. Stretching high, plucking flowers in dew-soaked knife-leaved cornfields that lacerated forearms. The sharp-end of cutting-edge genetic engineering. Telling lies part time in a call centre. I was so good at telling lies they took me on full time. It’s the soft Irish accent that gets them, they said. Lies, lies and more lies. A wedding. A divorce.
My life veered off on another path. Years spent back and forth between India and a Pyrenean mountain hut where I worked. India, where I sought to find myself, to lose myself. And succeeded on both counts. India, where I learned to speak English again. And to wobble my head. India, where I met my Malaysian wife. France or Malaysia? Not hard to choose. I’m a warm weather man. Humid tropical heat on a balmy palmy island. Winters aren’t cold here. The climate suits me well. It could be paradise. Perhaps it is.
Marc in a bookshop in Kuala Lumpur with a copy of Sini Sana:Travels in Malaysia, in which he had two short stories published.
How many different lives I’ve led. How many things I’ve seen. A palm reading Tibetan monk on a Himalayan mountain slope tells me I’m only halfway. Tells me to use the years wisely. When I cycled to school on frosty Meath mornings I never imagined any of this. Does any schoolboy?
“Would you ever move back to Ireland, given the chance?”
I can’t say. It’s not in my plans. But none of it ever was.
Marc now lives in Langkawi, an island off the west coast of Malaysia, close to the border with Thailand. When he is not writing he runs a yoga centre with his Malaysian wife.
Marc’s Website - www.yoganowmalaysia.com
Writing - http://marcdefaoite.blogspot.com
Photos - http://www.flickr.com/photos/marcdefaoite/
YouTube – http://www.youtube.com/marcdefaoite
Absolutely loved reading this; what an interesting life you’ve had so far….a real citizen of the world. Best of luck to you in Malaysia and beyond.
Thanks Lauren
Indeed I am very lucky man. There was plenty I had to leave out. It’s hard to do justice to a life in a thousand words.
Good luck to you too
Pretentious and egotistical. We could all be “warm weather people” if we got the chance but some of us have to stay in Ireland and suck it up. If Marc has no intention of coming back to Ireland then why is he bragging about his travels and experiences to the rest of us? Call me a begrudger but living in this country breeds begrudgery, especially if you haven’t got the opportunity to go away for more than a week and are tied by circumstances outside your control. Don’t come back to Ireland Marc, the air here is choked by unexpressed rage and a sense of desperation and helplessness.
What an amazing journey you’ve made thus far, and who knows where the wind will take you yet!
Really nicely written article also, almost a poetic account. Makes me want to do it all too!
Lovely account of your travels so far. @Elle, there’s no bragging in it that I can read. Just a man telling his story. I lived in Australia for 3 years and in telling of my experiences, there’s a difference between bragging and explaining. I wouldnt let it worry you. @marc, great article.
That was a fantastic article, extremely well written and really shows the positive side of emigration and adventure.
@Laura. I agree, makes me want to travel so much!
Marc, what a wonderful story. Got goosebumps reading of your travels.Good luck with the second half! Elle, I really hope that things pick up for you, there’s a fierce amount of bitterness and despair in your response.
It was an absolute pleasure to read your article, an amazing feat to be able to condense your life into a 1,000 words! Sadly your positive attitude to life is a loss to Ireland but that is they way it the story of Ireland – the ones with determination and belief leave and we are left with those who aspire to work in some branch of the civil service.
Enjoy life in Malaysia and your future travels.
Thank you Marc! That was a fantastic little read and I wish you all the best for whatever or wherever your life takes you next! I’m living in Brussels – not far from the JJ & Kitties and the latter is still as you remember it
Best of luck 
@Elle – reading your comment at first I felt angry that someone could be so begrudging but then I mellowed (try it!) – I hope you find some positivity and manage to curb the begrudgery a bit.. life’s what you make it afterall..
Great article and sounds like you enjoying life and all the adventures it has to offer….. enjoy life in Malaysia and all it has to offer.
Inspirational words… perhaps this will encourage some more people to step out of the invisible boxes that encase most of our lives and take a chance at happiness. Best of luck with the second half of your journey (I’m sure that Tibetan palm reader knew what he was talking about).
@Elle ” Call me a begrudger ” – you are a begrudger
I started a diary the day I left Ireland – 4th of June 1989. I’ve kept writing and scribbling on and off down through the years. This year things seem to be coming together for me on that front. This article/story is the first time I’ve had anything I’ve written published in Ireland. It’s a homecoming of sorts.
Thank you all for your kind words, your positive and interesting feedback. I’m flattered and honoured, to say the least.
The written word is powerful indeed. The emigrant’s letter home is an emotionally charged thing. If things aren’t going well, you gloss over it and highlight the good. Ye wouldn’t want to worry the mammy now, would ye? Everything I wrote is true, but I could have just as easily told a tale of woe that would be true too.
I’ve missed many family milestones, births, marriages and deaths. I’ve been an absentee brother, son, nephew, cousin, grandchild, uncle. I’ve known the self-esteem sapping desperation of dole queues too. 3 years I worked the nightshift and was thankful for the job. For a year I held down three jobs. I lived most of another year in a tent. A hard cold winter sleeping on a hard cold floor. For a month I ate only rice. I know hunger well enough to know that it’s only the first three days that are hard. After that there’s a lucid clarity and a sort of apathetic peace. If lives are lost cat-like, I’ve lost some of my nine. Death is familiar enough to me that he doesn’t frighten me anymore.
When I left Ireland I wanted to leave some of my past. The alcoholic schoolmaster who used me for a punch bag. The school-bus bullies who beat me daily for being gay, which I wasn’t, though in a disturbed adolescent way wished I was, so I could at least deserve their kick and punches. The drunken manager in a Connemara hotel who tried to rape me while I slept. It took a bloodied broken nose for him to loosen his grip enough for me to escape. I got away with bruises and bite marks and hitch-hiked back to Dublin. Misguided frightened individuals, the products of a culture of fear and repression and slowly simmering rage. All forgiven, but not forgotten. I wanted to leave all that behind, but carried it for years. Long hours with psychotherapists. Longer hours of tears.
Hard times forge us in their fires. Make us stronger. If we let them, those fires will burn off the impurities and the dross. I’ve come through it scarred, but intact. I’m a better man for it too.
Wherever we are, whatever our circumstances, we go through it for a reason. Weight can press us down or we can resist it to grow stronger. Hardship chisels away the superfluous. Reveals what is essential. It’s when you’ve touched the bottom that to go on you must go up.
Every day I sit and watch my breath coming in and going out. Remind myself that I’m alive and how precious that can be. My life bears fruit, but I bare the cost. Today is more important to me than the things I’ve lost.
I let go of everything. Absolutely everything. I stopped fighting the current and followed the flow instead. I still got snagged on rocks. Good people gave me help in smiles and kind words. In hard words too. Some of the things I let go of I picked up again, but I make my choices carefully and I can still let them go. I’ve been to my limits and found they weren’t real. When I went far beyond those paper fences I found that I was something other than the simple image of myself that I had let my life carve. I’ve flirted with the borders of time and space and gone beyond the petty mind. When we really find the foundation we see that all is one. There is no separation in anything. There’s peace and joy everywhere if you want it hard enough.
The irony is that it comes not in that wanting, but in letting go of the wanting. Wanting things, having things, lacking things – there’s no happiness in things.
But mystic words are not enough. Words are powerful, but hide as much as they reveal. How can you describe what it means to swim to someone who has never been immersed in water?
Life is in the details, the stuff we never look to see. Apart from family and friends it’s the simple stuff I miss. I’d murder a decent cup of tea and a slice of fresh brown bread. The simple stuff is the essential stuff. A smile, a wink, a nod. Those are things the Irish haven’t lost. I hope we never will.
We’re a resilient race.
We weather storms.
Wow Marc – congratulations on writing an inspirational piece… talk about the road well travelled!
This is really a cool story…and I’ll tell you… I too live in Langkawi and have only met Marc once (in real life)…he is a very passionate and interesting human being. He most definitely isn’t BRAGGING (that’s for Elle).. Now Elle if you could think outside the box… a wee bit, you’d be surprised what you can do in the world. Marc is not a rich man, but someone brave enough to follow his heart. So thus the road of travel beckoned him. People like him inspire others to follow their dreams before its too late. And that is a good thing. Because life is indeed short, so make the most of it. Thank you Marc…excellent!
WOW…………That was an excellent read, and I thought I have travelled, I have a very good story to tell, I am currently living in Central Mexico, and my first job here was working in a call center for Euro 2.19 per hour 4pm to after midnight and I survived that for almost a year,(this year 2011) I paid rent, ESB, Water,Petrol out of those wages…..and still managed to live a semi normal life. To those of you who begrudge us who leave, what makes you so special
Thank you so much for writing two inspirational pieces Marc. I have lived outside Ireland for a few years now (am currently in Brussels) and many parts your story resonate with me. I have kept a quote book since I left Ireland and there were so many things I wanted to write in it from your reply above that I just printed the whole thing out and I will put it in later! May more people in the world be able to see life with the clarity of thought and perspective that you have found.