Teaching me to be different

Settled people thought they knew best for me at primary school. They sent a woman every couple of days into the classrooms to get "the Travellers" for showers.

"Why?," I would think. "I'm clean. Why aren't any settled children going? My mother just washed me last night." What humiliation I went through going down to the showers: coming back with my hair washed; the settled children knowing where I had been; they, in turn, thinking I was dirty when I wasn't.

At lunch break we Travellers were singled out again, put into a special room and made to eat what we were given.

How was I to respond to settled people from the adult world, people who thought they knew best for me, when all they were doing was teaching me to be different?

My first experiences of settled people were bad, and for years afterwards this affected me. I was never sure whom to trust, never had any real friends from the settled community.

When it was break in school, we were all let out to play. "Play", now there's a word. Would you call the settled children calling the Travellers names "play"? Would you call all the fighting that took place between settled and Traveller children "play"? I didn't; I wanted to go out to the yard but I was scared of the fighting.

This regime at school was all due to people who were educated, the experts. I dread to think what goes on behind the doors of the meetings where they are discussing Travellers. What do they say, I wonder? I don't think I want to know.

Soon this nightmare of primary school was over, but it felt like forever. Confirmation day came and went and so did my time at that school. I learned a lot but was glad to get out.

Some months later I started secondary school. I was willing to go through the same discrimination all over again if only I could continue getting a decent education.

As I walked in the door of Mater Christi secondary school in Finglas for the first time in November 1996, I thought back to the primary school and wondered what I would do if these people were as bad to me as the other children had been. Would I have to spend the next few years being a so-called "different" person?

I need not have worried, because the minute I walked into the principal's office there was a welcome waiting for me that I had never before received. The teachers and students welcomed me like I was one of the settled community. Over the next two years I was to make settled friends and learn things I never thought I would.

Before I went into that school I thought all settled people were the same, that they hated all Travellers and that no matter how hard Travellers worked to make them see our good side, they would never listen. As the days turned into months, and the months into years, it dawned on me that these settled people were different. Something about them made staying on in school a little extra worth while.

For the length of time I was in that school never once was I made feel different about who I was. They made it seem as if it didn't matter.

However, even though I was treated the same as everyone else in school, I always knew that I was different and no matter how long I stayed in school, nothing would ever change that. When I went to secondary school, it was only meant to be for a short time, but soon this changed.

Nearly all the teachers told me I could get the Junior Cert but to get this I had to stay on for at least three years. That didn't exactly appeal to me, as I was one of the first in my family to go to secondary school.

The biggest obstacle for me was the fact that, usually, when Travellers leave primary school they stay at home for a year and then they attend a local training centre. In these, Travellers are taught basic reading and writing and other subjects. There are a number of reasons for Travellers attending these training centres, one of which is the small allowance, about £28, that is supplied and, as Travellers think the amount is a good wage, they are more inclined to let their teenage children attend. The other reason is that young Travellers have suffered so much discrimination in school, they don't want to go to another school.

I had a great dream to become a writer and there was no way that a training centre could provide that. And so I persuaded my parents that the Junior Cert was a great idea and even though they may not have been fully convinced at the time, they said that I could continue. This I was very thankful for, as I didn't want to leave the school without some achievement.

At times in school it got tempting to leave and several times I stayed at home for a couple of weeks, but each time I got the will to come back. This was not achieved by myself because had it not been for some of the teachers, in particular, Mary Grace O'Donnell, and the school liaison teacher, Frank Houlihan, I would not have done my Junior Cert.

I as a Traveller now have a lot of respect for lots of settled people, and I wish that I could say the same for all the settled people out there but am afraid I can't. I used to give speeches to the girls in school, as I thought the settled people in the class knew little or knew bad things about Travellers. Some Travellers are violent and some are bad and they can be rude, ignorant, robbers and some can be drug dealers, but we shouldn't all be discriminated against because of this. I tried to make the girls understand that if they continue to make us feel different and leave us isolated then the results won't be good.

I want a good life and part of that means getting a good education, and if Travellers don't get that soon, we will always be the uneducated people that we are now.

Mary McDonnell (16) lives in the Dunsink halting site in Finglas, Dublin and is now studying English and history for the Leaving Cert, out of school