MANCHÁN MAGAN'stales of a travel addict
I WAS IN A tunnel house on Lanyu island 100km off Taiwan. It was dark and stuffy and smelt of teak oil. I couldn’t see very well and there was hardly room to sit upright. A large cauldron was bubbling away on a small hearth. I could smell rice and wild garlic from it. An elder of the Yami tribe, Shapen Mate Nan began to sing a song for me, an ancient song, part of the creation myth of the Yami People. His grand-daughter Shuan Ala told me that he was singing it so that we could communicate across the barrier of all that divided us, Culture Ireland to Culture Lanyu Island.
This tiny Polynesian man in his home-spun outfit and enormous smile was welcoming me into his world, opening a door into his culture and its connection with the surrounding plants, fish, waves and rock.
Four years before that I had been in the Ecuadorian cloud forest high above the Rio Yambala valley when an old Indian gestured me into his hunting cabin, and pointed to a pot of green sludge bubbling away on the fire. The place smelt of rodents and damp horse blankets. He sat me down on a splintered plank stretched across a wooden crate, and poured a ladle of the slimy liquid into a mug for me. It looked like pond scum and he gestured for me to swallow it back with one gulp. He had that same look in his eye as Shapen Mate Nan, a desire to communicate, to bridge the divide between us, and so, I took the drink, a form of boiled mescaline cactus, like peyote. It tasted like rancid borscht and my stomach did its best to reject it, but I made sure to keep it down. It was a gift from him, an entry point into his world, and as my muscles began to tingle and my brain stretched and swerved with the effects of the hallucinogen I realised I was about to become as deeply immersed in indigenous, equatorial, highland culture as any foreigner could ever hope to be.
We in Ireland don’t tend to sing the songs of our creation myth any longer and nor do we offer strangers mind-altering plants, but we do still seek to connect visitors who come here to our culture in direct and powerful ways. Our artists, musicians and poets also head out into the wider world to bring our essence to people who’ll never reach our shores. We hook them up for short periods to intravenous infusions of who and what we are. A Martin Hayes gig in Beijing, a Colin Dunne dance performance in Rio de Janeiro, an Anne Enright reading in Delhi, a Druid play in New York, a Kíla gig in Zimbabwe, Liam Ó Maonlaí in Cuba.
A large number of these trips is funded to some degree by an institution called Culture Ireland, which, through the miracle of the loaves and fishes manages to send hundreds of artists abroad each year on its €4 million annual budget. Yet, Culture Ireland now risks being merged into the Department of Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht, after seven successful years of independence.
For artists, the line between travelling as autonomous cultural ambassadors and puppets of the government machine may become less opaque. The reason Shapen Mate Nan and the old Ecuadorian Indian reached out to me was not to spread their government’s message, but to assert our common humanity.
Let’s hope Culture Ireland can continue to do the same.