Starting the long goodbye

Leaving home to go to school on the mainland is sometimes the first step in the process of migration for island children: the first long-term crossing of the water which divides island life from that on the mainland. Many of the children of the islands never return to them to live full time. Traditionally, island children have had to attend boarding school on the mainland for their secondary education. This is something which has been gradually changing over the past decade. Boarding schools are being phased out all over the country and alternative arrangements are being made for island children. Many now board with local families near their schools, thus integrating into the community. And they also go home far more frequently than before, weather allowing.

The Co Galway town of Tuam is a catchment area for several of the westerly islands, including the three Aran islands and Inishbofin. Inishmaan is the only Aran island which does not have a post-primary school. Consequently, there are presently currently seven girls from the island boarding at Tuam's St Bridget's, the Convent of Mercy secondary school.

Islanders are often perceived as being media-shy, with a longstanding reputation for guarding their privacy. For whatever reason, of 10 island families approached by this reporter asking to interview their sons and daughters, only three agreed - a take-up so unusually low as to be remarkable.

Patricia Maher (16), from Inishmaan, is in her Leaving Cert year at St Bridget's. The boarding part of the school is being phased out and will close in two years. Any island children still at the school then will board with local families. Patricia has been in St Bridget's for five years.

"Boarding school has toughened me up," she declares. "If I was at home, I'd be too distracted to study as hard as I do here." She says several times that she likes boarding and that she is happy in St Bridget's. Her parents are islanders who were living in England when Patricia was born. They came back to Inishmaan when she was four. "All my memories really start when we came home."

Ten years ago, St Jarlath's boys school in Tuam had more than 330 boarders. Now it has only 130, three of them islanders: two are from Inishbofin and one from Inishmaan. Peadar King (14) and Eamonn Day Lavelle (13) are both from Inishbofin. They lounge in chairs in the front parlour, bantering with each other with the companionable ease of old friends. Inishbofin has a population of about 200, and Peadar and Eamonn have known each other all their lives.

There is no secondary school on Inishbofin, so they always knew they would have to go away once they were 12. It is Peadar's second year there and Eamonn's first.

In her dormitory cubicle in St Bridget's, Patricia has black and white posters of the Aran islands and a copy of Tim Robinson's famous map of the islands on her walls. "And loads of pictures of my family." What do the boys have up on their cubicle walls?

Peadar has a few posters. "Nirvana, Nirvana, Nirvana," he grins. Eamonn says he has nothing up. "But I might put up a poster of a mountain bike." Neither of them has pictures of his family. Are boys less sentimental than girls, I tease? Eamonn shifts in his chair. "Photographs of home would just make me worse lonely," he says flatly, and I feel like a cretin.

Do other pupils regard them as exotic, coming from small islands? "Oh yes," Patricia says, a tad wryly. "I've had all the questions: are our houses thatched and is there electricity? People ask if there's a nightclub. Imagine! With a population of 200 people. I tell them there's only the one pub, like. And they ask if there's a swimming pool, when the sea is all around us."

The sea may be all around the place where Patricia grew up, and she can see it from her house, but she admits she cannot swim. "A lot of people at home can't swim. I've feared the sea since I was young: I've known people who have drowned. I don't like going home in the boat."

Both Peadar and Eamonn can swim, and both of them laugh out loud when asked if they fear the sea. Do they miss having the sea around them? Peadar looks flummoxed. "Nah, not really," he says. "Yeah, I do," says Eamonn. "My bedroom window at home overlooks the sea. Well, there's a few bushes in the way." Peadar is still considering the question. "It's claustrophobic," he says after a while. "What d'you mean?" Eamonn asks, leaning forward in his chair. "D'you mean being here is claustrophobic or having the sea all around you is?" Peadar looks almost embarrassed. "I mean here," he says eventually. "The sea is so far away from here, the land makes me feel claustrophobic."

The journey home is a long one for island boarders, and one which depends on the clemency of the weather. Patricia goes home one weekend a month. Peadar goes home almost every weekend. It's Eamonn's first year, so he hasn't been home much yet, but they both agree weekends in school are the worst aspect of boarding. "So boring," Peadar says. "There's more time to get homesick," Eamonn mutters.

On "home Fridays" they get a lift from a teacher into Galway, the 5.30 p.m. bus to Cleggan and the 7.30 p.m. boat to Inishbofin. The return journey starts at 1 p.m. on Sunday.

"It's a one-day weekend, really," Peadar observes. "And it's very tiring, but it's worth it to get home. It's something to look forward to." They are envious of the plane service to Aran. If the sea is rough, Patricia can be home on a nine-seater plane from Inverin in six minutes. As a student, her return flight is £20. The boys stay with relatives in Galway in bad weather.

What's the first thing they do on returning home? "Sleep," Patricia says. "Eat," declare the boys in chorus. Is the food that bad at school? It's definitely a credit to the school kitchens that the boarders say it's not bad at all. "But you appreciate the food when you go home," Peadar says firmly.

All three of their mothers run accommodation for tourists, as well as knitting traditional sweaters and cooking in restaurants. Their fathers have small farms, rent out bikes and do building jobs - or a combination of all. These three teenagers are at very early stages of their lives, yet none of them see themselves returning to their islands permanently.

"I can't imagine myself living there all the time, but I'd want to go back for holidays and all that," is Patricia's view. "In the winter, you wouldn't be able to have a good enough job," Eamonn says. "Summer time is when you make your money," Peadar agrees.

Despite the success and versatility of their own parents, these teenagers do not seem to believe they themselves could make a living from staying on the island year-round. Or, more tellingly, they do not seem to want to live on the island into adulthood. But who knows? Teenagers are mercurial. Patricia wants to study accountancy. For the boys, such a decision is a long way off yet, although Peadar mentions a hope of being a professional photographer.

Would they send their own children away to school? "Definitely," Patricia says. "No matter where I was living. It makes you study hard. And you make friends for life." Patricia feels so strongly about this that, asked at the end of the interview if there's anything else she wants to say, she repeats it: she would definitely send her children away to board, "to toughen them up. To make them independent".

The boys look appalled by the same question. "No way," Peadar splutters. "If you don't like boarding school yourself, why would you think your kids would like it?" Then he adds urgently: "We knew we had to go away, because there was no school on the island. That makes a difference. But going to boarding school when you have a choice . . ." - he shakes his head and looks baffled. As for Eamonn, his stunned silence is answer enough.