If you have an Irish name

Rick and I passed this sculpture in Murrisk, County Mayo on the way to see it.

Today we stopped.

Only when we were close did we realise the story it told.

The Irish Famine killed over one million people between 1845 and 1850.

The saddest part is that their deaths could have been avoided, because more than enough food was grown in Ireland, only the wealthy preferred to export it and had written laws to make sure that they had their way, the people be damned.

In turn this led to the Irish emmigrating, usually to America, where they fought their way out of poverty to build lives that their descendents enjoy today.

The ship memorial was dedicated in 1997 by the then Irish President Mary Robinson, one of my personal heroines for her work with human rights as well as her sense of humour. In an interview she told me when asked how she could stand looking at the horror of the Rwanda in her role of HCR that her glass is always "a quarter full."

Only when we went close up did we see the skulls and skeletons.

The Irish immigrants that went to American in the 1850s are no different than most of the Latin American immigrants that go to the US today. They are like the African immigrants that risk their lives in tiny boats to Europe.

They want work, they want to eat, they want education for their children. Like the signs, "No Irish need Apply" in Boston windows, the new immigrants are vilified and scape-goated, called lazy, seen as thieves, job stealers, etc.

Why do those whose ancestors suffered the same as immigrants try to block the new immigrants? Maybe they've forgotten their family's histories.