Stories from the Edge - Volunteer Now

on the news bulletins. Most weekends the drunken gangs return and throw empty drink bottles at those portacabins andcaravans close to the road, breaking their windows. Michael believes it’s only a matter of time before someone is killed.His tale of terror and intimidation has uncanny parallel with racist deep South in 1950s America. He quickly points outother historically matching situations such as the European treatment of the American Indians and the AustralianAboriginal people.As he speaks his two young children come out to play on the cold January morning. Stephen is the youngest. A gentle, shychild who plays lovingly with his pet pup. The older boy can’t get his tiny quad bike to work. Michael breaks off from theinterview to help the youngster. It is clear that he is a caring, patient father. It is also clear he would not have been a caringfather if his father had treated him any differently. He starts up the small engine. Stephen gets on behind his brotherholding tightly as the small two stroke engine ‘puts puts’ slowly over the brown and frozen earth. Michael resumes and thelessons of the African/American struggle for equality is not lost on him. He paraphrases assassinated Civil Rights leaderMartin Luther King and pointed out that his young children are going to school. Some have even gone to pre schoolplaygroups which is a first for the Travelling community. "Stephen will grow up with other little boys and girls who will notknow him as the gypsy child but as Stephen their friend," he said.He believes his community work is beginning to pay off. Other younger Travellers are now pushing for education, which isopening many doors. Over 90 per cent of those who went to school left again without the basic three R’s. During his timeas a volunteer Michael Mongan went to night school and eventually got himself a job working for the community. Hebelieves he is the first Traveller to get a settled full-time job. "It is better to have a Traveller on the inside talking aboutTravellers than a settled person talking about Travellers. I can tell what life is really like because I am living here. I knowwhat people here are talking about and thinking. What they want and don’t want," he adds.Michael is determined that the Travellers’ future will be in the hands of those who achieve a decent education. He isdetermined to change his third world. He sees the future in those young men now receiving a second level and hopefullya third level education.More importantly they are studying the law and the new laws forbid discrimination on religious political or racial grounds.Michael Mongan is glad to be in the front line he claims. The settled people will find out that the Travellers are not‘barbarians.’ Under the New European Human Rights Laws recently adapted by the British Government settled folk andthe authorities will soon get their wake up call. "It’s just a matter of time before a Traveller is ordered out of some publicutility and he or she will take a human rights case. The day that happens the gates will fly open and we will not be treatedas Third World people anymore," he adds.He is no romantic with ideas of the ‘freeborn man of the Travelling people’ made so popular in the 1970s Irish folk hit. Yesthere were good times on the road but there were mostly bad, harsh and cold. "All those romantic stories about life on theroad are a load of bull shit," he said. He believes it is important to keep alive the Traveller traditions and allow them theoption of moving about the countryside. "But they want to be settled in one place with good accommodation to live inwhich everyone is entitled to, and they can make up their minds afterwards if they want to go off for a while," he said. Itis that part of the Traveller tradition he wants to keep alive, "But the future is now important for the young ones. Jobs andeducation, that is the way forward".