OPINION (AN COLÚN): A grim walk towards death in a beautiful place

THE IRISH WORKHOUSE CENTRE in Portumna is a model of how these kind of places should be designed and run. It was once a place of misery and suffering during the 19th Century (and some very bad corruption); now it is a very important feature in Portumna because it attracts visitors and is a location for cultural events year-round and during the Arts Festival.
It was disappointing to read therefore that after two years of Covid the Centre is, financially, down on its luck and has had to launch a GoFundMe campaign, seeking €50,000 for some essential work. I hope it gets the response it deserves and will overcome its problems.
Every time I visit the IWC I think of our own workhouse here in Birr. This empty building was damaged by fire in 2017 and is becoming increasingly derelict. A company plans to establish a care home for dementia sufferers in the premises. Work was meant to start on the care home a couple of years ago but it was put on ice because of Covid. Some people are worried that the care home mightn't happen and more years of dereliction await. In truth, no one can say for certain what will happen. However, some of us continue to have hope.
In 21st Century Ireland the Famine era feels like an alien planet, where society was crueller and people's lives had less value. Thank God we weren't born in such a time, we all say.
Over the weekend I was in Mayo, walking in the Doo Lough area, a wonderfully beautiful place. However, its beauty was in stark contrast to the horror and cruelty which happened here during the Famine years. In March 1849 a group of starving people who were desperate to enter the workhouse at Louisburgh were told to present themselves to the Guardians of the Workshop at Delphi. When they finally got there, after walking for miles over rough roads, they were told that they could not be admitted. Many of the starving people died on the return journey. There is a simple plaque in their memory on the side of the road.
I parked my car near the plaque and I thought about the characteristics of human goodness and the characteristics of human evil.When I say evil I often mean hard-hearted; and the people running Delphi Workshop must have been savagely hard of heart indeed. Many of us, as we go through our lives, experience the over-shadowing of our finer natures by the systems which society places upon them; systems that can be self-serving, callous and cold. But no matter what system I lived in, no matter what the threat to my own personal wellbeing, I couldn't turn back the poor, suffering wretches on my doorstep if I happened to be one of the Guardians of Delphi Workshop in March 1849. Hundreds of severely debilitated people undertook the walk, in very bad weather, and a number died en route, perhaps twenty of them.
The Editor of the Mayo Constitution was disgusted when he heard the news. It became clear that two ancient human characteristics had contributed to the tragedy, namely an over-zealous, bureaucratic nature, and a blind compliance to the rules. “Can this be true?” asked the Editor, “Is it to be tolerated that men largely paid for dispensing relief to the starving peasantry, shall be guilty of such an act of barbarity as this?” He called for an inquiry, declaring that “the blood of these people calls loudly to heaven against those who sent them unprepared before their God by the most melancholy of all deaths – death from hunger.”
Inscribed on the roadside monument is a quote from Gandhi: "How can men feel themselves honoured by the humiliation of their fellow beings?"
According to Oxfam, today the world stands on the brink of unprecedented famines. About 30 million people are experiencing alarming hunger, severe levels of food insecurity and malnutrition in north-eastern Nigeria, South Sudan, Somalia, and Yemen. 10 million of them are facing emergency and famine conditions. Famine is already likely happening in parts of northern Nigeria, while Yemen and Somalia are on the brink. Thanks to aid efforts, it has been pushed back in South Sudan but the food crisis continues to spread across the country.
Famines are always caused by a fatal combination of various factors that can include conflict, insecurity, access, chronic poverty, lack of trade and severe weather events such as persistent drought. Ongoing war and conflict are the primary drivers of the situation in north-eastern Nigeria, South Sudan and Yemen, and for Somalia it is drought and weak governance after years of conflict.
“We always have the power to prevent and end famine,” says Oxfam, “but we always let it happen. A declaration of famine is effectively an admission that the international community has failed to organize and act in time and that national governments have been unable or unwilling to respond.”