Three things this past week got me thinking about community and ‘belonging’ abroad; I spent last weekend at the North American GAA championships in Leesburg VA, on Monday I came across the GAA’s belonging manifesto and, as of the other day, I’ve been living in Chicago six months (there’s some weeks I think the blog could write itself). I’ve been far more settled here since I found a community, and My Top One Tip for Moving Away is simple; find your community, whatever your community is, and belonging will follow. The community I tapped into was the GAA, specifically Aisling Gaels on Chicago’s northside, and though I can’t pinpoint exactly what it was about football that gave me a sense of belonging, I do know that I wasn’t the only one looking for it.
Before coming to Chicago, I looked to other emigrants with their cosmopolitan and multicultural groups of friends and decided that I hadn’t come all the way to Chicago just to hang around with more Irish people. Making all them new glamorous and diverse friends wouldn’t be easy, but I’m well able and I assumed that the 29–40 years olds of Chicago would be flocking to my side in no time. I was wrong. MeetUp and the likes are great places to meet people – it’s in the name – but usually, lasting friendships are made through existing communities like the workplace, theater groups, the LGBT communities or Newcastle United supporters’ clubs. When I was ready for it, I had a readymade community on my doorstep and through the GAA, I found a sense of belonging simply by turning up week after week, seeing the same faces, continuing previous conversations, watching matches and eating chips on Sundays. It wasn’t a conscious thing, but I noticed as the weeks passed that I didn’t feel like an anonymous stranger in this city anymore. It might have taken me six months to cop that I needed community and support, but when I did cop it, I was fortunate that I knew exactly where to go.
I should’ve emailed the Aisling Gaels the minute I got off the plane in February instead of hmming and hawing for six months and thinking I was too old to play football or that I mightn’t fit in. The months of feeling adrift and relentless social effort had dented my confidence but the familiarity of the football – the accents, the craic, the fumbled soloing and the common humour – was as good as a reset button. Things always make more sense when you realize you’re not the only one who feels a certain way or does a particular thing. The Aisling Gaels was a readymade community with no breaking-in period or ‘getting to know you’ phase because everyone there had been that lost sheep at some stage, or had seen enough newbies pass through the ranks in the club’s eleven-year history to know what it was like. It was simply ‘pick up a football, get in line and get stuck in’. The decency and goodness of the established members of the team or those who’d been there for years was evident in how they went out of their way to make the new people feel welcome and included. They did it for me and they’ll do it for many after me, as well I saw when one of our number busted herself on the pitch and everyone rallied to her side, offering support and help at every turn. Or when a new girl coming here got added to the WhatsApp group and was sorted with an apartment almost immediately. Sometimes expats dismiss the idea of tapping into the Irish community upon arrival in a new city but they’re able do so because they’ve chosen to tap into a different community. Never shy of notions, I thought tapping into the Irish community would make for a less authentic American experience but I was wrong; my time here is all the better for having gotten involved.
The 2019 US GAA Finals were held at Leesburg VA, this weekend. A load of teams participated in men’s and women’s football, hurling and camogie. It was good craic, I really enjoyed myself. Throughout though, I wondered what it was that brought people to this tournament, to join the GAA in America or Canada? There was very obviously a whole lotta Irish people out on the field playing an Irish sport but ‘Irishness’ wasn’t what held the thing together. There were plenty of people there who have no Irish relatives or family. Indeed, the ‘Irishness’ was a generic packaged kind (Harp on tap and Galway Girl on loop) that’s neither inspiring nor offensive, that ticks a box but isn’t designed for centre stage. What was prominent was the individual identity of the clubs and their members. The team jerseys boasted local skylines or bridges across their front; the Golden Gate Bridge, the Statue of Liberty, some bridge in Pittsburgh. The teams lining out – like the Aisling Gaels – were mostly home-base teams (i.e. born and reared here or settled here) because the tournament is played late in August when most of the J1s are away home. Such clubs were born of people coming together, maybe forty years ago, maybe last year, to build a community and foster a sense of belonging in their new or adopted home. The US GAA finals were hardly a melting pot of multiculturalism and diversity but looking around, I think that ideas of community, solidarity, belonging, friendship and camaraderie had far more to do with us being there than a national or ethnic identity. Though it was an Irish sport that landed us in Leesburg VA, it was the desire to belong that had gotten all of us on pitches in the very first place, whenever that was.
For me, happiness is found in community – in the several communities I belong to, for we’re all part of many. None of this sense of belonging was conscious or monitored; I didn’t know that as the summer passed I was feeling more content until one day I was more content, more settled. The feeling of belonging that came from one outlet – the Aisling Gaels – but it spread to other parts of my life and work, and did wonders for my confidence. If you’re emigrating, going to college or starting secondary school, the advice is the same; find your community, and belonging will follow. There’s strength in belonging. And serious craic too.
doireann.ie 