The Fountain

Donna frightened of The Fountain, originally uploaded by BiddieB.

This is a picture of my friend Donna. Donna is making a frightened face because she is at the entrance to The Fountain. The Fountain is a neighborhood in Derry which is Protestant and surrounded by Catholics.

One of the locals told Donna that if you drive through the area marked with red, white and blue curbs that you're very likely to have your car hijacked. Now we don't know if that's true or not but as we had no car, we had no way of finding out.

The area is surrounded by a tall wire fence with lots of barbed wire. The patriot flags hung in the area are on poles with barbed wire so that they can't easily be stolen or tampered with. We walked through this area a few days later with trepidation but got out unscathed. We passed a few children playing and I'll admit I was afraid that they were going to jump us. But they didn't.

Most of the houses are fairly poor looking and have cages over their windows so that rocks and other things thrown at their houses don't break their windows. I should note that the homes on the other side of the face which nearly quarantines this neighborhood also have cages over their windows.

This photo was taken on my first day in Derry. Two minutes later Donna and I walked past two burned out cars. I didn't take a photo of them as people were standing around and I really didn't want to get in the middle of whatever conflict that came from.

It was a frightening way to start my trip in Derry, but being from Canada we were lucky to be completely unaffected by it. It seems that some of the struggles from Bloody Sunday and before are still quite active in Derry. That's something they don't tell you on the tour or advertise on their website.