Sunday Independent January 10th 2010

Young Traveller Women Talk Fashion,
Love, Sex and Reputations

The young women of the Travelling community are very different to your typical Irish girl, but also more similar than you might think. When Joanna Kiernan met Kathleen Ward and her friends she discovered lots of common ground - from boys and dating, to fashion and getting ahead in the world.

Kathriona Ward, left, 18, with Teresa Ward, 17,
Kathleen Ward, 18, and Margarita Ward, 15
Photography by Sarah Doyle

By Joanna Kiernan

'In our culture we're not allowed out until we're married, so no one will talk about us and, like, give us a bad name. The only way you're allowed out to a certain place is with a parent or, say, an auntie, but other than that, no, cancel it, you're staying at home," a fiery-haired Kathleen Ward, 18, tells me.

It's a Monday evening in Loughrea, Co Galway and the girls are gathering to chat. As they settle in, the two Kathleen Wards present -- one with black hair and one a redhead -- each tell me that the other has copied her hairstyle, an intricate-looking French-plait style, braided into two pigtails on either side of their faces.

A hushed conversation is going on in the other corner of the room, which the red-haired Kathleen dips in and out of, while also very impressively managing to hold her own with me. The other girls are whispering about someone who has said they saw one of the girls "go off" with a boy. That's all I get. There isn't really a need for the secrecy, as I haven't quite managed to tune my ears into their unique frequency yet. Their entire way of speaking is different -- faster, more staccato. Words are accompanied by intense looks and strategic silences.

After a couple of minutes, I begin to understand things first time around, rather than having to play them over in my mind. The initial delayed reaction does not go unnoticed, but the red-haired Kathleen prompts me, "Go on, next question."

"Our family is protective of us. They won't let us go nowhere," offers Teresa Ward, 17, one of two Teresa Wards present.

This Teresa has dyed blonde hair tied up in a high bun, a typical Traveller style, the girls later inform me.

"Like, in a Traveller's culture, right?" Teresa continues, "before you're married, like, if you're single, you do all your housework. You go out after your housework. No phone. Maybe you would be allowed a phone, but when I'd a phone, my brother used to go through my phone every week, just to see if I was texting boys, and I wasn't allowed on Bebo, Bebo was banned. The only way I could go up town is if I said I had to get milk for my mother. My brother'd go, 'You have half an hour', and if you weren't back in that half an hour, he'd be coming to get ya."

Margarita Ward, 15, claims that her parents have become stricter with her as she gets older. "I'm allowed go to teenage discos, all my life until now. I'm only 15 and I'm not allowed outside the door anymore."

"You come to a certain age," Kathleen intervenes to explain, "about . . . when you hit puberty, put it that way."

So when are they allowed out?

"When you're married, when you've the ring on the finger," Kathleen answers without a second's pause. "When you're married, right? Your husband is with ya. So no one can talk about ya. He'll see you haven't gone wrong and no one else will see you've gone wrong, so it's grand."

Teresa, who her sister Kathleen describes as "the blondie one", is, at 17, one of the youngest present and yet she was married last year.

"Even though I was married, I still didn't go out," she corrects the others plainly. "I got married there last April," she shoots in my direction, "separated since this May."

Kathleen doesn't agree with Traveller girls like her little sister Teresa getting married so young. "25, 26 is a good age," says Kathleen, "because you're more mature. You know what you want in life at 25, 26. You know where you're going to go."

"I think that's a bit old," Margaret Mongan, 18, argues. "About 21, 22, that's my own opinion."

"If he wants me, he'll wait for me, that's the way I look at it," Kathleen retaliates. "If a boy likes ya and he loves ya and that, he'd wait for ya. Am I right? I'm right.

"In my case, I've three brothers and three sisters and I'm the only single girl; me and my brother are left single. All the rest are married. My sister, she's married before me and she's only 17. I'm 18, and that's why I don't want to get married."

But without the option of really getting to know their husbands before marriage, what are they hoping for?

"You can get some Traveller boys out there they think they're gorgeous, think they're David Beckham, and they're not David Beckham. But what's the point in being good looking, if you're going to have a bad life with them?" answers Kathleen, "They've no personality. I'd like -- not bad looking, not ugly and not good looking, but he's alright, like, good personality and he respects me."

"About two years older than me," adds 15-year-old Margarita. "He has to be tall. He has to have the real Traveller look: the spiked hair, the shirts, the Timberland boots and the jeans. If he's wearing tracksuits, he has to have the socks over the outside. He has to have his eyebrow pierced. I love that, and d'you know, if I treat him mean, he has to come back. He can't beat ya, no chance, because, if I'm getting married, the first thing I'm going to say to him is -- my brother told me this -- 'If you ever even try to hit me I'm going to break your teeth.'"

Motherhood is also high on all the girls' list of priorities.

"Oh, yeah, I want 20 children," laughs Kathleen, "Ah no, I'd like to have a nice family, like five. Whatever God sends me, I'll be happy with."

"Two," Margaret states gently. "A girl first so that her brother won't bully her and tell her what to do."

My query as to whether it might be an option for them to remain single and not have children is met with a resounding, "No," accompanied, not for the first time, by a few strange looks.

But what of a female friend or sibling who didn't want marriage and motherhood?

"I'd respect that," Kathleen responds, a little perplexed by the question, as if it is so fantastical that she'd rather not, but is nevertheless playing along. "Maybe she has her reasons, there could be something, probably something wrong with her. Not like something bad, now, or anything, but you know, like, she might have had a bad past. She mightn't trust men, you know, like that, something bad happened to her."

On several occasions throughout our discussion, the girls refer to people talking about them; eventually, I feel compelled to find out exactly who is doing all of this talking?

"See now, anyone will talk if they know ya, if you're chatting to a boy," Kathleen responds curtly. "If you're chatting to a boy at the fair, it might be your cousin, but sometimes they mightn't know that. They think that you're with him. They think that you're going with him. You might just be having a nice little chat with him."

Such whispering, according to Margaret, will eventually get back to their parents, "with stuff added onto it".

"Like, 'I saw her down a laneway,'" Kathleen elaborates, "'and she'd a fag in her hand!' Any excuse. It'd be that small, but when they get to the parents, there is lies, and we get killed over it. We'd get in trouble."

"The day my husband asked for me, I got a belt of a shoe across the head. My mother nearly killed me," Teresa adds, giggling at the memory. "He asked my mother and my mother said to come back when I'm 18, but we got married then. I couldn't get married again because, the way I look at it, my life is destroyed."

This seems like a bizarre thing for a 17-year-old to say. Surely she has the option of marrying again? For the first time since we met, the girls become bashful.

"I'll put it this way to ya," Teresa eventually concedes, "when you get married, you're supposed to be a virgin."

"Some Traveller girls have babies before they get married -- it's all changing," Kathleen steps in once again. "No one'll marry ya unless . . ." she pauses, correcting herself, "No Traveller'll marry ya, a settled would. They'd respect ya. You had a child; it's not a mistake having a child. It's a mistake by, like, doing it so young, but they'd respect ya, which is actually good. Travelling men, if they know you have a child for another boy -- cancel it!

"There is some Travelling girls that have had children that aren't married, that's not their fault: how do I explain this?"

Margaret attempts to clarify, "It was left out for them, they weren't meant to get married."

There is often so much of a focus on the differences between Travellers and the settled community -- the Travellers call them buffers or country people -- that the similarities between these girls and buffers may come as a surprise to many of us buffers.

"We go shopping, we go to the cinema," Kathleen says, explaining what they do for fun instead of going to nightclubs and pubs. "Weddings come up and we get all excited: we get our tan done, and our hair done, and outfits made. You know, like, Travellers outfits? Really nice. We don't go out, but we go out during the day, which is more safer and it's, like, nothing can go wrong during the day."

"Every year, like, we look forward to the fair," adds Teresa.

None of the girls drink. "I don't drink or smoke. My father would kill me," says Kathriona Ward, Margarita's sister.

Nearly all would love to travel abroad, but they are realistic about such notions.

"I'd love to travel, but we wouldn't be able to get up now tomorrow and go travelling around the world, a single girl. It's a different story when you're married," says Kathriona.

Kathleen would also like to travel, but believes that this will have to wait until her honeymoon. "I'd love to. If I could just go to England, I'd be happy, or Wicklow, I'm not bothered," she says.

My initial query as to whether or not the girls sometimes feel marginalised is met with a rapid defence by the group's youngest member, Margarita, "There's 25,000 Travellers in Ireland," she states almost immediately, with a lingering glance.

But the girls are aware that people can sometimes look on them differently.

"I done my Leaving Cert and even the teachers in school, they were shocked that I done my Leaving Cert in school because they think that I'd leave after I was 16. They think I just have to go and get married, but I done a hairdressing course, so, like, they shouldn't be judging us," Margarita's older sister Kathriona responds. "Like, I've a cousin who's a teacher, from Athenry, like, and she's a Traveller. They think that Travellers don't do that kind of jobs."

"And, like, look at Shayne Ward," the blondie Teresa interjects. "He's a Traveller and he was on The X Factor. Come on, like?"

There's a common assumption that Travellers do not enjoy much of an education. But things are beginning to change.

"Most Travellers, they leave school at a young age. That's why they get married young," Kathleen concedes. "If you stay in school, you've no intentions of getting married until you've finished your education and you've a good career behind ya, and you can have a good family."

Kathleen is currently studying Community Care. Having completed her Leaving Cert last year, she hopes, in time, to become a German teacher.

"My teacher, she's going to help me fill out the forms soon enough, like. So I won't be, like, staying at home doing the work and that, minding the children. I'm going to further my education," she adds.

"I'd love to go back to the centre that I'm attending now, because all the teachers, they know, they know that I can be a German teacher. They know, like, that I'm patient. I'd like to work in a centre with Travellers. I can be their role model, to show that they can do it, if they put their mind to it."

Margaret Mongan did her Leaving last year and is currently doing a computer course; her ultimate dream is to become a nurse. Like Kathriona, who also has her Leaving Cert, Margaret emphasises that she did this "in a school" as opposed to "the training centre".

The blonde Teresa is doing her Leaving this year and hopes to become a hairdresser.

"My favourite subject was religion because Travellers are, d'you know, like, big into religion, like," Kathriona tells me. "And my granny now is very religious. She goes to Knock and Lourdes and, you know, Medjugorje? And she's very good at, you know, making blankets, and she does that for raising money to send a child to Lourdes, a sick child. So we're very religious."

"Like there a while ago the Holy Mary was supposed to appear in Knock and, like, the whole lot of the Travellers went, because there's so much belief in the Virgin Mary and God and Jesus," adds Teresa, who suddenly comes across as older than her 17 years.

I wonder aloud if this is why Travellers put so much effort and money into their weddings.

"It's not only weddings now that they're doing that for, it's Confirmations and Communions," she responds. "Like my aunt, she's one child, a girl, and her Communion's next year and they've the dress made, a big pumpkin and horse, a big hotel and everything. The way they look at it is that they don't care as long as they get the use of the money."

"I'm, like, my father's girl," says Kathriona. "Like, I have a sister, but, like, I'm more of a pet to my father 'cause I have three older brothers and then it's me. Do you know, like? To me, now, I'll only be getting married once and that's it. So we might as well just make a big day out of it, like, my father will pay for everything. It's a big day out, so that's why lots of Travellers have big weddings."

Kathriona's dad is a security guard in a shopping centre and her mother is a pre-school teacher.

Margaret also plans a very big day. "Definitely about 500 people, a carriage, everything . . . I have three brothers, I'm the only daughter, so."

"Jordan-style," says Kathleen, her eyes twinkling at the thought.

"It's what every Travelling girl dreams of, to meet a nice Travelling boy and have a lovely big Travelling wedding," adds Margaret.

"And live happily ever after in a trailer with a load of crystal and Coco Chanel cups," interrupts Margarita.

"Waterford Crystal is a big thing," Teresa offers. "Travellers pay big, big, big money for it."

"Travellers love all that," Kathriona concurs.

The girls have differing views on what constitutes a desirable abode. Most now live in houses, but some have at some stage lived in a caravan or mobile home, which they refer to as trailers. Others see themselves possibly moving into trailers when they marry.

"I was in a trailer for a month and believe me, I hated it. I wouldn't go back in a trailer for no one," says Teresa, who moved to a trailer in Tullamore following her ill-fated marriage. She prefers a house with the luxury of, "a shower there and a bath and a toilet lovely and clean there for ya".

"Some people prefer a trailer than a house because they're used to it," says Kathriona.

Her sister, Margarita, has a different outlook. "I lived in a house all my life, but then because of circumstances we lived in a caravan for a year and I loved it."

Margaret is open to the idea of living in a trailer. She would, however, have some stipulations. "There's some Travellers that live on the side of the road in a trailer. I wouldn't do that, but I'd live in a bay, you know, with like five or six, and there's like washing facilities and all that. I'd live there."

Travellers are known for their outlandish and sometimes extreme fashion. Kathleen takes this point.

"In the fair you see all Travellers dressed to the best. Some, they dress overboard -- the hair is done; the tan is done, like going to a wedding," she says. "You're not going to a wedding, you're just going to see horses in short clothes. I wore a nice skirt, my legs were showing, but up here was covered too, so I was kind of smart. I'd a nice pair of boots, a nice top and a nice jacket. I was looking good.

"Other Travellers can dress overboard with bra tops . . . Scandalous . . . They might as well just go in a bra and knickers because that's the way they dress."

"It's a weird thing with some Traveller girls," Margaret ponders. "They're allowed to dress half naked, but they're not allowed to go with boys. It doesn't make sense because if you dress half naked, you know, obviously the boys are going to be looking."

"They'd be looking at you as if to say, 'I want you'," Kathleen specifies, "You should dress respectable, then there's no problem with ya, right?"

"Can I ask you a question?" Kathleen turns the tables: "Would you know a Traveller girl than a settled girl? Say if you saw me down town, would you know I was a Traveller?"

I answer honestly that I wouldn't have, but tell her I think I could definitely tell a Traveller wedding from that of a buffer.

I then ask her if she could tell that I wasn't a Traveller.

"Oh yeah, I would," she giggles, "The way you approach, nice and calm."

Suitably pleased that she's managed to avoid the stereotype, Kathleen continues, "If you go to Galway, you'd know a Traveller a mile away because of the way they're styled: tan, jeans, big earrings, big long hair. You know by the same way they open their mouth."

Margaret disagrees: "You actually wouldn't, though, in Limerick. You would think that they'd be Travellers and they wouldn't be Travellers."

All of the girls agree that Travelling women are strong people, but does this mean that they are the true boss of the household, the woman behind the man, so to speak, letting him think that he's in charge, but secretly pulling all the strings?

"No, no, the men are the boss of women. Do you know what I mean, like?" Teresa sets me straight. "When I was, like, with my husband he wasn't really the boss of me, but he'd tell me what to do and I had to do it."

According to Margaret, the majority of Travelling boys will leave school early, "They're gone at 16, working with their fathers."

"They are good workers," she adds, "Travellers are good workers. It's just the boys have no respect for girls."

"They're ignorant because they weren't taught properly," Kathleen exclaims. "They weren't educated, that's why they're so ignorant. They don't care what they say."

Travelling men, Margaret explains, "believe that a woman's job is at home, cleaning the house, like, if they're living in a house, and making the dinner and watching the children, nothing else. That's what they believe and if the woman doesn't do what you tell them to do, then they deserve to get hit -- that's what the Travelling men believe. Like, not all of them, but the majority of them do. And that's why their sons, like, in years' time, that's why their sons turn out the way they do."

"From seeing Traveller girls married to settled boys," Kathleen says, "they've the best lives going -- got lovely children, lovely house. They're so happy, every day there's nothing going wrong with them. They're real happy, but if that was a Traveller boy that's so ignorant and so controlling, nothing comes back out of it."

"There's actually some Travelling boys that when you get married to them they won't let you see your family," adds Margaret.

"Won't let you wear make-up or smoke," says Kathleen.

I counter the assertion and argue that the same could be said of some buffer men, Kathleen shrugs.

"It depends who they hang around with as well," Margaret explains, "because there could be one man and he could be brilliant to his wife, and then the other man could, like, beat his wife every day, like, if she doesn't do what he's saying, and the other man would be like, 'Oh, you should be toughening up your wife,' and, 'You should be doing such a thing,' and then he'll change just to fit in with the crowd."

"When you get married I think the men think that they're your boss. No man is my boss, only my mother and father," says Kathleen.

"Like on our placemat at home: 'A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle'," adds Margaret.

Kathleen sits upright, "That's why a woman should never depend on a man. She should always be independent; she should be driving, getting her own money. OK, you're with your husband, you have children, but he could leave you any time, he could beat ya, he could seriously do something bad to ya. And if he does something bad to ya, you've your car there, you can just leave him, but you see some Traveller women don't think about that."

Not all are keen on the idea of marrying a buffer.

"I wouldn't be now," says Kathriona. "I have two brothers living with two country girls and, like, they choose that, like. My father and mother don't like that, but sure, like, my brothers aren't babies anymore. They choose that for themselves, they have children with them. But for me, no, I wouldn't. If I fell for him maybe, but I don't think so."

"A settled boy doesn't know the way a Traveller knows. They don't know, like, that they can't tell anyone. They'd just say, 'Oh I'll tell someone,' and it'd get out then and your name is scandalised," says Teresa.

"There's some Traveller girls out there that would be, like, 'Oh, no, no, no, he wouldn't know about your culture,' but there is buffers out there that were reared, like, as a Traveller. I know loads of settled people that would actually know my culture better than what Travelling boys would know themselves. Like I have no problem getting married to a settled person. It doesn't matter who he is just as long as you're happy. Like, you could be happier with a settled person than you could be with, like, a Traveller," adds Margaret.

"Most Travellers are marrying buffers now and it's the best thing they ever did, to get the money," giggles Kathleen. "Ah, no! It's not that, it's buffers have more respect for ya and they know how to treat you properly."

"I disagree with that, to be honest with you," the other Teresa Ward, a 26-year-old youth worker, intervenes. "With Travellers we've all got our own culture, some of the settled people that would have been reared up with Travellers would know the culture as well, but it doesn't have to be that way. It doesn't mean that you have to marry a settled person to get shown respect."

From an outsider's perspective, judging by various media coverage and hearsay, the Travelling community does not have a great reputation. Premises around the country will shut for days on end if they get wind of a Traveller wedding or funeral being held in the area. YouTube is flooded with online videos showcasing bare-knuckle boxing and blatant challenges between feuding families.

"When I was in school and that was going on, buffers would be talking about it, like, throwing it into your face," says Kathriona.

Teresa, the youth worker, believes that settled people have an image of Travellers that needs to be turned around. "They've heard so many negative things in the paper or in the telly. So obviously they're going to assume that some of us is going to be part of that. There's Travellers out there in employment. They're out there involved in the community. But the fact I think, that some Travellers feud and it is on the paper, is that it's not got to do with the rest of us. We're all painted with the one brush. You will kind of get frustrated with it, but you've got to admit as well, that some Travellers actually do do this."

"Some of them we don't even know and like, why are we getting put down because of them?" asks the blonde Teresa.

"I think they're just doing it for attention," Margaret contends, "like the bare-knuckle fighters like, I'm not going to say no names or anything, because I don't want them coming down to my door. Some of them are just doing it so that other Travellers around the country will think that they're real tough and, you know, that they can beat anyone and all that, like. They're just doing it for attention, to let their name known to all the other Travellers around, which is stupid."

"The papers shouldn't even interview them," says Kathleen, "Travellers should be ashamed of themselves by putting that on paper. There's loads of good Travellers out there that want to do good for their family and their friends and everything."

I get up to leave and Kathleen watches me put on my cropped girlie biker jacket, which one particularly blunt girlfriend of mine often refers to as "Blackie Connors chic".

"You've a leather jacket," Kathleen remarks smiling. "Maybe you are a Traveller!"

And in that instant I feel delighted to have been, even for a moment, part of this very real, sincere and all-round hilarious fold.

Joanna Kiernan

Sunday Independent

 

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