To learn properly a language other than one's mother tongue is challenging and demanding. I know this only too well as I faced that challenge twice in my lifetime.
The first trial was mastering Irish. Coming from a middle-class, Church of Ireland family in the 1920s I reached my 12th birthday without any knowledge of it. After kindergarten, I had spent two years at a small school in South Dublin called Avoca on Carysfort Avenue, Blackrock. I learned about William the Conqueror who occupied England in 1066 and I also got a great grounding in Latin, French and English grammar.
So as to play rugby, I went on to St Andrew's College, then on St Stephen's Green. I got myself excused from the class of Seán Kavanagh, the Irish teacher (Seán a' Chóta); but after a year my father died and I moved to the King's Hospital, then in Blackhall Place. There my ducking and diving over Irish came to an abrupt and final stop.
I was an apprehensive, homesick and tearful small boy on an evening in September in 1930, as I began my first boarding school year after my mother's goodbye. In spite of all my forebodings, everything went well. George Langley, the tall, youthful, blond-haired Irish teacher from Cork, was excellent. No extremes of grammar or gabble. By Hallowe'en, I managed 40 per cent, at Christmas 50 per cent, and by summer I shared top marks of 72 per cent with Stanley McCollum from Athboy, later a top surgeon at the old Adelaide Hospital in Peter Street.
Soon afterwards, I read an article about Dr Douglas Hyde in the Sunday Independent. The son of the rector of Frenchpark in Co Roscommon, growing up he had become very friendly with the local people who still spoke Irish in the 1880s. He resolved to throw himself into a revival of the language and after a notable academic career at Trinity College he co-founded the Gaelic League in 1893. The league was purely and simply committed to the ideal of reviving Irish culture and especially the language. The movement was an instant success and soon its activities were nationwide. Dr Hyde's life inspired me. I wrote to him at Frenchpark and he replied by sending me some copies of his poems and encouraging me warmly.
In August 1933, an aunt in New York generously paid for a month's Irish summer school at Coláiste Chonnacht na Spidéal. We read An Crann Géagach by Pádraic Ó Conaire and I was captivated by his moving descriptions of the countryside and his Maupassant style. I went on to read all of his books that I could lay my hands on.
Soon I had the gold fáinne and won a sizarship in Irish at Trinity Entrance. At an inter-university Irish debate in Belfast I met the UCD student Dáithi Hanley, later Dublin's city architect. But money troubles still plagued my mother and I opted for a Guinness clerkship and a valuable, immediate salary. Still, I can fairly say that I had fully learned Irish and that knowledge would never leave me.
When the company transferred me to Belfast in 1938, I soon became conscious that war was already in the air; but most people fell back on the comfortable assumption that Hitler could never penetrate the Maginot Line and defeat the great French Army. When France collapsed in the summer of 1940, I joined the Royal Air Force and spent four years in the Far East.
In 1946, I returned to Guinness's in Dublin; but I soon found office work irksome and accepted a civil service post in the protectorate of Northern Rhodesia, soon to gain political independence as the state of Zambia. My first post there was in the Mpika District (pronounced "Impeeka") some 450 miles north of Lusaka, the capital. It covered an area two-thirds the size of Ireland. The district commissioner, a game ranger and I plus a dozen White Fathers in three missions were the only European inhabitants. Chilonga Mission was 12 miles to the south and I often visited Father Rau, the superior. Game abounded from elephants and lions downwards. Bemba was the local language and I was required to pass lower and higher grade examinations in it without undue delay. Here was my second challenge. Everyone around me spoke Bemba continually and enjoyed helping me in my early struggles to get under way.
I soon found it to my liking and easier than Irish as it reflected closely the life of the local countryside. The Bemba people are very courteous and every individual was addressed as "mukwai", meaning sir/madam. "Mwapoleni, mukwai" was the standard greeting and one acknowledged being addressed by saying "endita, mukwai". "Mfula" (imfoola), the word for rain, had a wet and liquid flavour.
A White Father named Lamond had written a good grammar and the Fathers also produced an excellent dictionary which took on a Dineen-type status so I moved ahead quickly and steadily and soon had the oral and written examinations behind me.
I came home to Ireland for a break after some years and then returned to the copper belt. Here I took up labour relations work at Nkana/Kitwe, the centre of the industry, which employed more than 40,000 African miners, many of them Bemba men. Copper was still a very valuable product as a result of the demand and shortage of the second World War. I got to know very well the president of the African Mineworkers' Union, Lawrence Katilunga, a Mu-Bemba who was a wise and effective leader and won many benefits through skilled negotiation. I was required to visit underground once a month and enjoyed speaking Bemba to those at work on the night shift. Word of my presence always travelled quickly and widely.
Independence came to Zambia in 1964 under Dr Kenneth Kaunda and two years later, my family and I returned to Dublin. I felt I had met my two challenges and I often recall with affection my month at An Spidéal many years ago as well as the "blue remembered hills" of Mpika and attending Benediction with Father Rau at Chilonga Mission.