“I was on the Luas from Cherrywood a couple of weeks ago, and a couple of stops in a boy about 10, he jumps on the Luas and he’s got this high-vis vest on with ‘Ballyogan Says No’ on the back. And he turns to me, and he gives me a big grin, and he flicks me the Vs.” Neil Green gestures the two-handed F-you.
“I burst out laughing. And he started laughing. He’s 10. Like, he doesn’t know what’s going on in the world. And when I laughed, he laughed. Then he just toddled off. And it’s so funny, because that just encapsulates the absurdity. He doesn’t fully understand what’s going on, but he saw me immediately and goes, ah, that’s the guy that we say no to. He knows he was supposed to do something, but he didn’t know what to do in the moment.” Green is laughing. “That’s why it’s so easy to make light of it. But also, we can’t make light of it because there are times when it does spill over into real things.”
Green and his family moved from Durban, South Africa to Dublin in October 2020, after his wife Valerie, a mammographer and “the anchor in our family”, was recruited by the HSE a couple of years earlier. Well into the process, a recruitment freeze turned their plans upside down and all went on hold; suddenly they were on again. Then Covid hit.
The couple arrived with daughters Ava and Casey (now 15 and 11) on the first flights allowed out of South Africa, into an almost deserted Dublin Airport. A lot of restrictions were still in place. “It was an eerie time. It was so strange to see the city then versus now.”
Their life was good in South Africa. “Some people have this idea that people [who move here] are running away from something. When I left it wasn’t running away from South Africa. I just wanted to give my children a different opportunity and see how they like it. And it turns out they absolutely love it. So here I am, and I’m locked in, and this is my home now. We wanted to give them a different place to jump off into the world than we had. You’re looking for different experiences and opportunities to enrich. That was the adventure. Let’s see what they would be like if we made the world a bit bigger for them. They got to Ireland and Dublin specifically, and they hit the ground. They were here for two weeks, and they were like, okay, this is where we are now. This is us, we like this version of life.
“If you had asked me six years ago would I be living in Ireland, I would have said, no chance. I’m a Durban boy. I’m very much a representation of what Durban and South Africa is. But here I am now, and I’m becoming a Dub. I like it. Who knows? For now, for the foreseeable, this is home.”
Green says he only became black when he moved to Ireland. In South Africa, he says, he was designated “coloured” or mixed race. “In Dublin, in Europe, I never have to explain to anybody that I’m black. In Ireland the word coloured is a bit of a bad word. It feels like old-school racism, but in South Africa it’s a legal, official designation.” Officially, he’s not black. “I had my Kamala [Harris] moment before she did,” he laughs. “When I got off the plane and walked into Dublin, immediately I turned black. That’s been good. It’s like discovering part of myself.”
It’s also the basis for Black Enough For That, a comedy show he’s premiering at Dublin Fringe Festival. An established comedian and radio presenter in South Africa, with Comedy Central specials and national tours, moving here meant starting all over again, with open-mic spots.
Being “black enough” is “like a new identity, a new role in society. At home, a coloured person is in a minority group. Here black is a minority as well, but it also means I fall into this bigger tapestry of black people. That’s who I am, that’s who I should be. But in South Africa, through the government’s machinations I was made to feel othered in my own country. Now there’s a freedom.”
He says “coloured” people are marginalised in South Africa, and “within that we found our own culture, we found our own food, music, language, our own way of speaking. I’m very proud of coloured culture. But it’s also liberating to just be black, to be part of this big diaspora of people.”
The stand-up comedy show from September 9th is based on his time here. “It’s really personal. I like to think it’s going to be funny. It plays with the idea of being a person of mixed race; it turns out I’m plenty black.”
There was no comedy, no anything, when they arrived during Covid. “When it kicked off again that put me at ease. That was the thing that helped me transition. There’s this fraternity within comedy. In Ireland, and especially in Dublin, you have a thriving comedy scene, and the people involved, almost to a person, are magnificent. Once I started doing comedy, they’re like, okay, welcome. That was a big part of me finding myself here. Yeah, you’re one of us now.”
He works as a receptionist in a hospital. “That’s very much my job. Comedy is a passion project. I’ve been given an opportunity to gig, and I’ve very much taken it. I’ve seen Ireland off the back of it, doing shows in little towns and villages and it’s so much fun. I’ve worked with new material, finding out what resonates with people and our commonalities. When you’re comedian, that’s what you’re doing. You’re always walking around with a notepad.”
Last year he and two other comics, Malinda Perera from Sri Lanka and Lesly Martinez from Venezuela (billed as “a South African, South Asian and a South American”), did a joint show, Immigration is a Joke, which toured Ireland. “There was a lot of anti-immigrant sentiment permeating the online space, and somebody used the phrase, immigration is a joke. Malinda picked it up, that’s a great concept for a comedy show.”
After some “nasty stuff” on social media, “heading into the first show, we were feeling a bit nervous. Is this [social media commentary] something real? Then we got there, it absolutely couldn’t be further from what it was like.” They had great responses, he says. Audiences included many immigrants, but were “overwhelmingly Irish”.
Their final gig was in Dublin on December 6th, as the city reeled after riots. Nobody was going into town and events were cancelled, including the venue they’d booked months earlier. They relocated to The Well on Stephen’s Green. “You can still smell the smoke in the air. And there’s us doing Immigration is a Joke, sticking our tongues out to people who would say that. We had a full house, people from all over the city and commuter towns, and it was just victorious, to do that there at that time.
“For us to stand there, looking around the room of other immigrants, just laughing at what had happened. I mean, we were all scared. I can’t speak to everybody in that audience, but I know what I felt like coming into that gig. We were all scared and just laughing our way through. That’s what we do.”
It’s not all victorious; Green has experienced being othered in subtle ways. Where he and his family live in south county Dublin, he walks daily through Ballybrack, past their local supermarket, to the [Killiney] Dart station with his two daughters heading to school. “Last year there were protests on the corner, and it was crazy, some of the stuff that was spray-painted on the wall.
“Even though nobody’s physically coming and saying anything to me or my kids, it’s hard to explain to my daughter, who’s 11, why someone spray-painted ‘Hunt immigrants, not foxes’ on the wall. She’s small, she just kind of shrugs and goes, oh, okay, but there’s got to be something happening underneath. It’s one person, maybe with his mate behind him saying: go on. That’s two people. But everybody who walks past, that’s what they’re seeing. I’m not having a moan about it and I do understand. But there was about a week I couldn’t take my daughter to school without listening to some idiot on a loud hailer talking absolute nonsense.”
Aside from incidents like this, “when people let you in, they really let you in. The friendships I’ve made, the relationships I have, are genuine. I’m now a Galway football supporter by the way” though he’s only been to Galway once. That’s through a friend, the father of a child at school. “The first time he saw me, he came up and said: welcome. That’s a real thing. Where you do connect, it’s genuine, and I really do appreciate that.”
Black Enough For That at Dublin Fringe Festival, International Bar, September 9th-14th. https://www.fringefest.com/
We would like to hear from people who have moved to Ireland in the past 10 years. To get involved, email newtotheparish@irishtimes.com or tweet @newtotheparish
