Last week the Prime Minister of Ireland, Enda Kenny, visited Saudi Arabia to enhance ties between the two countries. Area wise Ireland is no bigger than the American state of South Carolina (32,000 sq. miles) with a population of about six million people. The total population of Ireland is slightly higher than the population of Riyadh.
Saudi Arabia and Ireland can increase the scope of cooperation especially in the fields of education and medicine. At this time, Saudi Arabia has about 3,000 students attending the best Irish schools and there are about 3,000 people from Ireland working in the Kingdom. Ireland is a country, which is advanced in many fields. Ireland could prove to be a strategic partner for Saudi Arabia in many fields, including food security.
I still remember my first encounter with an Irish. It was around 1970 when our school headmaster told us that our English Teacher Mr. Kent who is from New Zealand is leaving and we will have a new English instructor from Ireland and his name is Mr. McCormick. At that time Ireland was in the daily newspapers around the world and children didn’t understand the difference between northern and southern Ireland and why there were two Irelands.
The young students found it difficult to comprehend the accent of the Irish teacher. So, he started to speak slowly and loudly to make himself clear to his students. As time passed, this Irish man turned from an English teacher to a music instructor. Yes, that is what I said…A music instructor.
At that time, Saudi schools built by ARAMCO in the Eastern Province and supervised by the Ministry of Education had music lessons in the curriculum. A Jordanian- Palestinian instructor gave the music lessons at that time. Students were taught basic music information such as learning the notes (DO RE ME FA SO LA TE DO). For the information of the readers, the two Saudi Islamic studies teachers at the school were the closest friends of that Irish man.
McCormick knew of the music lesson and wanted it to take it to higher notes. And one day, he showed up with a guitar at the school. And when he was in our classroom he changed the subject from teaching English grammar to a song — the meanings of which I realized much later in life. He taught us many songs and one of them said…we shall overcome one day. To this day, I don’t know why he played this song many times in the classroom. He used to bring his guitar to school every day. And in addition to teaching us music, he told us many stories about Ireland such as the Irish food, culture and most important we learnt about one of the most influential novelists and writers in the world, James Joyce. So, at the end, we had an Irish English teacher, but we didn’t only learn English. He taught us English, music, geography and European cultures with an Irish flavor. McCormick was from Belfast, Northern Ireland.
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