Looking in from the outside

“When I sit down to have a chat with new people, I still think: ‘Am I going to tell them I’m a Traveller?’ You don’t have to say it, but why should you hide it? They say: ‘Are you Irish?’ I say: ‘I’m an Irish Traveller.’ Some people are quite shocked; they look at me and say: ‘I would never know.’ It is a bit hurtful because I think: ‘But what was there to never know? What has changed in their aspect when I said that? Are they looking down on me now?’ There is still that stigma about Travellers. We work in London, we vote and we are a part of the London community, but it seems like we are always looking in from the outside.”
Mena Mongan



photograph (by Perry Ogden) of Paddy and Liam Doran, Irish Travellers via