'I am definitely Irish now- big time,' insists Renny who is honoured to be accepted in Clonmel

Renny Abraham was born in Kuwait of Indian parents. He came to Ireland sixteen years ago to work. He is married to Ambily, and they have three children, Oisin, Noah, and Nimah.
I am meeting Renny in a sheltered garden at Rathkeevan Nursing Home just outside Clonmel.
Renny presents as athletic and healthy and I will learn later he captain’s a cricket team.
BEAMING SMILE
His beaming smile offers a sense of kindness. He is wearing a crisp navy shirt and trousers. Renny appears confident and sure.
His first words are, “You are welcome, you are welcome.”
The story he tells me of his Sense of Place is heartwarming:
I was nine when all hell broke loose in Kuwait. The Gulf War sent my parents, my sister and I back to the Kerala province in India. Being born and brought up in Kuwait helped me with coming over to Ireland and getting used to different vocabularies of English.
My Indian friends living in America tease me about my use of Irish slang words when we speak on the telephone. The only yoke I knew before Clonmel was the one in an egg and now I use it to describe many different things.
They often ask, “What do you mean by ‘no bother’ and what is ‘the grub’?”
I find Irish food mouth-watering. Initially, I missed all the spices but not so much now. I do not cook as I could burn water, my wife, Ambily, does all the cooking. I cover the cleaning and ironing. I came to Clonmel to work as a physiotherapist sixteen years ago. Due to the recession, EU citizens were offered places on the panel first. I took work as a care worker here in this nursing home to earn a living.
I was the first male staff member here. The owners said, “Look, we will give it a go. If you don’t work out in twenty days, then we might ask you to leave.”
WARMTH AND SUPPORT
I thought it would be a temporary job. The warmth and support I got from everyone here helped everything to fall into place. It seems the residents liked my charming manner, which I get from my father. I found that the Irish expect you to learn fast and I can understand why.

It was, “We’ll give you time to learn but, you know, hey, come on, use a bit of common sense.”
It was what I noticed the Irish were keen on. Within three years I was Deputy Manager and three years later I became Manager.
DREAMS COME TRUE
This place has made my dreams come true. I met my wife Ambily here in this nursing home. She was a nurse and from my home place, Kerala.
Ambily is the best thing that has happened to me. She now works in South Tipperary General Hospital. Our children are growing, and they need our time and attention, so we work opposite shifts.
My family is a huge part of my life. Our first born we named Oisin as I was keen on having an Irish name. He is nine now and his brother Noah is seven.
One wants to be a chef and the other to own a recycling company.
PLAYING HURLING
They are in an excellent school and play hurling there. Both also play soccer with Clonmel Celtic. My little one, Nimah, is four and she wants to be a teacher. I am fine with that. I am not going to put any pressure on my children.
I ask them, “What do you like to do?” Ireland is a good place to bring up children. The education system here is very balanced between academics, mental health, and sport. It is different to India.
There, it is very competitive, very academic. The workload is too much for a child and has very little prominence for sports. We have relatives in India whose children are similar in age to ours and this gives us a chance to compare the two systems.
When people ask me how I’d like my children to describe me I say, “Loving, supportive, understanding” but [laughing] I am sure they would say I am strict as well. We don’t have a television. Television was very much part of my life growing up but there is so much rubbish on it now that I don’t want my children exposed to it at this early age.

I have said to them, “When you are able to support yourself you can get it yourself, but you won’t get it from me”.
Instead of television and Xbox they play sports and learn classical music. I bought some comic collections for them online. I wanted to introduce them to the classics in the comic world that I loved as a young child.
RESPECT AND EMPATHY
What I am trying to teach them is that if you don’t have respect and empathy, you are not a complete person.
My father, who was the biggest influence on my early life, often spoke of respect and empathy. He told me, “You could have the highest of degrees but if you don’t have respect and empathy, you are not a person.”
I say to our children, “If you see someone having problems, especially an older person having issues, you better drop everything and run to them and give them that moment.”
I fully expect that from our children - everything else is a bonus.
KUWAIT
As a young boy on trips to India from Kuwait, I remember holidays with my grandfather. He had a boat which was new to me. He took me out in his boat and that was exciting.
He helped me climb trees and pluck fruit. When our children, who were born here in Ireland, go on holidays to their grandparents in India they have their reservations about the heat, the mosquitos, as they are not used to it.
INDIA
Weather in India is extreme, touching 40 degrees and humid at the same time. Then there is Monsoon season - three months of rain on the trot.
Now Irish weather is my kind of weather. I can breathe. I like this climate so much. Maybe I was Irish in a previous life.
I have some form of attachment to Ireland. My mother visited once and found it too cold and stayed in the house a lot. She missed going to church - we are Syrian Orthodox Christians. She is very much happy for me and my family and our life over here.

India is a long way from Tipperary. I miss my family and I worry if, God forbid, something should happen, especially during Covid, that I am on the other side of the world. It takes at least fifteen hours to get to India from here.
However, I am thankful I come from a state, Kerala, where we are lucky not to be affected by lack of oxygen supply because we are the only state who produces oxygen.
What is in short supply are beds. This concerns us very much. My older sister lives close by and pops into my parents who are eighty. They are both well, thankfully. We speak on Zoom and WhatsApp all the time. We were very lucky - we went to India for two weeks in February 2020 and were well back before all hell broke loose.
RATHKEEVAN
When I arrived at Rathkeevan Nursing Home I wanted to keep everyone happy - it was an Indian cultural thing. Here, where I was trusted to work my way to Manager, I had to grow to change with the tides.
I learned to be very outright or “straight onto the face” as we might say in India. Luckily, I had learned ahead of Covid that you cannot keep all people happy all the time - you may have to be on the wrong side to do the right thing, you know.
COVID
We had to shut down the nursing home to keep our residents and staff safe. Initially, it was quite hard as I had to face relatives and residents not being on good terms with me.
It came to the stage where I had to say, “To hell with it, I am doing the right thing.” We approached multinational companies for supplies instead of waiting on the HSE to provide masks. It was quite hard, and I worked non-stop on the trot during the peak. We worked well as a team and were able to contain it – it didn’t go beyond four cases and no deaths thankfully.
As a team we set ourselves up to keep it out. We started video chats, voice calls and window visits as we wanted families to know everyone was fine, to trust us, we were taking care of their loved ones, we just didn’t want to let the bloody Covid in.
It was a giant step to close the doors so early. We were among the first to re-introduce garden visits after lockdown. We are lucky to have several sheltered gardens here. Our activities co-ordinators Catherine and Nicola were so happy to eventually get art, crafts, dancing, music, poetry, and little celebrations back when it was safe to do so.
This is each resident’s home from home, and we work to their individual care plan needs. If their pattern changes today that is what we respond to. We work for them. I want each one to enjoy life. The only thing I want my staff to know is we are all progressing to that stage where we are not going to stay young forever, right.
So, I believe basically in Karma - what you do today you will get back tomorrow. It makes all the difference if you hold a hand. It makes all the difference.
COMERAGH MOUNTAINS
I like to holiday in Kerry. I am not a fast person, and I don’t like fast places. I wouldn’t be a big fan of Dublin. We like farming, countryside, and mountains - that is what attracts us here. In Kerry, we are able to connect with nature’s beauty. Dingle and Tralee would be among our favourite places. Locally I love St Patrick’s Well, Carey’s Castle, the Holy Year Cross (the Winter Cross we call it, and we visit every Good Friday to do the Stations of the Cross), the Comeragh Mountains and of course, Slievenamon.
HONOURED
The Tipperary-Indian community, made up of 100 families, won first prize at the 2019 St Patrick’s Day Parade. The group picture was in the local paper, The Nationalist. You can see the Irish and Indian flags and each of us is honoured to be accepted in this, our place. My wife and I became Irish citizens seven years ago. We vote in both local and national elections.
I am definitely Irish now, big time. My kids and myself, we all have the Tipperary hurling jerseys and wear them when the matches are on.
I have loved cricket since I was a boy. I brought a bat from Kuwait to India and from India to Clonmel. I am captain of the second team of the cricket club in Lismore. The Clonmel Cricket Club no longer exists. We would like to bring the cricket club back, but this would only be possible if we have our own grounds here in Clonmel.
So, we are hoping that someone out there would be kind enough to lease us land to fulfil this dream. The season starts in the middle of June and my sons are starting their cricket training this year.
But I love hurling too. Both my boys play hurling for St Mary’s School. People have asked me which cricket team I support, Ireland or India. I said it is a tough one, but it is India. Cricket is in our blood over there just like hurling here in Ireland. But in hurling it is “Tipp, Tipp, Tipp” all the way.
FULFILLED MY DREAMS
I am who I am today because of Clonmel and Ireland. I have no hesitation in saying it. I don’t even know if I could ever think of going to settle in another place. I have had no nonsense from people here.
They are very welcoming, very warm, very down to earth, ready to help. This is a beautiful place with mountains, rivers, excellent schools, and opportunities for sports training - weather I love and food I enjoy.
A place where I have found work that matters and people who care.
A place where I was given a chance to make a home with my wife and three young children. I have fulfilled my dreams here.
My final words to Renny are THANK YOU for participating in the Our Sense of Place project. It has been an honour to hear your story and bring your voice to paper. You are very welcome here.

Our Sense of Place

Eileen Acheson published her poetry collection I Wonder in 2019: words that heal, comfort, celebrate and honour.
She curates spoken word for Clonmel Applefest and the Clonmel Junction Arts Festival.
Eileen also facilitates therapeutic writing workshops in the woods and at her home in the valley of Slievenamon.
Eileen is one of the authors engaged by Applefest to tell the stories of immigration from Clonmel's global community.
The collection of stories contained in the Applefest production, Our Sense of Place, has been a huge success.
Some of the stories in Our Sense of Place will be published in The Nationalist over the next few months.

'Let humanity shine thorugh' plea from Nigerian lady who has found sanctuary in Tipperary

Asylum seeker Chebeuche is now an Irish citizen