Four Years Later

As I'm sure you've seen all over the news media, this weekend marks the four year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina touching down on the Gulf Coast.

I first visited the area in December of 2007.  With a group from our campus chapter of Habitat for Humanity, I spent a week in New Orleans during my winter break.  We stayed at Camp Hope, originally a middle school in St. Bernard Parish, just outside of the city.  The school had been mostly submerged when the hurricane went through and had been reclaimed to house relief volunteers, with classrooms converted to bunk rooms, and showers added to the bathrooms.  Camp Hope's mission has switched gears several times since its inception, but since early 2007 it has been managed by the New Orleans affiliate of HFH, with the great majority of the volunteers staying there working on HFH projects.
We spent the week working in Musicians' Village in the 9th Ward.  The project was started by Harry Connick Jr. and Branford Marsalis in partnership with New Orleans Area Habitat for Humanity to give homes to artists who had lost their homes and left New Orleans subsequent to Katrina.  There, we spent the week framing a house with an NCCC team.
There were two very significant things about that trip for me.  The first was an idea that was mentioned during our orientation.  The man speaking to us told the group that now that we were here, we didn't even have to raise a hammer.  The simple fact that we had volunteered to help was enough to make a difference.  I thought it was an absolutely crazy statement when I heard it, but over the course of the week I came to understand that it was true.  The people of New Orleans were so thankful for our presence.  People loved to talk to us, to give us free ice cream, to keep us out of trouble.  It was a simple picture of human compassion.  We were just a bunch of kids trying to do some good, and the people we encountered couldn't be more thankful.  We, as humankind, are dependent upon each other.  And the fact that we do indeed respond to these situations with a helping hand is pretty amazing.
The second thing was the disparity in repair.  My mental image of New Orleans isn't that of Bourbon Street or Mardi Gras.  It's of the FEMA trailers that are still there housing the displaced, sitting in between huge expansive homes.  The land there was so cheap after the hurricane.  Developers just bought it all up and put in these McMansions.  And people bought them.  And live in them.  Right next door to their neighbors in these trailers without proper plumbing.

My second trip to the Gulf was in December of 2008.  This time we went to St. Tammany Parish, just outside of New Orleans, an area so in need of relief after the hurricane that the one parish had two HFH affiliates, St Tammany East, and St Tammany West.  We worked at the later, where we helped out with an unfinished Carter Build project.  St Tammany was in need of assistance not really because of destruction cause by the hurricane, but rather because so many people moved there afterwards.  The area simply didn't have enough homes and the infrastructure was buckling under the sudden inundation.  It was interesting to get that view on a different kind of destruction created by Hurricane Katrina.
My time in St Tammany West was also when I decided that I wanted to be an AmeriCorps volunteer.  I spent the week talking to AmeriCorps about their experiences with NCCC and National Direct, and their stories really influenced me.  I was suddenly filled with a drive to serve my country, and I'm so glad that I am.

March of 2009 was my last time down to the Gulf, this time in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi.  The work experience at that affiliate was probably my favorite.  It was a blitz build, and we were able to go from a concrete slab on the morning of day one to a practically finished house by the time we left.
It was also a great experience because it really made me think about a bigger picture.  When most people think about Hurricane Katrina, they think only of New Orleans.  And it's true that NOLA was and is very much in need of post-hurricane assistance.  But we forget that the entire Gulf Coast was ravaged by Katrina, and then again by Rita.  Although I wasn't at first, by the time my trip was over, I was really thankful to have gotten the opportunity to work in Mississippi.  Those families needed and deserved our help just as much, and there is no reason that they should be left by the wayside simply because they aren't in the city that received the iconic media coverage.

During my two subsequent trips, it was really interesting to see how so much had changed.  And yet, so little at the same time.  People are still living in those FEMA trailers.  Cans of water are still lying around.  People are still displaced.  And we forget about it, because it isn't in the news every day.  But we shouldn't, and we can't.  I will never forget the connection I felt to humanity during my first trip, and my sincere wish is for everyone to feel that at some point in their lives.