Tuesday- St. Bernard's Project

Today, I and four others went to St. Bernard's Parish and volunteered at St. Bernard's Project. We were told that we would be helping an 87 year old woman named Aunt Sally (no last name given) to repaint the inside walls of her house. We arrived to find Aunt Sally already vigorously at work with a roller brush, applying primer to her once and future living room. Aunt Sally did not seem or act 87 years old; she not only looked 65, but stood by our sides for nearly the entire morning and afternoon, lugging paint buckets, fetching sodas and cookies for us, and amusing us with her stories of slot machine magic, running after the recent Mardi Gras floats, throwing cabbages at passersby, and catching wooden nickels to turn in for pickled pork at the only supermarket for miles around. After a coat of primer, we took a break on the steps with Aunt Sally and she told us about her family's history in the parish. Her nephew, Gary, also stopped by and filled in many of the following details.

Aunt Sally's once and future home is flanked by Victor Street, Jackson Street and Lloyd's Avenue. Her daddy's name was Victor, her uncle's name was Lloyd, and her family name is Jackson. She grew up in that exact location when the land her once and future home stands on was farmland owned by her kin. They sold part of the land to the parish to be developed, but her entire family occupied homes in the neighborhood. Sally's family and their homes withstood Hurricane Betsy in 1965, when St. Bernard's Parish did not sustain significant flooding. However, when Katrina and Rita hit in 2005, the region was inundated by water, reaching up to twenty feet in spots, including the local Home Depot, where all that was visible above water was the roof of the massive warehouses.

Aunt Sally and all of her relatives were able to escape unscathed from their homes, but watched the TV in agony as their homes were destroyed by flood damage. There was no question in the minds of this family that they would return to live here once again, as their family had in that very spot for five to six generations. Gary was able to sneak back to the area past the parish police to begin the rebuilding of his home on September 15, 2005; he has not rested a single day since, except for when he occasionally throws out his back and is laid up for weeks at a time.

As we lay the second coat of primer, Aunt Sally followed behind us, occasionally retracing our paint strokes. I realized how meaningful this experience was for her, as she lived two blocks away in a FEMA trailer and saw in the course of a day, her living room, kitchen, bathroom, and bedroom walls progress from a sheet rock shell to something that resembled its former state. During our lunch break, she described the beautiful rose bushes that had surrounded her house and were washed away by the flood; we secretly conspired to go to the formerly submarine Home Depot to replace two of her bushes, and give her a token to remember us by.

When we presented them to her, she responded with what seemed like anger: "You shouldn't have!! Really you shouldn't have!" She gave us all big bear hugs, inviting us to return whenever we come back. As we drove away, she began to cry, and so did we. Aunt Sally... welcome home.

Rebuilding Biloxi

Biloxi, Mississippi is a small coastal city an hour and a half east of New Orleans. The area sustained tremendous damage in Hurricane Katrina. Entire blocks of homes were washed away, and thousands of families were displaced. Much of the ongoing devastation has been overshadowed by media attention to the larger scale of damage in New Orleans, and communities are fighting for resources. While some residents are scrounging for money, supplies, and an increasing need for skilled labor (rather than general volunteer labor), others have been displaced and may never be able to return. The stories we heard in our two days here indicate that, while well-intentioned, many of the non-profit organizations that have responded to the disaster have done so on their own terms rather than being guided by residents in meeting their needs. Coastal Women for Change is a grassroots organization whose mission is to put local residents back at the center of the conversation about the rebuilding of Biloxi.

On Tuesday, one of the women of CWC took us to meet her brother, John, whose home was destroyed by Hurricane Katrina. We went to see him at his home, which he decided to rebuild from the ground up rather than try to repair the damage. “I knew it would be forever if I waited for the government money, so I just decided to do it myself. I’ll probably finish before I get anything from them.” He started in November 2005, before anyone else in town had started rebuilding, and spent the first two months digging the foundation. Since then he has been putting aside a chunk of his paycheck each month to buy supplies and working on the house for two hours every day, on top of his job at the navy shipyard. Sometimes he works alone, other times friends or neighbors or volunteers passing through help him. This being his first attempt at home construction, he bought a blueprint from Loew’s and modified it to provide the house with even better wind and rain resistance. Today the house has a solid frame, plumbing, and electrical wiring, which have passed code inspections, and John expects to finish by August this year.

As he proudly walked us through each room of the house, John shared with us that a part of his motivation to take on such a massive project himself was the desire to be a role model for his community and to show the kids in the neighborhood what can be accomplished with determination. We found ourselves in awe of his perseverance and patience – it took him four attempts to get the first wall straight, and even on the hottest summer days he said he puts up at least two wooden boards. We were deeply moved by John sharing his vision with us as well as the healing that it has provided him. “After I was done crying and I couldn’t cry anymore, I just had to do something, and this was it.”

In addition to the immense personal resilience we saw in John, we were also struck by the support that he has gotten from friends, family, and colleagues. We were inspired by his story and the many differing stories of rebuilding lives that we heard from the women of CWC and the other people we met.

-Megan C-R & Selene

Sunday in New Orleans

Moira here, sorry for the delay in writing about Sunday. After a quick visit to the French Quarter for coffee at Cafe Du Monde, a group of us went to an amazing Mass at St. Augustine, a historically Black Catholic church where slaves and free people worshipped together. The service was amazing. As a Catholic, I was deeply moved by the similarities in this service and my usual service in New York. I was also struck by the cultural differences in this New Orleans church--the call and response style, the deep history of this place. During the Sign of Peace, the entire church came over to us. I felt so welcomed. The homily was about the tree as a metaphor for resilience, and the priest was definitely speaking to the New Orleans community. "Don't cut the tree down. Give it another chance to bloom."

The message was in stark contrast with what I saw in the 9th ward later in the day. The storm could've happened yesterday. Rows and rows of destroyed and abandoned houses, dangling power lines--a ghost town really. I had to force myself to remember the resilience in the face of such trauma and desolation. This community has a long way to go, but it's moving forward.

Monday at Plaquimines

It is impossible to know what Phoenix, Louisiana, Plaquimines Parish looked like before Katrina. Nor is it possible to know what it looked like right after the storm. After working with a class of fourth graders (ages 9-13) at Phoenix School, a van-load of us rode with Rev. Tyrone Edwards of Zion Traveler's Cooperative Center along Hi-way 15. He's been around the world, he says, but Phoenix is home. This community of 400 pre-storm has about 65% of it's residents returned. Many are living in FEMA trailers on their own land, others live in "FEMA concentration camps" (according to Rev. Tyrone). We are told that it is important for people to be living on their family land, often next to the house they are rebuilding or even just the foundation or concrete steps of the house that had been carried by flood waters to rest on top of the levy. This land they own.

I spent a lot of our time thinking about whether or not I would have come back. It seems like a stupid, a selfish, even a racist question to ask, but I've been asking it a lot. And, in doing so, trying to understand why folks have come back. Why rebuilding has become a way of life....

But when I sat in Ms. CooCoo's FEMA trailer after she invited me in and then after I walked through her soon to be reinhabited home...after I saw all the dishes she had salvaged from around her home when she returned months after the storm....that's when I understood. She had lived in Phoenix her whole life (The town seems to me really a village by the side of hiway 15. They had one store and one bar before the storm and "nothing now") . That was CooCoo's home, her family heirlooms. Her dishes. I thought of the importance of dishes in my own southern family. It is important to me that I have inherited and will inherit grandmothers' china sets and other precious things. As Ms. CooCoo showed me hers in her bathroom ready to be cleaned and told me about the china cabinet she was planning to buy, I understood better that this was and IS home. How could I ever question the desire to return and the need to rebuild?

Now, the question comes: What does it mean for and do to folks emotionally, mentally and physically to rebuild and recover from this devestation? ("the worst ever" people told us today). And then, what is MY role here and at home to assist in whatever way possible?