After leaving New Orleans and spending our first work day in Dulac it made me realize how important culture is to community members. Our mini term is community service based so we’ve worked in impoverished neighborhoods and with people who live with struggles I can’t imagine facing but I’ve noticed that what keeps people going is their pride. In New Orleans we met many people whose homes and community had been destroyed but they chose to come back and rebuild. The people I’ve seen seem to have such a strong connection and relationship with their neighbors and community that they would rather risk another serious hurricane than live else where. When I talked with children from the Lower Ninth Ward they expressed how much they enjoyed walking around the French Quarter and it seems that regardless of how difficult their situation might be there is a temporary relief. Although I’ve only been in Dulac for a day it seems as if there is less of a relief from the day to day hardship. Today we worked with a family to clean their house to help them sell it. It was painful to see the situation they had been living under for years. The house its self was falling apart and the back yard was covered with decomposing furniture. When we had the chance to talk with the woman who lived there she expressed that her favorite things to do involved going to Walmart and eating dinner out. It broke my heart that things my family does on a regular bases and barely even thinks twice about were things this woman loved most. For this family the relief and escape from their difficult life is Walmart.

This community service term is unlike any community service I’ve taken part in before because I have immersed myself into the culture and situation far more than I have in the past. One challenge for me has been to look at the situation from the perspective of the people living it. As an outsider sometimes my first impulse is to want to give the people I’m working with everything I have and the life I live. I’ve realized that not only is it impossible but it is also far from what these people want. At first I would look at houses that were completely destroyed and wonder why the home owners didn’t just knock the house down and build a new home and it was difficult for me to understand how important it was for them to rebuild the house they’ve lived in for centuries even if it meant compromising the quality. I feel so blessed that I’ve been given the opportunity to work in New Orleans and Dulac and I look forward to bringing what I’ve learned here back to Union.