Yesterday Jim gave us a tour of NOLA. The part of the tour that I think had the biggest impact on me was visiting the lower ninth ward. When we stood in front of the levee and just looked out at the complete devastation in front of us, the reality of what happened really started to hit me. I feel like I am pretty informed about the situation and the problems NOLA faces due to my own interest and this course, but it finally became real to me when I stood with the levee towering behind me and I tried to picture it toppling over and pouring millions of gallons of water on top of the houses that used to be there. It was just very eerie. And quiet. A real ghost town. And I think I’m really starting to get it.

We’re starting a new category of posts for some local vocab we are learning.  First is gutter punk.  Jim offered a new take on this to mean ‘rich kids from up north who come down here, live on the street, and live dirty on purpose’!  One of the students encountered a couple of such folks on the street, playing homemade instruments.  Jim doesn’t have much respect for them, as you might guess. This is a variation on the usual definitions of gutter punk that you’ll find at urbandictionary.com.

Perhaps I should add cuban cupid [thanks, Jasmine, I knew better, but the brain failed]shuffle, for those of you, like me, who’ve never heard the song!  See the link at the right to one of many YouTube videos, this one by Cupid himself.

More:

neutral ground — up north this is what we call the median , the stretch of grass going down the middle of a highway or boulevard.  In NOLA, it is neutral ground because Canal St, which is a broad boulevard, used to be the dividing line between the French quarter and the rest of the town. Hence, the median really was ‘neutral’ ground.

hurrication — a trip up north to avoid a hurricane, aka an evacuation, that becomes a holiday.

contraflow – when they make all lanes of a highway go out of town to facilitate rapid evacuation of more people faster

shotgun house – no, not a house filled with shotguns, but a common style of home in NOLA.  In the original shotguns, you could stand in the front door and shoot a gun through the house and out the back door without hitting a wall.  Many houses are double shotguns, i.e., side-by-side duplexes each of shotgun style. 

Well, this is my first post to the blog, because I have had some difficulty getting logged on to the site!  But I am excited to be able to post now.  It has been a really great first couple of days of the trip and I am very much looking forward to what is to come.  We have done so many wonderful things already that it is difficult to put into words what I am experiencing.  I do have many aches and pains, which is to be expected, but I will take those aches and pains if it means that life might be a little better for the people of New Orleans since Hurricane Katrina.  I am really happy to be here with the group of students that we have.  They are bright, insightful, and really committed to the work that they are doing.  Nothing compares to a trip like this and I am incredibly fortunate to be able to experience it yet again.   

Today we took a tour of New Orleans with Jim as our tour guide.  The tour was so much more than any of us expected.  We made stops at the three locations where the levees broke during Katrina.  It was scary to think how devastated these places were because of the levees breaking; houses were completely washed away and water inendated the surrounding area, trapping many people and destroying many houses.  Going to the lower ninth ward was probably the most shocking.  The levee break there was tremendous and caused an unfathomable amount of damage and death.  It was so strange to see an area that was once completely inhabited be overgrown with brush and practically void of  people or homes.  I think we all agreed that it felt almost erie.  The area was like a ghost town, even three plus years after the storm.  All I could think of was that those empty plots of land used to be homes for so many people.  It was especially evident when we could see steps or foundations of homes still standing without the house.  It was interesting and also disturbing when Jim told us that people used to visit the lower ninth ward in the year after Katrina when debri had not been cleaned up yet.  He said many of the residents were terribly offended by the lack of compassion of people; for example, people picking up remains of their homes as souvenirs.  Overall, the tour was a great experience and Jim was very informative about a lot of the gaps in our previous knowledge.  It really helps us understand what a great impact our hard work can be after such a horrific tragedy. 

This mini-term has thus far exceeded my expectations in every way. I’d heard great things from some of last year’s participants, but naturally, only now understand the hype. We’ve worked two days on site (at specific house projects), one day building a playground, and today got a tour of the city. The tour specifically focused on the levees. The lower 9th ward, which received a lot of media attention in 2005, was especially eye-opening. This lower-class community was devastated by the collapse of the levee that separated it from the canal, and now, in 2008, less than half the number of pre-Katrina homes still stand. Most of these are either entirely new or required a ton of repair. One neat thing going on in this area is Brad Pitt’s “Make it Right” project. He’s teamed up with architects and builders across the country to make energy efficient, green homes. Some are critical of his organization because these houses are not conventional “New Orleans style” architecture, and input from will-be occupants was minimal, but in my opinion the residents likely lack knowledge of good building techniques, and old methods are obsolete. It may take some getting used to, as the homes are multi-colored and unconventional in appearance (lots of weirdly placed overhangs and sloping walls), but green building takes into account many considerations that usually go overlooked. Proper orientation, for instance, harnesses the sun’s warmth and captures as much natural light as possible. Green building in the re-building efforts will serve as the focus of my project for this class, so these are issues that are particularly of interest to me. On another note, I just got back from a local oyster bar where I ate raw oysters and watched football- it’s only two blocks from our church. Overall, this city’s pretty special.

Saturday we worked with an organization called Kaboom and built a playground. There were many other organizations there helping and it was nice to speak to them and share experiences. At one point during the day I got a chance to speak to the kids who go to school where the playground was being built. The excitement on their faces when they saw the big yellow slide go up was the best thank you I could have got.

Today we went on a Tour around New Orleans with Jim. We drove around and he showed us the levees and some neighborhoods that were badly destroyed. I was shocked to find how close some of the homes were to the levees and even more shocked to find some of them being rebuilt. Why would they rebuild these homes if they are most likely going to be destroyed again? Jim explained to me how generations of families lived in these neighborhoods and how its home to some people. I guess I was naive to to think that people would just abandon the homes they grew up in. Being here and experiencing New Orleans explains why people keep coming back. It is not like anywhere I have ever been before. The city is so rich in culture and everyone is so outgoing and friendly. How could you leave somewhere like that? Last night Chelsea met this man and when I came over and listen to their conversation I heard him say “We laugh and smile on the outside, but on the inside we are crying…Thank you so much for coming down and helping us” He then gave us all big hugs. What he said brought tears to my eyes. Everyone is so thankful and although we are only five days into the trip I can honestly say this is the best experience of my life.

Over the past couple days, a lot has happened. While working on our housing projects, building an entire playground in one day, and feeling more comfortable in New Orleans, I think that I have kind of opened up and enabled myself to ineract with some of the local residents. Yesterday we built a playground with Kaboom in the Gentilly Terrance. This was an amazing experience. Not only did I meet a lot of great people, but the teamwork and overall effort was awesome. While working on painting some four square courts, I worked with this one local women who shared a lot with me. Her name is Doran and she lived a couple blocks away from the school. She has been living in the area for 10 years, including Katrina. Besides the water damage that her house suffered, she shed light on some other interesting topics. One that I found very interesting and true was that she was saying how the people here are so cool. That is exactly how she described it. She said that even though there could be a hurricane next week, yet everyone still stays here. The people here really take life for what it is and they are very appreciative of it. I think that this is a great quality and is very interesting. In terms of the storm, her house suffered mostly water damage, being 8 feet under water inside the house. While being so overwhlemed, Doran would cry and cry just looking and thinking about all that she had lost in the storm. She related this to a patient and a doctor where it was known the patient was going to die. She said that even though they know they are going to die, they still do treatments and take medicine to try and get better. So even though another hurricane will come sometime in the future, they still take the time and money to put back and fix their homes. Doran was explaining that she could only look at one wall at a time and fix that one wall for the big picture was just too overwhelming. While fixing one wall, she said that it was motivating to take one step at a time to fix all of the problems in the house.

Another thing that I wanted to mention was that since we have been here, I have been asked for money more than once. The first time was while we were working, a female came up and asked me if I could give her a couple dollars so that she could buy something at the local store for her daughter to eat. I did not have any money on me so instead I gave the little girl the fruit in which I packed for lunch. I was not sure what to make of this. I know that it is not my place to judge or anything, but I just was not sure whether she was being honest or not. It is hard to tell, because you really don’t know. She could see that we are young white adults here to help and that we have money. I just thought that this was interesting and I didn’t know how exactly to handle the situation.

Last night we went to a local social gathering, where I meet a local resident by the name of Bruce. Bruce is born and raised from New Orleans, and he has gone through it all. He said that his story was much too long to tell but he started telling me anyways. Not really getting into the details of the Katrina experience, he was telling me about himself and about the people of New Orleans. One thing that relly struck me was when he said that from all that they have been through, even though they are all smiling and having a good time on the outside, they are still crying on the inside. This was really sad for me because that is one thing that I have really noticed, in general the people here are extremely nice and welcoming. Everywhere we have been they are the so happy to tell their story, to hear about us and what we are doing, and just talking and having a good time. While still in the process of finishing the repairs on his home, he is just trying to live each day and get through it with waht he has. Relating back to what Doran was saying, he is really just making the best out of life. Straight from work, he still goes out and socializes and has a good time, because that is what life is all about. Celebrating what you have and taking it each day at a time. Getting a little more detailed in Bruce’s story, he lived through New Orleans, stayed here and suffered. By the end of his short summary of what he had been through, we were both in tears. He said that even thought it has been three years, people still have nightmares about this and the emotional damage is almost unbearable. While being emotional about his story, I told him that I felt bad that I was in tears, because I don’t even know. I wasn’t the one that went through that. He was so appreciative of me and of our group and he thanked us for our kind hearts. In the end we exchanged some information, and I hope to keep in touch with him.

In closing, all this has really just struck me. It is so painful to hear these stories and also it brings me sadness that most of our country is just so oblivious to this and to the suffering here. Before I came here, I knew what happened and all of the damage, but the emotional aspect is just unbelievable. It is mind blowing to hear what these people have gone through and are still going through to this day.

We’ve been working hard all week and today we have our first day off. Besides sleeping in a little bit we are planning to use it to explore the city (in groups) on our own and then our leader from PNOLA and SAFER, Jim, is going to give us a full tour of the city. On Thursday and Friday I worked with a group on Ms. Chris’ house. We weren’t able to meet her but it was still really rewarding. We primed and painted her whole house in two days! I think I may have gotten about as much paint on my clothing as I did on the walls but it was so worth it. I think yesterday was my favorite day of work, even if I am extremely sore today. We worked on the KABOOM! playground at a local elementary school. It was a truly inspiring event. The group of 200 plus volunteers who were a mixture of community members, Capital One employees, University of New Orleans athletes, and another group of community service volunteers from Ohio, worked together to construct a full playground in only 6 hours. Everyone was split into different groups so that you were able to interact with different people. I was assigned to the mulch group. We moved a HUGE pile of mulch from the spot it was dumped to the playground. I worked alongside a woman who works from Capital One and we ended up talking about her experience with Hurrican Katrina. She lives by the 17th Street levee that broke and as a result her house was under 6 feet of water. She was the first person who I have been able to talk to on a one-to-one basis about their Hurrican story. Hopefully next week I’ll be able to talk to even more people and hear their take on the storm and how they have been able to recover afterwards.

Today, we helped to build a playground for an elementary school. Over 100 people came from the neighborhoods, out of state universities, highschools, volunteer organizations, etc. The entire playground became a totally different one after a five-hour work. The swing was built, the basketball courts were painted, the benches were constructed, and the ground was painted for hopscotch. It was amazing to see how many things could be done with the help of a lot of people. Only  five-hours of work made a better community where kids will grow up.

Also, volunteering is not only beneficial for other people but good for the volunteering person. Lots of people said thank you to us after doing the jobs, which always made us feel good.

Note from Jan, 12/7: Above are 2 pix of the school ‘before.’  Below are a few shots of the ‘after’:

Above, the almost finished playspace for young kids.  Below, the mural on the side of the preschool classroom trailer.

Below, the school logo, in the center of the asphalt yard:

and just a couple of  our students!  Don’t miss the comments below and other pics posted in the web albums to right:

Jenny Riskin, Union ’08, who took this class last year, is now working for City Year here in New Orleans. Jenny joined us last night for dinner and went to the Rock N Bowl with us.  Her story of what it’s like to try to support kids in the NOLA schools was heart-wrenching, but I’ll let students share their thoughts on that.  For now I just want to point out that today’s NYT had a great article on these issues — I’ve posted a link to the right.