'neff said: July 2006

Woke up this morning to sheets of rain pouring down on the metal roof. It never rains alittle in New Orleans. The first time I saw it rain I was terrified. I was sure the whole place was going to flood. It doesn't seem the sewage system has been entirely cleared yet because when it rains the streets do flood here in St. Bernard Parish. I moved my bags away from the wall, just in case it would come in. I live in a gutted elementary school in Violet, LA. When we first arrived, rooms were mostly separated by a tarp. Since then, they've hung sheetrock, but the ceiling's not finished yet so it doesn't reach the roof and the place can get really noisy... especially when it rains in sheets. Sounds like it's all going to come down on me.

Last night I walked Bourbon and Decatur streets with some new friends. I absolutely love downtown New Orleans. Bourbon street can get pretty dirty and crazy at night, but the bars are amazing. Last night we ate dinner at an old bar where I finaly tried the Muffaletta (apparently an important bit of NO cuisine). Then we walked to Preservation Hall where we watched a 6 man band perform in this tiny, dark, hot room that looks untouched since the early 1900s. They played Just a Closer Walk with Thee, which is often a funeral song down here that starts out slow and speeds up when the funeral's over and they're dancing down the streets. They played their signature "When the Saints" where everybody sang along. And they played an old slow jazz song where the sax player "Stackman" stood up and mumbled some crazy lyrics and puffed on his horn in a way I only imagined I'd ever see in New Orleans. It's just as I ever expected it. The culture is so rich. You walk down the street and live jazz music flows from each door and meets in the middle where sweaty bodies meander from bar to bar. And it doesn't feel like they have some rich history they're constantly trying to recreate for tourism... the history's now and they're just continuing their way of life... full of jazz, drinks, and some of the craziest art I've ever seen. A couple weekends ago, I went to Pat Obrien's where we sat at an old piano bar where two pianos face each other, beer steins hang from the ceiling, and waiters dressed penguin-style with bowties and a cloth hanging from their forearm carrying small trays squeeze through the tables and take your order. You get to request songs and they honestly play everything. Two times in the same night, someone requested "Hang On Sloopy" and the whole bar broke into O-H-I-O. I was so excited! But only a few of us were doing the hand motions.

So not all of 'nallins is on Bourbon street. The reason why I'm here is we are working with the St. Bernard Parish government to "muck out" houses. A typical day begins at 5:30... wake up, eat breakfast (which depends on what was donated this week... sometimes breakfast is alittle lacking), get dressed and pack my bag. The first two weeks, I would travel with teammates from Americorps and we'd all just work on a house together, but this past week we had over 300 people here at Camp Hope so I was assigned to be a "bus captain." Basically, I still gutted houses, but had to carry a radio and make judgment calls that I'm probably not that comfortable to make. My team was from all over the US and Canada, people who heard about this opportunity and made arrangements to get down here and are committing 1-2 weeks to rebuilding St. Bernard Parish. I get on a school bus with my team and the bus drops us off at our assignment for the day. We start work early before it gets too hot and end around 1:30.

I have to go into the home first with the team leader and we bang around with pitchforks and crowbars and scare any snakes and rats away (since most of these homes have not been entered since the hurricane). We go to each room and open all the windows and try to get some air circulating. The house we started Thursday was pitch black in most places. The homeowner obviously tried to board it up before the hurricane and then pulled heavy curtains over the windows. We couldn't see anything so we ended up opening most windows from the outside with a crowbar. You walk into these homes and all the furniture and nic-nacs are swirled around all over the place. Couches and mattresses against doors, china cabinets on their sides with broken glass strewn about the room, overturned kitchen tables, a stuffed animal eerily stuck to the ceiling... You never know what you'll find. Somehow I usually find the mice families, as I pick up a dresser drawer that just falls apart in my fingers and 6 little mice scurry out of my hands. Brown recluse spiders everywhere because this is their haven. We've only seen one snake but he was pretty decent-sized. He liked the dark, quiet house too (and my team cut his head off with a shovel despite my "I'll hate you forever if you kill him!!! Let him get away!!!").

One little piece at a time (you have to be patient and enduring), we carry everything to the curb. We clear the entire home out, salvaging as much as we can. Usually the salvage pile is just glasses that stayed in the kitchen cupboards and some mirrors. Photos hardly ever make it, but when you find one, it's a treasure. Can't save anything porous so even if a stuffed animal or a quilt or embroidery look old and meaningful to someone, you can't save them. Everything's covered with black mold. After we clear a room, we take down the drywall, which just crumbles in your fingers. Take down the ceiling (if it didn't fall down already) and all the fixtures. Within 1-3 days, the house is nothing but a foundation with 2x4 framework and a roof.

I have been able to meet many of the homeowners, which is unique because many people just left town and don't plan on returning. It's ranged from Tim, who came and actually worked with us and threw away everything we salvaged for him (I did see him take a lot of smoke breaks on his front porch, though, just staring with glassy eyes at his life on the curb...), to Kathleen who looked so disoriented as she walked in the front doorway and looked at me and said, "this was my home," and began sobbing. I took her outside and showed her the salvage pile and I took off my hat and facemask and started crying with her as she picked up a couple of her grandmother's rings and put them on her fingers and tried to open her grandfather's old doctor bag that had sealed shut. An old framed diploma made it through almost perfectly and she held it and cried.

It's such an emotional and physical roller coaster down here. It's not like anything you've seen on the news. They show you 'nallins and all the life that's back in there and the jazz and the pretty people with smiles on their faces and the colorful homes all rebuilt... No one shows you St. Bernard Parish and the fact that no home, rich or poor, was spared; that the levees broke right here and knocked whole homes right off their foundations, dropped a giant shrimp boat in a neighborhood that no one claims now, placed refrigerators and mattresses on rooftops, and claimed lives marked with a big X and a 1 underneath it spray painted on every single house and business. Dead dogs still rot inside homes and my friend had to scrape a carcass that was just bones and some fur off a front porch on a home she worked on yesterday. You can smell a house that still has a dead animal inside. It's actually worse than the smell of a rotting fridge, which is one of the most foulest smells ever imaginable. Black ooze leaks out of the fridge as you carry it out to the curb and washing machines still full of what's called "Katrina water" spill out all over your clothes.

If you thought 'nallins was back, please look into St. Bernard Parish or Waveland, MS. These are two places where the stories are almost forgotten by US media. The anniversary's coming up so maybe they'll finally take a look our way. But they probably won't. So I'll try to keep this updated with photos and stories. Some pretty incredible stories I have to share already, but this post is too long as usual.