Pictures from the Week!

Some of the Group at the Levees that Broke during Katrina.
The Group Outside after a wonderful Volunteer Dinner!! The dinner was made by a family that lives in St. Bernard. It was delicious!!!

Erik, Ben, and Rochelle mudding Destin's Room at the Tinson House!
Part of the Group Eating Lunch at a House Welcoming Party
The other half of the group at the House Welcoming Party (the completed house is the one behind us!)

The Trip Was a Success!!

After 5 long hard days of working on houses and a 12 hour trip back to North Carolina we have made it back safely and we had an amazing time. We have helped so much this week with two very special families, but the work cannot stop there. There are still so many more homes left to be worked on. The St. Bernard Project will be celebrating their 200th completed home on the 18th of March, but that is barely a dent in the amount of homes that need to be competed. On Friday a group of us drove around the 9th ward and saw where the levees broke and all the homes still around it that are destroyed. Driving around neighborhoods and still seeing houses with crushed roofs and shattered windows makes your heart sink. 

I know that this group will be spreading the message of what still needs to happen in New Orleans and of the people and the struggles they are living. So if you ever have a week to go and volunteer- please do so. Thank you everyone for your support of helping to make this trip possible and allowing us to help two amazingly strong families get back into a home. 

Weathering The Storm

When I first envisioned this trip, I was intrigued to find out what our group would be working on, especially it has been three and half years post Katrina. This week has been unlike any other of taking in sights, sounds, and most importantly the people of New Orleans.  I'm not sure I mentally prepared myself for what I about to see.  

Three and half years after Hurricane Katrina, I am amazed to see so many empty homes with spray painted "X's" on them.  As the media aired repeatedly, the "X's" were branded on each home as a tool to show if the house was checked for people and their animals.  People are still not living in these homes and many of them will be demolished in the near future if they are not claimed.  How can this be so I wondered?  

Even the Wal-Mart (among many stores) down the street is still eerily boarded up with the water line showing up to the words of the "Wal-Mart" still quite evident.  Three and half years later, the people who are here are constantly reminded of this devasting storm by a constant reminder by empty buildings and people who have left the neighborhood.  The people that live her are resilient, strong and grateful.  

We have a group of ten people working at Joan's home.  Joan is a wonderful grandmother to her grandchildren and mother of four daughters all who were born and raised in the St. Bernard's Parish area on Reunion Street.  On Monday, at the end of the day, Joan brought her little dog Buttons as we sat in a circle outside her home.  We listened to her story and as I was petting Buttons she informed me, he spent 29 days by himself during the storm.  Joan also told me Buttons was so scared, he wouldn't come out of the home upon her return.    

Even though this storm has affected Joan's family, she still remains incredibly strong with a story to tell.  Every time we see her, she always greets us with a smile and says in her charming New Orleans' drawl, "hi baby". You see, Joan has weathered the storm.  She has dealt with so much, more than one should have to go through in a lifetime. Things are looking better, as Joan will soon move into a home that was built for her with love.   

 

Being Reminded of Our Impact

As our group sat at in the van on the way to a Welcome Home party, Andy (one of our site supervisors) noted that it was exactly half way through the week.  We all noted that he was right, but it got me to thinking--how much work are we really getting done this week?  What impact does it really have on the people here?

Finishing the last of the 2nd coat of mud in our house left us some free time to talk with Destin the 9 year old son of our homeowner spent the late afternoon with us getting to know Nicole some more.  Lunch once again gave us the chance to talk with Dwayne and live the life of  Louisiana. After all, it is the people we are here for.

We got to see first hand out important the work volunteers with the St. Bernard Project is.  We were invited to attend a Welcome Home Party for a young family of three moving back into their finished house.  We pulled up in our 15 person passenger van just on time and joined group after group after group of volunteers in celebrating with gumbo and cake this family's coming home.  What a great feeling to be able to see where our houses are going to be in the next couple of months.  I'm sure each of us would really like to be here for the Welcome Home Party of our homeowners.  

A combination of mudding, mudding and more mudding wrapped our day up after lunch.  The other group did more sanding than any human being should.  It was another day of people covered from head to toe in dust, mud and water.  Even Rochelle and Ben were dirty today!  Kim aged 40 years in a single day--her hair was so COVERED with dust that she looked grey.  

Needless to say, the lines for the showers were four or five people long.  Today especially we needed to get cleaned up quickly because all the volunteers for the St. Bernard Project were invited to a dinner served by a local named Paul.  He and a group of family members cook once a month for every one and we are lucky enough to be here this time!  We had burgers on the grill, mac and cheese and salad.  We rounded off our meal with some king cake and Erik entertained us while we waited with some dancing.  Paul had created a video slide show of his families experience with Katrina that he shared with us.  Needless to say it was emotional for all of us.

So now, with sun kissed cheeks we are winding down for the night.  Trying to do some homework, but mostly just enjoying Kevin and Joel's talents on the guitar.  There are card games going on at the dining room table--intense ones at that by Kendria, Ben and Amy.  

We all are well, and hoping for a renewed energy in the morning to finish as much work as we can.

My love and smiles and hugs from NOLA,

Bridget

 

When the Levees Break

So today my group took an extended lunch break and went on a tour of the levees which are located adjacent to the 9th Ward.  The 9th Ward was one of the areas that received some of the most coverage during Katrina because it was one of the hardest places hit and it is one of the poorest locations.  First our site supervisor, Travis, took us to Mr. Go which is a manmade resevoir that was intended to protect the St. Bernard's Parish from flooding.  Instead it was easily breached and then it acted as a barrier that kept the water in and caused a lot of chaos days after the hurricane was over.  We ate lunch overlooking Mr. Go but just on the other side the community was completely destroyed, only concrete slabs remained where houses used to be.  After eating lunch we drove down the street into the 9th Ward and took a look at the levees.  This was my second levee experience but it was still amazing to me how small these levees were. How could anyone in their right mind believe that these would actually prevent flooding? Even more shocking was the fact that instead of making improvements to the levees, whoever fixed them repaired them in the exact same way they were originally.  No improvements were made to the levees despite the fact that they virtually did nothing the first time.  For anyone interested in the Katrina catastrophe, seeing the levees in real life is a moving experience.  You hear about these things on the news but to see how small they are makes you wonder who thought that they were a good idea in the first place.  The point is that there is still much to be done and despite a decline in news coverage the problems in New Orleans have not gone away. 

Our first day

Sooo, the 13hour drive was long but we all entertained ourselves the very best, arrived in New Orleans, for most of us who hadn't been there before its quite a shock. It's very different to everywhere else in America and the scale of the disaster is hard to imagine, there is people still living in trailers! New Orleans is very much feeling the effect of Katrina. There was a lot of beads and trash on the ground as it is parade season, apparently its bad luck to pick the beads up off the ground.  Anyways, we're here to help some people and so we we split into two groups today and worked with two families, one was a single mother and the other was a grandmother. Meeting the homeowners was great as it was nice to see who we were doing the work for and hear their stories. The houses we are working on have already been dry-walled and insulated so we are mudding and sanding. We were working under supervisors Travis and Andy who were lovely. Andy telling jokes and Travis lurking(according to Mary). We are working very close to the volunteer house so its very convenient. There is lovely weather so on our lunch break we sunned ourselves. The work is hard and can be repetitive and boring but we have lots of fun doing it, listening to the Top 40 over and over again and singing Britney Spears (that was Thom). Haley's butt was hilarious by the end of the day with Keatin putting handprints with mud on her jeans. Hilarious! Then there was the water fights when we had to clean up! Well we are all back at the house now so we'll keep you updated on our progress throughout the week!

Keep you posted!

After 12 hours in the car and the longest game of apples to apples

Today, we set out on our journey to New Orleans from Queens University at 6:30 am. After filling up on gas station snacks and Burger King, we were officially on our way. The first few hours were filled with sleeping in odd positions and listening to jazzercise songs on the radio.  Followed by games like Apples to Apples, BS and hitting the ceiling after crossing over into a new state. Nicole, Thom and Mary drove carefully and safely through a total of six states to get from Charlotte to New Orleans. We finally arrived around 6:00 pm and all we wanted to do was eat and sleep. After a few games of UNO, eating dinner and hanging out, the gang headed to bed to get ready for the day to come.