It was the most draining ride from an airport I had ever been on.
The Superdome was in the foreground – where the New England Patriots dynasty was born four short years ago in Super Bowl XXXVI. The historic stadium was home for 14,000 people when it was used as a shelter of last resort for evacuees six months ago. The levee was in the background – the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet. The same floodwall that the New Orleans Times-Picayune reported four years ago would not protect southeast Louisiana in the event of a major hurricane. The MR-GO breached its levees in more than 20 places last August.
Looking out the window of the bus trip from Louis Armstrong International Airport in New Orleans to Camp Premier in Chalmette, there were few inhabitable houses, minimal operable businesses, cars buried in rubble and trees lying in the middle of the road.
That's the scene all around St. Bernard Parish and the Ninth Ward of New Orleans - more than six months after Hurricane Katrina left both districts with 100 percent structural damage.
Watching a news anchor sit comfortably behind a desk in New York telling you the situation in the Gulf Coast is one thing, but seeing the plight firsthand is quite another.
I spent my spring break this year not on a beach in Cancun or Palm Beach and not on the slopes of Lake Tahoe, but in the midst of the devastation. I was one of over 2,000 college students who spent time away from classes immersed in the most physically exhausting and emotionally difficult experience of our lives – clearing debris from homes and meeting the people most affected by last summer's debilitating hurricane season.
The first house we worked on belonged to Lee Campo. Campo was hoping to salvage some of his most worldly possessions by storing them in high places before he evacuated his home.
"Had I known things would happen the way they did, I would have prepared better," Campo said. "I took a few important things and put them on high shelves or on the floor in the attic. But [Katrina] left water three feet high in my attic."
Most of Campo's family albums and keepsakes had been destroyed. In addition, Campo could only make room for two of his four dogs in his truck. Two of them were left behind and buried in the exact spot in the backyard where Campo found them when he returned.
Campo plans to rebuild his home and move back in, but it is unclear when he will be able to.
Keefa Bernard, a Rutgers University junior and volunteer worker, said walking in the neighborhoods where people had lost everything shed new light on the issue.
"Being here, it seems like it could be anyone's neighborhood. It could be someone in Clifton or someone else close to my home," Bernard said. "You can just imagine kids playing on the streets and how there was life here and now there's not. Everything is so dead."
Relief worker Carolyn Haines said the physical drain of hard labor turned to emotional exhaustion after finding memorabilia from the families that lived in the neighborhood.
"You start to find what's left of pictures and cards and more personal belongings and that is what is the hardest," Haines said. "You find out that one person's son is named Jeffrey and one person's son is named Andrew and you start to put together the story's of these people you've never met and it puts things into perspective."
Preparing for the emotional scenery was one thing, but expecting the stories of heartache from the locals was a whole other animal. After a group session with psychologist Jeff Hoerger, we were expecting stories of homes broken, memories crushed and lives lost.
But the morale and spirit of the residents in Louisiana was the polar opposite of the shattered city. Never have I encountered so many people with nothing, who had nothing and now have even less than nothing, so gracious and openhanded.
Katrina may have broken the levees and homes of southeast Louisiana, but it couldn't break the spirit of the locals' southern hospitality.
We met Donnie at RC's Tavern – about a mile from our camp. RC's is the only place for the workers at the nearby power plant to socialize, mostly with each other. They work seven day-on, seven day-off shifts and most of their families have relocated – temporarily or permanently – and they only get to see them every other week. Donnie is a plant worker and told us how his daughter phoned him in tears at two in the morning to say she saw us touring the French Quarter and what incredible people we were for helping them. Donnie immediately offered to buy six of us drinks for the night.
Dylan is a rolling stone type who calls New Orleans home. He hopes to setup a hostel just outside of the city and attract workers like us throughout the year. We met Dylan on St. Patrick's Day down on Bourbon Street outside of Fritzel's European Jazz Pub. When he realized the ten of us were volunteers, he paid our $10 cover charge and invited us into his favorite French Quarter hot spot for a drink.
Arabi and Tammany cab companies would cart cars and vans full of students from our base camp to the French Quarter for a $20 fare – nearly half of the usual cost of the trip.
Kirkland James is from Michigan, but attended Louisiana State University for three years until Katrina hit. Kirkland is now forced to live and work at the camp where we stayed, as are over 200 other residents. Kirkland would smoke cigarettes with us, play cards with us, tell us about the culture and even pull us out of a 500-person dinner line in the mess hall to serve us food first.
Sadly, the work is nowhere near done. Camp Premier, which housed over 1,800 volunteers during my week's stay, is cutting its capacity and canceling smaller groups who have committed to volunteer in the next few months.
New Orleans is truly a tale of two cities. There is what you see of one of the biggest natural disasters in American history, and there is what you hear from the residents of putting their lives back together. There is also the French Quarter and Garden District, high tourist areas that went relatively unscathed in the hurricanes, and the surrounding parishes, that will take months and maybe years to get back on their feet. And there are the people, the people who asked for help and got it, and the people who asked for help and are still waiting. The experience was a far better thing that I have done, than I have ever done. After a week of grueling labor, unaccommodating living arrangements, emotional highs and crippling lows, the hardest thing to do was to leave.
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