New Orleans Trip

Over break, I went on a trip down to the New Orleans area to help rebuild after Hurricane Katrina. We left on the morning of the first Saturday of February break, and drove in a van with 2 adults and 8 kids. We drove about ten hours the first day and slept on the floor of a church in Bristol, Virginia (NOT comfortable). The next day we got up and drove 12 more hours to Arabi, Louisiana, where we would stay for the rest of the trip. We stayed in an old hollowed out church filled with triple bunk beds. Quick stats on this place: 100 people staying, 4 showers, 2 toilets, which sucked. Every morning we would get up at 6 in the morning and drive to the Knights of Columbus hall to eat breakfast. The daily breakfast had fresh fruit, cereal, grits, sausage, and pancakes.
After breakfast we would get in our van and drive to our worksite. The place where we worked was the Islanos museum; we were repairing their ticket booths/snack shacks. They were rotten and the shutters were broken, and one was missing its roof. We had to bust out the rotten walls, add new ones, engineer a way to lock the shutters open and closed, and repaint the sheds. On top of this, there was a huge pile of old wood that had to be sorted. The good wood was stacked to be used in other build projects, and we broke up the bad wood and built a bonfire. This was what caused us to meet the first character of the trip; Charlito. Charlito is a carpenter from the area who restored old Cyprus wood to use in his builds because it was cheaper than buying new wood. In his thick Cajun accent he hilariously explained to us exactly what he would do with the "lumbah" that we left for him, and introduced us to his "adopted Mexican". During lunch on these workdays we would go to the house of a woman named Maria, whose home had been built from the ground up by the volunteer group we were with. As a form of repayment, Maria cooked lunches for the volunteers working in her area. She made delicious lunches of jambalaya and gumbo for us, and told us her Katrina story while we ate. When work was over, around 4 o’clock, we would go back to the church to shower and then head to the Knights of Columbus hall for dinner. All of the meals were made by the chef, named Ricey, that travels with the volunteer group.
On Thursday, instead of going to our worksites, we went to the local area high school and watched a presentation given by the students. Student ambassadors then paired up with us and we shadowed them during the school day. My ambassador was a sophomore football star named Johnny Ginart. Spending the day with him was funny because we spent zero time in class and instead walked around and butted into other people's classes. All of the teachers liked Johnny so we were allowed to do what we pleased. After school ended, we went with some of the students to a Mardi Gras Parade. The two parades that night were Chaos, a young but up-and-coming parade, and Muses, a classic parade in which all of the floats are filled with only women. As the floats went by people would throw beads, cups, Frisbees, plush toys, and assorted other things to the craziest people they saw.
On the next Saturday we set off to head home. Unfortunately for me, the person in the bunk below me had the plague, and halfway home I came down with the flu and pneumonia. I spent the night in Virginia throwing up, and the ride home after that was...uncomfortable. Overall despite the sickness I thought the trip was amazing. One of the most striking things about the trip was the widespread devastation. Even 3 and a half years after the storm, most people are still living out of trailers in their front yard or did not return to the area at all.


Pictures 1&2: These two houses were right across the street from one another. This was common in the area, one nice house followed by a gutted rotting house, and repeat.

Picture 3: This is Jackson Barracks, a national guard barracks that was right next to the homes above.
Picture 4: This is the concrete slab where a home used to be, but the home was washed away by the floodwaters, also on the same street as the houses above.
Picture 5: Maria.
Picture 6: This is the church where we lived for a week.
Picture 7: The living quarters.
Picture 8: The group and Rich. We spent half a day with Rich planting trees in pots, which you can see on the right side of the photos. The trees, after growing in a nursery for a year or two, are planted in coastal areas to break up floodwaters.
Pictures 9&10: The museum where we were working.
Picture 11: The sheds before picture, sadly I didn't get an after photo.
Picture 12: Cutting wood to hold the shutters open with.

Picture 13: The infamous Charlito.
Picture 14: Charlito's "adopted mexican", we never did get his name.
Picture 15: Float from the Chaos parade.

Pictures 16&17: Some of us at the parade, the short girl is from New Orleans.
Picture 18: A church in the Ninth Ward that we mudded and sanded for a day. The building used to be an old walgreens, but alot of the chain stores didn't come back, and this church bought the building and the members are restoring it while worshipping, with help from volunteers.

Sorry that this post is so huge, but there was so much stuff that I couldn't justify skipping.
-Ian