Big and Easy
Man oh man, what a day.
I'm down in New Orleans, with Brian
blindapprentice attending Celebrate! a conference for Christian University students, put on by the Council for Ecumenical Student Christian Ministries. It's a conference that's held every four years and this is my third time attending, the previous two being in Asheville, NC in 1998 and Albuquerque NM in 2002.
I'm fairly disappointed with the content of the conference, mostly because it's gone down in quality since I first starting attending them. However, the city is... unbelievable.
The morning featured music and stories of survival and loss by a gospel choir called Shades of Praise. They were pretty inspiring, mostly in hearing about how they supported one another during the storm and its aftermath.
We had a bus tour of the city this afternoon, and the devastation from Hurricane Katrina is like nothing I've ever witnessed in my life (except maybe for Beirut in 1999). The most upsetting areas were Lakeview, a middle class neighbourhood, St. Bernard parish and then the lower 9th ward, a low income neighbourhood that was HUGE and where there had been little reconstruction since the flooding. Home after home, business after business... each one was marked with an X and had numbers written around the quadrants indicating whether there had been bodies inside, whether there were pets, etc. We saw many houses lifted off their foundations. There were advertisements for businesses offering to demolish homes. There were others offering to assist in lifting homes to re-settle them, with grants of $30,000 from the government to help fund this initiative, but finding out that the real cost for such a procedure is closer to $80,000. Our tour guide, who was from St. Bernard parish, said that her closest neighbour is 7 houses away, and that many people return not knowing where any of their neighbours are, with no schools for their kids, no doctors, 30 mile drives for groceries, with bodies (or parts thereof) still being discovered. She said when she moved back, there was a body on the roof of her house, an old woman who got separated from her family and was swept away in the waters. The body was removed but there is still a stain on her house, that cannot be cleaned by conventional methods.
We saw where some of the levee re-construction was happening, and how fragile it still looked. I can't begin to explain how traumatizing it was to see all this from a bus, let alone to imagine living through it. Our hotel is just down the street from the Superdome, newly rebuilt and awaiting the Sugar Bowl in a few days. The streets are already filling with people all geared up for this big party.
And then, this evening, we experienced a grand New Orleans tradition of participating in a Second Line procession, the kind that has been popularized in film as jazz funeral processions. It was really remarkable, we had a full marching band from Louisiana State University and a police escort... we marched into the French Quarter, wearing beads and necklaces, clapping and dancing. People along Bourbon Street were on balconies, throwing down more beads for us to wear, and people joined us as we marched along. It was a march about the celebration of life in the midst of death, and it was incredibly liberating. The French Quarter, likely the "sinniest" part of the city, is the main area that was spared by Katrina. It's certainly the most vibrant and lively part of the US I've ever seen... the culture is more Caribbean/European than American, and it reminded me a lot of Puerto Vallarta at night, although less catering to tourists and more reflective of the culture of the city. We ate gumbo and shrimp and Cajun blackened stuff. It was way yummy.
As far as the conference goes, I appreciate that they are exposing us to the city and letting it become much of the program, but I was hoping for more analysis around the issues that aren't being named with Katrina, such as the complicity of the government. Someone today mentioned that with the amount of money that is spent on the military that it would be entirely possible to clean up this city and help to get it back on its feet. The population has only half returned at this point. The amount of work that needs to be done is tremendous... almost too much to imagine.
I'm down in New Orleans, with Brian
blindapprentice attending Celebrate! a conference for Christian University students, put on by the Council for Ecumenical Student Christian Ministries. It's a conference that's held every four years and this is my third time attending, the previous two being in Asheville, NC in 1998 and Albuquerque NM in 2002.
I'm fairly disappointed with the content of the conference, mostly because it's gone down in quality since I first starting attending them. However, the city is... unbelievable.
The morning featured music and stories of survival and loss by a gospel choir called Shades of Praise. They were pretty inspiring, mostly in hearing about how they supported one another during the storm and its aftermath.
We had a bus tour of the city this afternoon, and the devastation from Hurricane Katrina is like nothing I've ever witnessed in my life (except maybe for Beirut in 1999). The most upsetting areas were Lakeview, a middle class neighbourhood, St. Bernard parish and then the lower 9th ward, a low income neighbourhood that was HUGE and where there had been little reconstruction since the flooding. Home after home, business after business... each one was marked with an X and had numbers written around the quadrants indicating whether there had been bodies inside, whether there were pets, etc. We saw many houses lifted off their foundations. There were advertisements for businesses offering to demolish homes. There were others offering to assist in lifting homes to re-settle them, with grants of $30,000 from the government to help fund this initiative, but finding out that the real cost for such a procedure is closer to $80,000. Our tour guide, who was from St. Bernard parish, said that her closest neighbour is 7 houses away, and that many people return not knowing where any of their neighbours are, with no schools for their kids, no doctors, 30 mile drives for groceries, with bodies (or parts thereof) still being discovered. She said when she moved back, there was a body on the roof of her house, an old woman who got separated from her family and was swept away in the waters. The body was removed but there is still a stain on her house, that cannot be cleaned by conventional methods.
We saw where some of the levee re-construction was happening, and how fragile it still looked. I can't begin to explain how traumatizing it was to see all this from a bus, let alone to imagine living through it. Our hotel is just down the street from the Superdome, newly rebuilt and awaiting the Sugar Bowl in a few days. The streets are already filling with people all geared up for this big party.
And then, this evening, we experienced a grand New Orleans tradition of participating in a Second Line procession, the kind that has been popularized in film as jazz funeral processions. It was really remarkable, we had a full marching band from Louisiana State University and a police escort... we marched into the French Quarter, wearing beads and necklaces, clapping and dancing. People along Bourbon Street were on balconies, throwing down more beads for us to wear, and people joined us as we marched along. It was a march about the celebration of life in the midst of death, and it was incredibly liberating. The French Quarter, likely the "sinniest" part of the city, is the main area that was spared by Katrina. It's certainly the most vibrant and lively part of the US I've ever seen... the culture is more Caribbean/European than American, and it reminded me a lot of Puerto Vallarta at night, although less catering to tourists and more reflective of the culture of the city. We ate gumbo and shrimp and Cajun blackened stuff. It was way yummy.
As far as the conference goes, I appreciate that they are exposing us to the city and letting it become much of the program, but I was hoping for more analysis around the issues that aren't being named with Katrina, such as the complicity of the government. Someone today mentioned that with the amount of money that is spent on the military that it would be entirely possible to clean up this city and help to get it back on its feet. The population has only half returned at this point. The amount of work that needs to be done is tremendous... almost too much to imagine.