A week in NOLA
NOLA stands for New Orleans, Louisiana. On the 14th of June I went there as part of an 18 person group from Cornerstone to spend a week helping Mercy Response restore some of the houses that were damaged by hurricane Katrina and the and flooding it caused. Mercy Response is based out of the Vineyard church grounds in a suburb of New Orleans called Kenner and is working on 30 houses at the moment. They have a big "tent" for the volunteers to live in. The tent has both wifi and air-conditioning. The AC is important because Southern Louisiana is extremely hot and humid. Although the tent is pretty close to airtight, no food is allowed into it just in case. Food is stored in a nearby kitchen and there are bathrooms in a nearby trailer.
We spent our first full day in New Orleans itself, exploring the city as regular tourists; we even had lunch at the NOLA equivalent of Fisherman's Wharf (with the quality and price that implies). Wandering around downtown, I was amazed by how much fun the area seemed to be, what with bars that sold hand-grenades and the like. When we were tired from walking for hours, we piled into a street car and headed uptown to the Garden District, where we played in a lovely park that moonlights as the official mosquito breeding grounds for NOLA. After having our our fill of the park, we headed back to the waterfront to explore some more and fill the hunger pangs gnawing at us from the inside. We had dinner at a restaurant where one member of our group (Tania) used to work when she lived in New Orleans some years ago. That place was much better, although the culinary fiasco of lunch hadn't exactly set a very high bar. Tania left dinner early, supposedly to buy coffee, but no sooner had we walked out of the restaurant than she descended upon us bearing gifts of beignets, which are vaguely like beavertails or funnel-cakes. Not being one for copious amounts of powdered sugar, I blew most of it off my beignet, prompting shocked responses from the others.
On Monday we started working on houses. The 18 of us were split into 4 crews, each assigned to a different house. Since I had a little experience with mudding and painting, I volunteered to lead a crew of 4 to work on a house belonging to a man called Joe, where we would be assisting a contractor who was already working for Joe. All the supplies we would need were supposed to be on-site but when we got there, the contractor informed us that there was no paint so we ended up just caulking and spackling the window and door frames as well as the trimmings.
Consequently, we finished up early and decided to visit a man whose house had been worked on by 2 of my crewmembers last Fall. His name is Anthony and he served as a firefighter for New Orleans for 21 years but is retired now (not surprising since he's 87 years old) and teaches French. He was asleep when we arrived but my loud knocking woke him up and he instantly recognized the 2 women who had worked on his house last year, inviting us in to chat. Anthony regaled us with tales of his adventures as a hurricane survivor, punctuated by frequent trips down memory lane into his colourful past. My favourite story was his decision to paint the inside of his entire house bright pink after it was restored, despite having lived with dull grey walls for decades before the flooding. Fortunately, he was convinced to go with a more subdued peach colour instead. Although Anthony is very funny, it's hard to get a word in edgewise when he's talking so it was a bit of an effort to extricate ourselves from the conversation when it came time to depart.
In the evening we watched a couple of short documentaries about the hurricanes and their effects on people's lives, which motivated us to work hard all week. I learnt that the first people to respond to the flooding from Katrina were the Mounties. That's pretty impressive, considering how far they would have had to travel!
On Tuesday we showed up at Joe's house again but this time the contractor was not around and the door was locked. There was supposed to be a key waiting for us at a secret drop-off spot but it was nary to be found. One of the contractor's other crewmen showed up and assured us that somebody would swing by with a key so we sat around in the grass and talked while we waited for it to arrive. While waiting, one of my crewmembers (Karen) and I needed to use a washroom so we walked a block to the nearest one. On the way there Karen remarked that she didn't want to use the washroom at a fast-food joint because she wasn't buying anything so she would use the one at the gas station beside it instead. I pointed out that she wasn't buying anything there either but she insisted that this was somehow different. When I explained that this distinction was merely one she had been socially conditioned to accept, she realized that this was true. As it happened, there was no toilet paper in the men's washroom and I didn't feel it was fair to ask for some when I wasn't buying anything so I just bought some TP and then proceeded to restock the washroom with it before using it. Karen found this greatly amusing.
After 2 hours had passed and no key had materialized, we gave up on it and fell in with another crew who were working on a house belonging to a woman named Joyce, who had grown up in that house and was very attached to the 4 foot long bathtub she had once used a a child! Several other people working on her place had offered to replace it but she would have none of it. Joyce also has exquisite taste in chandeliers, much to the consternation of the electrician on whom it had fallen to install them. Upon my arrival I was assigned the task of installing a set of drawers into a bathroom cabinet for which there were no instructions. After carefully analyzing the components, I was able to determine how they needed to fit together for the drawers to work properly. The actual installation was straightforward by comparison. I spent the remainder of the workday helping install window blinds and attaching hooks to doors before we cleaned up the place and left.
After dinner we headed downtown to serve food at the New Orleans Mission (a homeless shelter/food bank type place). I don't think they were used to having so many volunteers at once because there was far less work for us to do than we were capable of. Every time they gave us a task, we swarmed it and were done in a few minutes. The only other volunteer present was a local museum curator who had been ordered to perform community service by a court after a DUI indictment. She'd spent a night in the slammer as well and has no desire for an encore.
On Wednesday morning we went back to Joe's place armed with the knowledge that his wife would be around with a key for us. We were looking forward to finally getting started with painting. Once more, it was not to be. No sooner had we arrived at the site when we were greeted by a plumber who insisted that his insurance wouldn't let him work at a site where there were any volunteers present. Sounded pretty daft to me but Joe politely asked us to yield to the plumber because he really needed the plumbing done. Respecting his wishes, we headed back to camp yet again, extinguishing any last hopes we may have had for painting those trimmings. Perhaps God is saving them up for next week's group.
Meanwhile, Mercy Response had been preparing to assist victims of flooding in Iowa by sending some of their tools and staff there from New Orleans. They had a bunch of us inspecting the gear to make sure it worked, cleaning it, branding it and packing it up for loading onto the trailer. It's amazing how much gunk a powerful jet of water can knock off something! After a long day of working in the blazing sun, we took advantage of the heat by playing on a slippy-slide. After dinner some of us built a 2nd floor for a borrowed 20-foot truck so that it could hold all the gear that needed to go up to Iowa. Well, I'm being a tad liberal by including myself there, since I mostly just watched.
The plan for Thursday had been to load up the trucks and trailers with gear and supplies in the morning and then head over to a house where we were to install wood for the floor. That might have happened if the Bobcat hadn't decided to take a sick day, forcing us to rely on good old bone and muscle for lifting several heavy palettes of supplies onto the truck. Although we did get everything loaded in the end and sent off the first response team to Iowa, the resulting delay and fatigue caused us to end the workday earlier than usual. A few of us took advantage of this unexpected spare time to hit Wal-mart for some fresh fruits and vegetables, for which we'd developed a craving over the previous few days. I hadn't realized until this trip just how spoiled we are in California when it comes to healthy food!
After dinner we sat around in a circle to sing worship songs, lead by the talented (and seemingly clairvoyant) brothers Bjerke. It was like camping, except that the sky was a ceiling and the fire was a single candle. And we had air-conditioning. The Bjerkes ran through their entire set list (plus a request from me) before ending with a repeat of an old favourite. Anthony, who had spent dinner engrossed in conversation with Suzanne (whom he knew from her work on his house last Fall) and then stuck around for the musical fare, thanked us for the work we'd been doing and tried convincing Suzanne she should move to New Orleans.
On Friday a large contingent of us headed over to the house of a man named Jimmy, who needed a Pergo floor installed. I'd never seen a hardwood floor installed before but by the time we let, I felt like an expert and was even teaching my new skills to one of the other volunteers! Jimmy was so happy to see his floor being installed that he bought us delicious gumbo and po-boys for lunch. He also gave us a crash course in New Orleans cultural history. Apparently it is a longstanding tradition to take the family to a local bar, where alcohol may be ordered to go! Jimmy suspects that may have something to do with the high car insurance rates.
That night we finally made it out to Bourbon St in the French Quarter again. Seeing people walking (and occasionally dancing) in the middle of the street at night was really neat and made we wish we had a street like that in San Francisco. We eventually ended up at a jazz bar called Sing Sing that was refreshingly devoid of tourists and drunks. We were mildly dismayed to realize that we'd walked in just as the band was about to go on break but decided to stick around until they came on for their next set because we liked what we heard of their music before they walked offstage. That proved to be a good decision as they played through some good songs when they took the stage again, although we left before the set ended because it was getting pretty late.
The next morning we cleaned up the camp so it would be all minty fresh for the next group and then flew home to San Francisco. This week will live on in my memory long after the aches and pains vanish over the next few days. It's a great feeling to have helped people recover from the ravages of Katrina and to know that the gear we sent off to Iowa will be used to bring relief to those currently in dire straits from flooding there. The only thing better than having a prayer answered is being the answer to somebody else's prayer.