NOLA Trip Pics

Unbelievable, originally uploaded by Thepreacherswife.

For those of you who are interested, here's a link to our NOLA mission trip photolog, via Flickr.

Re-entry

We're back. Five days of mucking out flooded houses and two days of driving, followed by July 4th to help smooth our re-entry into normal life. How was your holiday?

The devastation in New Orleans has to be seen with your own eyes (and in some cases smelled with your own nostrils) in order to be fully appreciated. There's really no other way to explain it - it simply defies description, and we're talking 9 1/2 months after the storm/flooding. Nevertheless, we'll post pictures soon.

Despite the seriousness of our team's task, we generally had a good time. The hospitality was wonderful, and the people were grateful. We listened to a lot of survivor stories, ranging from minor inconvenience to personal tragedy. Friday's work day was the hardest from an emotional standpoint - we were cleaning out the personal possessions of a house that had at least 8 feet of water, and the house was basically untouched since the storm. It was a day we needed to remind ourselves that our work wasn't futile, that it would make a difference to someone. It was a starfish kind of day.

The conventional wisdom seems to be that the rebuilding process will take 15-20 years, so we'll have plenty of opportunities to return and offer more assistance. I'll be back.

Meanwhile, the world doesn't stop or even slow down. I have labs and a Dr. visit next Tuesday, and yesterday we learned of yet another person in our church who's been diagnosed with cancer. That makes five twelve (according to the Rev) in the last two years, if my counting is correct, in a church with an average attendance of 110 or so. No rest for the wicked.

A Titanic Task Ahead

Early Sunday morning, seven of us from our church will sojourn down the Mississippi to New Orleans to do some relief work through the United Methodist Church. The trip has been in the works for several months, but it seems like all of a sudden we've gone through a time warp and realized that it's just about time to go!

My official team member function will be that of sherpa and translator, in addition to helping out with the physical labor. Being a New Orleans expatriate, I've been watching with great frustration and sadness the plight of the city in the 10 months since Katrina made her presence known. It is a prime example of how the short attention span of the American sheeple works. The hurricane and her flood-causing aftermath made for great headlines until we all got bored and tired of the story. Life went on (for everybody not directly affected by Katrina, that is), and as long as nothing interrupted the broadcasts of "American Idol", we generally didn't bother to concern ourselves with what I really believe is history in the making.

As several bloggers from the city continue to point out on behalf of the decimated population, things are not OK in New Orleans. The city made headlines again briefly at the beginning of the week, when a quintuple murder prompted the mayor and governor to call in the cavalry. The National Guard was summoned to patrol abandoned neighborhoods so that the strained city police force could actually do some policing in the ares where people are actually living. And when I say living, I mean surviving from day-to-day. Life in the city for a large percentage of the population was a struggle before the storm, and obviously, things really haven't improved since.

The violence, however abhorrent it may be, isn't the real news here. The real news is that a major American city has experienced total devastation and for the most part, people don't care. According to a city population study done in January, only 14% of the pre-Katrina population has returned to flood-damaged areas. The New York Times reported the other day that suicide and depression are rampant and that more than half of the area's psychiatrists and other mental health workers are gone. The fire department is understaffed and underequipped, having to rely on Coast Guard helicopters to scoop waters from the nearby lakes and canals so that urban fires don't get out of control. Several locals have taken to calling the city "Debrisville" as mounds of trash from demolished homes sit in fetid piles waiting to be picked up.

Our group will in all likelihood be deconstructing a house somewhere so that it can be rehabilitated. Ten months after the storm, there are still thousands of houses with molded carpet and belongings, refrigerators filled with pre-Katrina groceries, and the occasional 10-month old dead body.

No, New Orleans is definitely not OK. Meanwhile, it seems like America has cut and run.

All this begs the question of why we (our mission group) are bothering to take part in an effort that has all the outward signs of rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. It took southern Florida more than a decade to recover from Hurricane Andrew; some would argue it still hasn't completely recovered. America has Katrina Fatigue and would rather throw in the towel on New Orleans rather than actually working to find solutions to poverty in the midst of plenty, because that would take too much effort.

Well, as as a famous musician (not a policeman) once said, "We're on a mission from God." It's part of our duty (as an alleged Christian nation) to care for the least of these, especially since we Wesleyan types believe that we need some works mixed in to make our faith truly come alive.

I'm excited and ready to go. I'll see old friends and hopefully make some new ones. We'll laugh, we'll cry, we'll listen. We'll work together to keep hope alive for those who need it.

See you in a week.

I'm wondering....

I've been reading about the disaster in the delta region of our country through a New Orleans paper that is miraculously still publishing, at least on the internet, giving much desired news about the devastation to those of us who sit comfortably from a distance in awe, shock and horror.

One reason our home has been paying such close attention to the situation is because, as you all know, New Orleans is Frank’s childhood home; he lived there until he was 14. The city that holds his childhood memories has drown and there is a certain amount of grief that accompanies that coupled with the empathy many of us feel for the plight of those who rode the storm out. Another reason is that I, like many watch searching for clues on how I can help.

We've all heard those being displaced by floods and the destruction of the hurricane as "evacuees" in the last day the term "refugee" has been used more and more frequently. Imagine, you've been told to leave your town, you have no access to basic necessities like food and clean water, you have no idea what the next few hours hold for you, let alone the next few days and weeks.

Then I recalled the experience I had with our church youth at the Heifer Ranch in 2000 in what they call the "Global Village". Our group, along with the others at the camp, spent a night in a situation that simulated the differences found between the developing and undeveloped parts of the world.

We split up into new communities of people: Appalachia, Africa, Honduras (they had access to running water!), the Barrio, Asia (the mosquitoes were very big), and a group of Refugees, one of whom was "pregnant" which meant a water balloon secured with duct-tape inside the T-shirt one of them wore. The adult leaders were told that our role was to be a 2 year old toddler; they youth were in charge of decision making.

We were left there with the instructions that no one was to leave the village for the night and that there was enough food in the village for everyone to eat, although the food was not evenly distributed among the communities. Honduras had the most resources, including food and didn’t have to share with the rest of us if they didn’t want to; the refugees had nothing, not even a place to lay their heads. As I recall none of the refugees were from our church, but I do remember what an impact in made on me to see a small group of three wander around, asking for work to earn some food, to earn a place to stay for the night.

Our plight was not nearly as desperate as the situation in the Delta. Human nature being what it is we too had our share of "looting"--a member of the Barrio snuck back to the Heifer Hilton's soda machine and brought goodies back for his community. We had our share of "cheating" too; members who'd illegally brought candy into the village used it to "bribe" the 2 year olds into being quiet about breaking other rules. But we also knew that when it was over we'd get to take a shower, get into fresh clothes, and be able to cook a meal where no one would have to even worry about going hungry. And within a few days back to our homes in Missouri with our families and our “stuff”.

As I recall the experience we shared as we spent a night in another world, I wonder: what will our response to the situation in front of us will be? There are so many resources for us to pull together to share, what are you going to do? I look forward to hearing your ideas.

Peace, the Rev

Water, water everywhere

New Orleans, my beloved city, is drowning, and it is absolutely breaking my heart.

I imagine that for many people, it must seem like the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah or the fall of Babylon, but for me, it's the loss of my childhood home. Even though it's been more than 20 years since I lived there (if you count the two years I spent at Loyola University in the late 1980's, then it's more like 15 years), I still feel a closer connection to The Big Easy than I do to either Chicago (where I was born, and where the majority of my blood relatives live) or Atlanta (where we moved to after I finished 8th grade in school).

It seems a little bit silly, but for me it's almost as if I'm watching my childhood die right in front of my eyes (via TV and the internet). I take some comfort in the confidence that the people I know and care about there surely did the smart thing and got out before Hurricane Katrina blew through the area. Still, it will never be the same again. Tens of thousands of houses will have to be rebuilt after having been submerged in the flood waters from Lake Pontchartrain and the Industrial Canal.

I was planning to go there in October for a work-related conference, but that is almost assuredly out of the question at this point. It's more likely that my next trip there will be as part of a relief effort with UMCOR (The United Methodist Committee on Relief) than a pleasure trip.

The ironic thing is that for a while it seemed that New Orleans had once again, through its mystical powers, managed to escape the forces of mother nature, only to be surprised by a failure of its floodwalls. I am told that at present the Mississippi River is calm and almost blue in color. For me, it's an eerily unnatural picture of the river; churned-up mud and silt has always been a sign of the city's status as a hub of water-borne commerce.