2008 Service Trip to New Orleans

The hospitality that has been extended to our group while on this trip has been unlike anything that I’ve ever experienced. The volunteers who donate their time and energies to repairing this city are treated like royalty! I would like to personally thank the Vogel, Schneider, and Currence families for opening their homes to us and sharing their very touching stories about life post-Katrina and offering us their thoughts on the ongoing recovery efforts. The stories of these families and those of the other individuals we’ve encountered this week have made this trip memorable. I have been inspired this week to encourage classmates, friends, and family members to take ownership of New Orleans and vest their free time and energy in efforts that will help restore this unique city to its original glory. I would also implore our government to take a more active role in this capacity. With such a great amount of need remaining I realize that a full recovery for New Orleans and the surrounding areas will take several years, but I can see that the job of recovery has been made unduly difficult by our largely unresponsive federal government. How a government could be so absent from an area so completely devastated by natural disaster completely boggles my mind. Contemplating our departure tomorrow has also made me realize how great an impact can be made in such a short period of time. I can say with a great deal of certainty that there are individuals that our group has met this week that will live in our minds forever. My only regret is that I did not have more time to share with these folks. I can’t wait to see how much has improved when I return.

Many of the locations that we’ve visited have visible water marks that reach as high as 15 feet. A local man told us that these marks were formed only after the flood waters had settled several weeks after the storm had passed. All of the folks that we’ve spoken with have stressed that these marks do not even begin to reflect how high the flood waters reached at their highest levels. On our drive to the St. Bernard Parrish community resource center, I noticed that the vast majority of houses have been marked with a large “X”. We were told that these marks signified that the house had been checked after the storm. We also learned that that number found just below the “X” represents the number of people that clean-up crews found dead in each house. Our drive home after our work for the day was complete took on a much different tenor than our morning departure. I found myself paying more attention to the large, spray-painted numbers and water marks on the houses we passed than to the road and heavy New Orleans traffic in front of me. Many of the houses we passed had numbers other than zero on their fronts. I found strange irony in the fact that many of these very visible X’s were painted in blood red. I cannot understand how a city can be expected to heal after such a great tragedy when such visible and macabre reminders of the day that permanently altered the lives of so many remain present on nearly every street corner two and a half years later. The people of New Orleans seem like a VERY resilient group but I think that even they would admit that seeing these marks on their morning drives to work, on the way to the grocery store, and in nearly every other public space conjures up memories and images that by now they’d rather forget. With each day and with every new encounter, I am reminded of how truly blessed and fortunate I am.