I’ve been
wanting to get to New Orleans ever since August of 2005, when Hurricane Katrina
ravaged the city and Gulf Coast region with the worst natural disaster in
American history. At the time, though, I had an infant and a toddler at home,
so it wasn’t easy to leave them for a service trip halfway across the country.
This year, though, I was asked to chaperone six teens to New Orleans for the
Evangelical Lutheran Church in America’s triennial national youth gathering.
One of our five days in New Orleans would be dedicated to service. With my kids
now older, it was a better time to leave them and my wife and get myself to the
Big Easy. Last week, we made our trip.
I was
impressed with the degree to which New Orleans’ main tourist districts are
still thriving. Led by its delicious food, vibrant music and festive atmosphere,
the city has shown an astounding determination to survive. But when we took a
bus trip to the Seventh Ward last week for our day of service, the atmosphere
was different. In the area we visited, it seemed as if 60 percent of the houses
were renovated, while the remaining 40 percent were abandoned or boarded up,
with vegetation growing unchecked. I know that other sections of the city are
in even worse condition than this. Many individuals have chosen not to return
to New Orleans, and have started their lives over again in new cities and
states. This is the biggest heartbreak of New Orleans, post-Katrina – that it
still, at times, resembles a third-world country. In the United States of
America.
Some of the
New Orleans residents who are rebuilding their homes have received help from
the government and from non-profit organizations. Our work last week involved collaboration
with Habitat for Humanity. As we arrived at the homes we’d be painting on North
Villere Street, teens and adults from states across the country hopped out of
two buses and started covering the outsides of two homes with colored paint –
one of them teal, the other army green. The teens from my church painted the
porch of the teal-colored home, while my fellow chaperone and I took on the
side of the house. As we dipped and brushed, the homeowner of the green house arrived
along with her brother. In true Habitat spirit, they grabbed paintbrushes and
got to work as well.
When we had
finished painting the teal house, I helped put away the ladders, then walked
over to the homeowner’s brother. I asked him what the experience of Hurricane
Katrina had meant to him. He answered with an optimism that surprised me: “Katrina
was meant to come to New Orleans because it taught us how to get away,” he
said. “So many people here only knew New Orleans, but Katrina forced us to
leave and learn about other places.”
New
Orleans, he said, will always be home. But the evacuation had helped him to
make an informed decision on whether or not he wanted to live here, he said. I
asked him if New Orleans will survive this. “Oh yeah,” he said, adding that the
city’s residents wouldn’t give this town up because “we love to party too much.”
When I asked him if America had forgotten New Orleans, he pointed to people
like us who were venturing out of the tourist zones for the first time, in
order to help.
The bus was
packing up, as we had finished painting the teal house, with the green one
nearly done as well. I shared with the man how much I’d been wanting to get to
New Orleans for the past seven years. Now that I was here, though, it felt like
such a small thing. A few hours of help on one house, out of the many thousands
still in need of love and labor.
The young
man turned to me and said what I knew to be true: “Every little bit helps.” From
what I can see, America has not forgotten New Orleans. But there is still so
much to be done there. It is one of our truly unfinished jobs. I am home again
now, but I don’t think it will take seven years for me to get back again. I’ve
got paint-stained clothes to remind me.
1 comment:
Loved this, love the message you are sending along, the gift you are giving your children as they are witness to your good deeds.
I've never been to New Orleans and I truly look forward to the day... perhaps on a mission!
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