Day 2 - City Tour and First Work Day: Monday, April 2, 2012

 Today we started working, but not until 12:30, so we had time to drive through the city and see some sights before our work orientation. We woke up early this am to a delicious, hot sausage and egg breakfast cooked by James, one of the several talented chefs at Annunciation Mission. Our plan was to stop in a few places on the way to the St. Bernard Project office (more about the organization we are working with a little further down the page). Our first stop was the world-famous French Quarter and Jackson Square, where ESPN had their coverage tent set up for the Final Four final game later that evening. It was about 9 am and we could sense the Quarter just starting to wake up, undoubtedly to begin another day of revelry (well, I guess that depends on who you wanted to win!) The people I spoke with about it said the city was electrified by the whole event. Yes, New Orleans still knows how throw a party!

Our next stop was a little more serious. Part of our immersion experience is educating ourselves about the people we are helping and the context in which they live. We had an opportunity to visit the Lower Ninth Ward, one of the neighborhoods that suffered the most devastation. This is where many of the images that we saw on TV came from: people on rooftops, with no water in the hot sun waiting to be rescued. More than 4,000 homes were lost in the Lower Ninth Ward during Katrina. At the same time, the Lower Ninth had a higher rate of homeownership prior to the storm than any other neighborhood in New Orleans. Families have lived in this neighborhood for generations. However, this is small consolation because a disproportionate number of residents here lost their lives in Katrina, and many, for a number of complicated reasons, have not yet been able to return.

We took a driving tour this morning of the community and saw first-hand the effects of both the storm's destruction and the community's hope for rebuilding. We saw the disaster close-up when we saw the incredible amounts of empty lots, houses completely gone except for the concrete footprint. We witnessed hope in the funky new housing that Brad Pitt has created through his Make It Right foundation www.makeitrightnola.org. This is eco-friendly housing designed to get the original owners back in the neighborhood. We saw the devastation in some of the houses that still bear the scars of Katrina, especially the "X" mark that has become so much part of the backdrop of the lives of people here. Search and rescue teams used spray paint to mark each house with an "X" after they searched it. In the top quadrant was the date, the left indicated who searched, ie. the Arizona National Guard, the right side indicated hazards anyone else coming to the house should be aware of, like TFW for toxic flood water. In the bottom quadrant, the rescuers indicated the number of bodies they found. From this, though, we found hope at the Katrina Memorial, a memorial to both the victims and a symbol of hope. Dedicated one year following the storm, it has a frame to represent a new home, empty chairs and a remaining foundation to represent those lost in the storm, and the blue columns indicate the different levels of water during the storm (see photo below). We stood at the ground zero, the wall of the Industrial Canal, at the very place the levee was breached and the devastating floodwaters literally tore houses from their foundations and imagined the horror(see photo below). Finally, we witnessed the hope dished out daily by Mack and Smitty at the Lower Ninth Ward Village, the community center that has become the heart of this community. This part of our experience again is vital to understanding the "Why?" of our trip, and gives us the motivation and conviction to do the difficult but soul-satisfying work we came to do.

 After a brief orientation at the St. Bernard Project, we drove to our worksite for the next three days. I'll include the link here for the organization and their mission www.stbernardproject.org. We agreed to take the afternoon shift and the boys got right to task. We are working on a house in the Seventh Ward, only a few minutes away from where we worked last year. I'll share a little about the owner in tomorrow's edition, but she has not lived in New Orleans since the storm. The house is ready to be painted after being prepped by the morning crew. Our job today was doing some painting prep, and then we put the first coat of paint on the walls. What a difference a little paint makes! A few guys also whacked the overgrown weeds in the backyard, a monster job in the 85 degree humidity! We also did other routine construction cleaning jobs, which were certainly not as much fun but necessary to move the project forward. With each task, the guys jumped right in and volunteered without hesitating or complaining. Check out the pics of our boys in action! Ms. A and I were extremely proud of our boys today.

We knocked off about 6:00 and headed back to Annunciation Mission for some well-deserved chow. We were thrilled to have James fix us the traditional Monday New Orleans dish: red beans and rice! It's understandable if your mouth gets a little watery or your stomach rumbles when you read this! Judging by the silence in the dining room as we ate, it was that good! We will talk to y'all tomorrow!