Arrived in New Orleans Yesterday. It has already been quite an overwhelming experience.
Rode down with Scott, who is from New Orleans and was sharing what it was like there both before and after Katrina. He had been back once before, shortly after Katrina.
As we drove into East New Orleans, I began to see the reality of not just the devastation of the hurricane, but the fact that there has been so little done to recover the city. We saw large complexes of apartments, abandoned. Office buildings, supermarkets, strip malls, all boarded behind vacant parking lots.
We arrived in North Ninth Ward, and at the House of Excellence, one of many buildings that Common Ground Collective has procured for their work. CGC is a completely volunteer run organization to aid in the recovery of the residence of New Orleans. I will not say more about them now, as you can (and I encourage you to) read all about them on their website.
House of Excellence (HOE) or "the hoe" as it is nicknamed houses CGC's administration offices, a computer lab for local residents, the CGC legal offices and the tech office which is where I will be working. I am helping Ted, who has been going it alone, for a few weeks now. There are 3 computer labs and about 5 offices with computers and it is our role to keep them all up and running. It has been a while since I have done this type of work, but I feel good about being able to help.
After learning about our role, we walked over to St. Mary's High School, the building that offers most of CGC's volunteers housing. The walk was beyond belief, again we saw house after house devastated by Katrina. After a year, about one house in 10 was to some level restored; the rest in various states of either boarded up, gutted, or with all of it's contents out front as if the house puked out its insides into the street. Power lines were down everywhere. Ted told me that this wasn't as bad as the Lower Ninth Ward.
St. Mary's School is a now abandoned 3 story Catholic high school that the local parish has offered to CGC in exchange for their renovation of the building when they are finished. There are simply not enough students around to occupy all the schools.
After a really nice meal, and an evening house meeting, I retired on my cot on the second floor in a classroom with about 8 others. There seemed to be about 80 volunteers in the building, but cots for many more. They are very short of volunteers right now and hoping there will be many coming in the fall. Most of the volunteers are either gutting buildings, or working on documenting and finding solutions to the toxic residues of both natural (mold etc.) and man made (chemicals such as fuel that leaked from compromised tanks) that are results of the storm.
I walked back to the HOE with another volunteer Trina who manages the computer lab. She like me, heard about the need for volunteers down here and took the train from New York. We took different streets than the night before, so I saw more of the same, house after house, unlivable, each having to be gutted before it can be rebuilt. Like a ghost town at times we saw very few people. A few houses were being restored by private contractors, but most waiting for someone to come and determine if it is worth restoration, or razing.
About Me
- Geoffrey
- It is better to love God and serve everyone rather than to try and figure It all out. After working in business management for both for-profit and non-profit businesses, I came to realize there must be something missing because I didn't see peace and happiness at the end of the path I was on. I then was blessed in learning about Peace Pilgrim whose message has gradually become the guiding force in my life. I have spent most of the last 12 years living in community as I feel that sharing resources, both material and personal is the most efficient means of living. During this time I was blessed to come into contact with many alternative ideas. I strive to be a very conscious consumer. If I need to buy something, I try to find out just where it came from and decide upon the source that has lead to the least suffering and the most sustainability. I sometimes find that others are very resistant to learning about this because it is much easier to walk into a store and buy what we thing we need. Since giving my life up to service, I have always had everything I needed provided, and living without a whole lot of possessions has made life much more rewarding and free.