Another NOLA Post

I just got back to my appt after flying back to the cities. It has been a wonderful, long, emotional, intense, and many other emotions week. I will post another reflection in a day or two after I've had some time to rethink a lot of the stuff we have done, but below is what I have been writing for the week now that I finally have internet access again.

3/23/07

I find it extremely difficult to believe it is already Friday and we’ve been here a whole week.

Lets start with Monday. On Monday morning we woke up and started working with the church again, some students worked with Minh who is a beautiful gardener who volunteers for the church and she isn’t even a member. Other group members continued work on the fence. That evening we were invited to a bbq that one of the church members held and we met with the group that stayed in the house before us. They were stranded in NO due to the bad weather in the upper east. On a lighter note we saw the first ice cream truck while working. This is an ice cream truck that I feel has followed us around the city. It has a terribly annoying song that starts with a high pitched annoying “Hello!” and then continues with a song I can’t place in my directory of children’s songs. That evening most of the group went to Xavier University and looked around for a bit and then the majority of the group went out while Sharon, Jenny, and myself decided to go check out Hands On and see what they were up to that night. While going to Hands On we saw a spontaneous Mardi Gras Indian Parade. I’ll explain as much as I’m figuring out about this strange and unique phenomena. NOLA is known for Mardi Gras but many people just see the superficial partying that goes on. There are deep cultural roots to this annual celebration and I only know a little of it. There are at least two different groups the Mardi Gras Indians and the Mardi Gras Zulus. The Zulus are Afro-centric while the Indians are Native American/Afro-centric. The Indians go out and have spontaneous parades all day Mardi Gras day and all night on St. Joseph’s night. They dress up in these amazing feather costumes and march and chant and sing, it is really a sight to see. Each tribe starts on its own and decides where to go at the moment, they have no plans prior to the event. When any two groups meet they have a sparring to decide if one group can pass by the other. Right in front of Hands On when we were there we saw about 5 or 6 different groups all meeting and ‘sparring’ and chanting. It was incredibly interesting! I’ll try to find more information about it later. We also met Theodore George and his Grandson. They are two African-American males who both graduated from Dillard University and it was a lot of fun talking with them and learning about the Mardi Gras Indians and what they usually do as well as getting some dance lessons from Theodore George III (grandson). The whole evening was one of those random, spontaneous experiences that only seem to happen to me in NOLA. It was truly wonderful!

Tuesday we worked with La Vang (the church) in the morning If anyone is interested in learning more about the church the website is www.lavangshrine.net. Then we had a 1:00 meeting with Reverend Bowman who is the chaplain at Dillard University. She led us on a tour and it was great to see this University in such great community. We were able to sit down and chat with some students who were hanging out in the middle of the University. All of their gorgeous oak trees survived save one. I am currently wondering if the sense of community was there prior to Katrina or if it is a result of the disaster. The student population was significantly lower than pre-Katrina enrollment but the students and staff were the some of the most friendly I’ve ever met. Then we had a 2:00 meeting with Heidi Daniels who is a professor of education and the school board rep for the 9^th ward. She talked about her advocacy work with all the different communities and her role as school board rep. She gave many many statistics, most of which I can’t remember. One that sticks out in my mind is that post –Katrina there are about 800 – 1000 teachers that have returned but only 300 of them are certified teachers. Also there was a great advantage to Katrina regarding the school system. The school system in NOLA is and was terrible, but the fact that many families were able to go elsewhere during the storm and enroll their children in other school systems parents and students see that they deserve a better school system and that the status quo needs to be changed. Hopefully more people will be fighting for a better school system with more equality. Following this meeting we met with the Father at Mary Queen church which is another Vietnamese church in East Orleans. The church we are staying with (La Vang) was a mission of Mary Queen. The Father talked a lot about how the city decided to put a large dump into the neighborhood surrounding Mary Queen that was something on the order of about 4 football fields in area, going 60 feet underground and 60 feet above the ground to dump waste from the flooding in. The Vietnamese community decided that they were ok with the dump but didn’t want it so large and smelly so they asked the city to shrink the size and not allow it above the treeline and to put a synthetic shield over the top. The city basically shrugged them off and therefore the community decided to fight the entire project. They were able to halt the dumping of wastes and are working to get the city to remove the stuff they’ve already placed there. During this debate the Vietnamese community joined with the African –American community because both live in the vicinity surrounding the dump and together were able to accomplish this. The Vietnamese community discovered that the African-American community had been fighting a similar battle (there was a dump 50 feet from part of the community’s back yards). Together they were able to halt the dumping there and begin to make the area livable. This situation really gives me hope and just goes to show that diversity and intercultural/interracial connections are necessary for us to get things done in this world. The government was using the divide and conquer technique and it was working until the two communities that were divided came together. Tuesday night we also got together with all of the other HU students down here and had a large group reflection. It was held at the church here and Father Anton showed up and told his story and the story of the church during the flood. I’ll try to retell it but most of you know how terrible of a story teller I am. Father Anton, Father Luke, and a couple other people were staying at the church because they had come to be together during the storm. Once the storm was over they walked out into the street and quickly noticed that the streets were filling with water and the water was rising so they set out into the community to find as many people as they could and get them into the second story of a home they owned. They ended up staying there for several days and when the water was so high they decided to get another group of people (about 18) and bring them to the church. They were in another house in the neighborhood and running out of food. So Father Anton took the ladder he had taken up to the second story and climbed onto the roof and used the ladder to stretch across from rooftop to rooftop to get to the other group of people and bring them to the second story where they were staying. They ended up waiting out the flooding and finally a rescue boat came but Father Luke felt he couldn’t leave his church so he stayed for a few more days and finally when he was out of food and everyone else had been rescued he was airlifted by a helicopter and made it on CNN (if anyone saw that).

Wednesday we began the day by cleaning out storm drains in the Lower 9^th ward. The city normally cleans the drains to keep them from stopping up but has not been doing anything since Katrina and a few residents commented that they didn’t even do it before Katrina. Due to the lack of drain cleaning the streets still flood if there is significant rain in a short period of time. It was sobering and very emotionally intense to spend an entire day in the 9^th ward. There are still some houses that are standing very few have even been gutted let alone work being done on them to fix them. One of the houses that was right where we were cleaning a drain there was an open window that looked into what used to be a little girls room. There was a Dora the Explorer poster on her wall, and a cabbage patch doll that reminded me of the doll I used to call Suzie. Her bedding was little pink flowers. In the living room (there was a large hole in the wall) there were still family pictures pasted up on the wall, the ceiling fan was still in place but all the fan things were drooping down towards the floor. It was very sad to be constantly thinking of all of the families who lost not only belongings but family members due to this terrible tragedy. That evening we stopped by Common Ground which is where we were going to originally stay. It was huge and apparently there are 500 people staying there. Large operation! We then came back to the house cleaned up and a few of us spent some time in the French Quarter and ate Beniegts at Café du Mond.

Thursday morning we had the levee field trip. The same field trip I took last year with the same professor from Tulane. There were some additional facts he told us but for the most part it was what I learned last year except this year he was much more adamant about placing blame and finding the responsible party and making sure they were held responsible for their actions. The responsible party for anyone who doesn’t know is the Army Corp of Engineers. They screwed up and used outdated definitions for what a category 3 hurricane was and used wrong definitions for what the worse hurricane was that could hit NOLA in 100 years (this is the strength they were supposed to build the levees to). I’m pretty sure I talked about this in my blogging from last year’s trip so be sure to check that out. Yesterday afternoon we worked with the church and then went to a play entitled “Rising Water” that was “a New Orleans love story”. It was good, it told a personal story and made the loss very intimate.

This morning we went to City Park and planted bulrush, irises, magnolia trees, and oyster grass with a bunch of high schoolers and some students from Yale. It was a lot of fun and a great experience. Then Sharon, Cindy and myself went to see Elenora from last year. Check out the blogging from last year to see what a wonderful woman she is and what an amazing man her husband is (very cute too)! I’ll be sure to let you know what else is happening tonight and tomorrow morning for our final large group reflection.