On the porch at the Breaux House
Sunday:
Our flight was supposed to leave Albany at 5:30 or so. Yeah, not so much. It was going to O'Hare Airport in Chicago, which was apparently experiencing a small Armageddon at the time, so we were delayed by three hours. There was a concern that we would miss our connecting flight, which would strand us there until 9:15 the next evening and cause us to miss our first day of work entirely. Some members of our 14 person group wanted this to happen so that we could be on the news as those people sleeping in the airport. Fortunately, we made it to Chicago with about 10 minutes to catch our flight to New Orleans...in O'Hare Airport. This could be rough, if, that is, our gate wasn't RIGHT next to the one we had just landed at.
We arrived in New Orleans at about...um..late. I don't remember when. Just late. We went straight from the airport to our bed and breakfast via taxi and met briefly with Brett, our host. As soon as we could, we all went straight to bed. On the way, we realized that in my room, there was an amazing view of the city from our bathroom window.
Monday:
We delayed the start of work for our first day after the travel drama we had experienced the day before. The food that we had requested was not all there, so we substituted other items and instead of following the list that we had checked off earlier, basically just grabbed whatever was available. Then we played with Brett's animals for a bit, while some of the girls fell in love with his infant son. Okay okay, everyone fell in love with his infant son. Oh, and we soaked up a bit of sunshine and 80 degree weather, which was an almost absurd change from Albany. (Fun fact: the northeast had a snow storm this day. It was delightful to give weather reports to the people back home.)
When we left for work around 11, we went to the school we were to spend most of the week at: McDonogh 42 Charter Elementary School. The person who was directing our work from Relief Spark (the organization that we worked with), Sydney, brought us in and gave us some almost tasks before going with our chaperones to pick up vans and supplies. Sydney had a scary little baby named Esteban (his father is Spanish...) who screamed basically the entire ride. I'm afraid of babies. That was wonderful.
Shortly after we began painting, a couple of students and I poked our head into the lunch room and began talking to the cafeteria ladies. They invited us in and served us food. Their generosity and friendliness was something that we were able to get used to for that week. Even in this rather poor area, the kids, teachers and staff members like this were impossible generous and giving to us.
Another group from Temple University was working at the school as well. They weren't the friendliest, but were only with us that one day. Overall, there wasn't much organization that day and we wound up figuring out our own tasks, which included picking up trash in the school yard and tutoring kids. That may have been the best part: tutoring fifth graders. After work, we had a bit of a venting session before eating delicious food, going on a supply run to WalMart and then to the French Quarter, where we began a weeklong tour of souvenir shops (more about this later).
Tuesday:
This felt like a much more productive day, though it began with the threat of being much more idle than the day before. We worked at the Habitat Restore that day, something the Habitat Restore was apparently unaware of at the beginning. Another school was working there all week so they were not sure if there would be enough work for us. This proved not to be the case at all. We swept, organized materials and painted the entryway and columns throughout the store. It was a great day there. The store does good work. When a house is deconstructed, materials are often donated to the Restore. Then they are sold for almost nothing. In any city, this is a blessing, but especially in a place that is still recovering from Katrina. I don't really remember what we did after work. It's the only night that is really blank, but I don't remember going out or anything. Maybe that was the night that we saw Bourbon Street.
Wednesday:
On this day, the work got hard. This was the day we began gutting a house on school grounds that they were interested in turning into a community center. We had to wait until later in the morning to begin because we had to wait for Sydney to arrive with release forms. I'm guessing that Esteban made a peep on the way, so she had to pull over and breastfeed him for an hour or so. Sorry, nothing against Sydney, she was a very sweet person, just a bit strange.
So after we signed the legal documents and Sydney explained that if anything happened to us, we were basically screwed, we began gutting. First we moved everything that could be saved to part of the house, and filled a trash barrel with other things. One of those things was a teddy bear. That might have been the moment where it all hit home with me. To see a teddy bear sitting on at the top of a trash can of a house being gutted is simply heartbreaking.
After we did that, we worked on the kitchen cabinets and taking out fixtures in general. Then came the fun part. Taking crowbars and hammers to plaster walls with slatboards underneath. If you ever have an excess amount of aggression, this is how you should deal with it. But uh, make sure that the house you're gutting isn't occupied at the time. Just a thought.
That night, we toured Saint Bernard's Parish, one of the hardest-hit areas. We stopped on one street where the group had worked in a previous year, to see the houses they had worked on finished or nearly finished. One very nice woman invited us into a house they had worked on, telling us about buying another house from her elderly neighbor, which she planned to fix and rent to her. (The neighbor passed away soon after, but the gesture was uplifting nonetheless.) After we left her gorgeous and completely finished home, we drove to another neighborhood where some impromptu assistance was given in prior years to some absolutely wonderful people. Those who were there in previous years got to visit those they helped, which was a great thing. We were really tired though, and between that and not having the connection (but at least seeing it), the trip seemed to just keep going. We got home rather late, and there was, to sugar coat the story, tons of confusion with the restaurant. All in all, a good day turned into a very tiring night.
To be continued...because this took all weekend to write (I had little free time) and it's 1:30 AM on Monday.
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