in medias res

M-i-s-s-i-s-s-i-p-p-i

I always associate Mississippi with a song my younger brother David made up on a trip to the Midwest when we were kids. It has no recognizable tune or logic. It goes, "Miss-sis-ssiiIIIIIiiii-uh-pee. Miss-sis-ssiiIIIIIiiii-uh-pee. Said the lady, I'll beee yer frieeeend... (repeat....repeat....repeat.... repeat....repeat....repeat). He sang it until Chris and I attacked him.

That has nothing to do with the rest of this post.

Okay, so some time at the end of last semester, I agreed to go on a trip to New Orleans to work on houses from Hurricane Katrina. I agreed and then quietly waited to see if the trip would actually materialize. Even though the first time we met as a group was three days before we were to leave, everything came together really well. I bought a sleeping bag, expendable clothing from Goodwill (a DARE t-shirt!), and wrecking gear - which included a "Wrecking Bar", safety goggles, leather work gloves, and a scarf with skulls on it.

I love my wrecking bar. It's like a crowbar on steroids.

Friday afternoon, we loaded up several different cars
and headed over to Mississippi. It felt a little like a youth group trip, and I felt younger. I even spent a few minutes gazing out the window and wondering about where my life was headed. (New Orleans was the only answer I came up with.) The group from my church had a few upperclassmen, but mostly first year students that could have easily been my students. I tried not to play that part of things up in conversation too much.

When we got there late-ish on Friday night, a group of conservative Mennonite youth were playing volleyball and someone broke out an accordian. I spent the whole weekend trying to correct myths about the Mennonites and Amish. The camp where we stayed had been built by Mennonite Disaster Service. The camp at Pass Christian, Mississippi was beyond beautiful. Live Oak trees on the Gulf Coast.

Early Saturday morning, we all had breakfast and split into our respective workgroups. I decided to hop in the car with people I had only briefly met. We had a great time! On the way there, we were listening to music that was popular when I was in high school and they were in elementary school!!! We got lost in New Orleans, only to be rejected by the very confused owner of the house who, I assume, had been waiting for a very long time for help and wasn't really expecting it anymore when it finally came. It made me sick to think about how much people must have been using the storm to try to rip people off, and now they were distrustful. After unsuccessful attempts to go talk to her, we left to join the other group working on a 4-story/level house across town.

Because the house hadn't been touched since Hurricane Katrina, we had to wear safety gear to go anywhere near it. I was really impressed with how hard everyone worked. All day long, we hauled, ripped, crushed, and piled the debris. By the end of the day, we had all of the rooms stripped and only two hadn't been completely cleared out. I'll admit, I lost a little steam about halfway through the day when I found out that the house was actually on the market. It felt much better to think that we might be actually helping people get back into their own house. I decided that it didn't matter - we were there to do a job, and we needed to do it well. Either way, it meant one step closer to the community being revitalized.

By the way, the two neighborhoods we visited were mostly vacant. The first neighborhood where we were rejected, was not nearly as nice as the second neighborhood. Realizing that it took thirty of us an entire day to clean out one house made it seem like New Orleans would never be rebuilt. There is still so much to do, and it felt helpless. As a country, I think we're all still feeling helpless, but we've also moved on and forgotten about how different it is. If I lived in some parts of New Orleans today, I would think that watching television would either be a huge addiction or the most depressing thing in the world. The "reality" of American life showed on tv is so disparate from what it looks like in these untouched areas.

People came by to talk to us and to thank us all day. The guy across the street (with the weird angels hanging from his front porch) told us about how he and his family had to be airlifted off of the roof of their house. One guy out walking his dog told us about how he was really discouraged and depressed and trying to clean out his house when a work group came by and helped him get the whole thing done in a day. He talked about how much that helped him.

By that evening, we were a good kind of exhausted. We gathered around an even bigger fire on the beach that night. I think I was in bed by 11pm?

The trip wasn't anything super-eventful. I had a great time, and it's back to life as usual. Well...as "normal" as life can get when you own a super-duper wrecking bar!




PICTURES:
1) my wrecking bar
2) the first house that we didn't clean
3) the view from the camp, looking to the beach
4) the santa I appointed as the guardian of the trash pile
5) the trash pile at the four story/level house
6) one of the creepy angels that guarded the house across the street
7) It's true - you can't beat Wagner's meat! (When we were lost, we turned around at this convenience store.)

posted by tara @ 11:00 PM