N'awlins

So, New Orleans. It was good. Really good.

Drove to Urbana on Friday the 4th. Picked up the rental car (which, might I add, enterprise managed to get 10 vans out in about 20 minutes, it was SUPER impressive!). Sunday at 9am met up with the 4 boys that were piling in the car with me: Nik, Kevin, Luke, and Chi Sum. We ran about an hour of errands before finally hitting the road. The car ride was pretty uneventful (discussion inappropriate) other than getting stuck behind an accident for about an hour and a half. We arrived in Kenner, LA about 1:15am.

Sunday was spent touristing. We went down to the lower 9th ward and saw Brad Pitt's Make it Right project. Its a cool idea: if you're going to rebuild, do it sustainably. Some of the designs seem a bit out of control, but ultimately sustainable housing is cheaper for the inhabitants living there (in terms of utilities and maintenance, etc). I'll be interested to see what happens there. It's pretty haunting that after 2.5 years there are still steps that lead to nothing and lots that are completely run over. Apparently that concrete that is still there makes it really difficult to rebuild. After that we drove around a bit to Uptown and checked out some of the HUGE houses and a big park. Talked to some locals and heard their stories of when the hurricane hit.

Monday my group managed to get (really) lost and miss orientation. First house I worked on the owner gave us Beignets! Good start to a morning. The first day was a bit disheartening - the guy owns a duplex and it just seemed like he was probably going to sell it once it was finished - not really the same experience as working with someone who really can't get help otherwise. Then again, I don't really know his situation, but that was the impression that I got. It was interesting because the site was really disorganized - it was just us and the homeowner and no guidance from the site; luckily a few people had done drywall before. The group that was in before us REALLY botched the taping and mudding and left a lot to be sanded. That group had also put up regular dry wall in the bathroom, where moisture resistant drywall is needed. Its really a shame because a) its a waste of time b) a waste of materials. The price of drywall in NOLA is about 3x what it should be since there's such a high demand for it. Its that case where volunteers are clearly doing more harm than good that is super frustrating - good intentions that just fall short (in our case, lack of direction, if we messed up). Chili deliciousness for dinner by Kevin and Nik.

Tuesday was interesting. Had directions for a house that needed a bathroom drywalled - probably needed 3-5 people. Went back to the Station to recieve the case file for the house. Got the case file with keys and more info on what needed to be done, along with some tools. Two of the guys at the site were going to follow shortly with supplies - we show up at the house with about 11 people, because they think the whole house needs to be mudded/taped and painted. We show up, and there's a bathroom that needs to be painted but aside from that, the whole house is finished (and very crooked). Talk to the neighbors a bit, which was really interesting, and talked about the hike in rental rates since Katrina. We go back to the station and have lunch before we get directed to a new place. We go to a woman's house (packrat) and help her move some doors/wood out of the backyard and throw some stuff upstairs away, and removed a bunch of nails from the ceiling so that drywall can be put up. The homeowner was very interesting and has had a lot of unfortunate things happen to her since the hurricane - so many that it was really difficult to believe. Its definitely incredible that people have been living in FEMA trailers for the last 2 years - they're intended to be lived in for 6 months, and may contain formaldehyde, which poisons the residents. The plan was to meet our contact at a different site and help move some more stuff, but he never quite got there, so we drove around the city a bit and went back to the 9th ward. We got to see one of the Levee breach sites - my group was really patient with the whole "not having a lot of work to do" - we got to see a lot of the neighborhoods and compare and contrast, which was definitely good. There could have been a LOT more complaining.
Pasta for dinner, much deliciousness.

Wednesday we got a new address and show up at the house - and again, pretty much everything was finished. Walked around the neighborhood a bit (explored the school that was definitely not in use - seems like school was being held in trailers behind the school. Wednesday afternoon we finally got a site that was considered "ours" and we'd spend the rest of the week there. Wednesday we put insulation up in the ceiling of a small two bedroom house. Thursday and Friday were mostly spent dry walling the ceiling. My group had a lot of fun - we were one of the more diverse groups, in 11 people we had at least 2 people from every school on the trip. I really can't have imagined a better work group - we had a LOT of fun and did a really impressive job despite our newly acquired drywalling skills.

I want to be a big enough person not to feed talking negatively about other people, but I let my frustrations get the best of me.

I'm so grateful for the opportunity to go to NOLA. I got to meet about 40 new people from 3 different schools around the country. Did closeness questions with a group of about 10 people, which is always fun. Anonymous compliments by touches are amazing warm fuzzies. The whole trip was a nice escape from my own life. It's really crucial to get some people who can think logically down to New Orleans to organize the whole rebuilding effort. There are too many good intentions (and volunteers) that are wasting hours and resources because of a lack of direction or knowledge/skill. I'm kind of ashamed that I haven't been down to NOLA until now.

It's amazing what a difference the ability to afford Flood insurance makes (or the knowledge that flood insurance could be useful).