- Pictures -
Time for an off-topic blog post. I decided that, although my trip to New Orleans has nothing to do with my stay in Germany, it will provide a little context to the rest of the blog.
I recently got back from New Orleans after my fourth mission trip to the area. I have been going with my church youth group, which has since paired with the youth group of St. Raphael church. We make these trips in an effort to rebuild after Katrina and Rita, the hurricanes that caused so much damage to New Orleans and the surrounding areas. This year marks the sixth anniversary of the disaster, and there are still huge amounts of construction that have yet to be done.
Our first trip was three years after the storm, and our group was comprised of seven teenagers and four adults. We worked on one house. This year, the sixth after the storm, our group contained a total of thirty people. We split into smaller groups, and worked on a huge number of properties; getting jobs done all over the city. We did painting, demolition, drywalling, flooring and everything in between. It's truly an amazing feeling to be able to see the annual trip grow and change so much, as more and more people become interested in helping out.
But now for the actual purpose of this post. I'd like to tell you all about what I've been working on so soon before leaving for Germany.
I'm one of five veteran members of the group - people who have gone on every mission trip since St. Francis church began its efforts. I love going each year to see the growth of the city, to meet new people, to learn new skills, and to get the job done. This year was no exception.
I began the week at the home of a woman named Ms. Bonnie, whose single-wide trailer needed to be prepared for rebuilding. On the first day my team of seven was assigned the job of demolishing the old walls and insulation so they could be replaced. If you've ever handed a teenager a sledgehammer, you know the true definition of glee. We worked with crowbars and even our bare hands to get the walls removed, and the entire trailer was bare to the studs long ahead of schedule. We did, at one point, have to rush out to avoid an angry nest of hornets which was living in the molding insulation, but even despite the delay we were the first team to finish our job that day.
The second day we were surprised with the news that we would be switching job sites. All of the groups shuffled around, and everyone ended up doing new things in different parts of the city. My new team of seven was tasked with the job of cleaning out an empty duplex. The building was old and beautiful, filled with antique and decaying wood. We spend the day hauling beams and boards out to a colossal dumpster. Each piece of wood was filled with rusting nails, so we had to be very careful with each and every removal. However, we again finished the job early and mutually agree that the job was the best of our entire stay. It's hard to describe why such a demanding job was so fun, but I can at least say I felt much more useful there than I would have if I had been tasked with painting.
The next two days were spent back with my original group at the home of Ms. Bonnie, who served us traditional red beans and rice at lunchtime (Red beans and rice tastes great, but it tastes much better after half a day of work in a hot trailer). While we were cleaning out the duplex, another team had come through and given Ms. Bonnie walls and insulation to replace those we had demolished. Our new job was to mud them - a process which covers cracks, imperfections, and holes so that the walls can be painted. On Saturday we said goodbye to Ms. Bonnie, leaving a walled and mudded home ready for its first coat of paint.
Sunday was spent attending a service at St. Augustine church, followed by a long, city-wide mission to visit homes that our teams have previously worked on. We saw homes that we finished, or that have been finished since we left and met with the people who now live inside of them. My favorite visit has always been to the home of Ms. Phoenix and Ms. Phillips, two sisters who live next door to each other and whose duplex we insulated and walled. They thanked us each day we worked on their home by serving us traditional New Orleans food, and seem just as happy to see us each year as we are to visit them. After all of those stops, we finally got free time in the French quarter, which we spent shopping and exploring while trying to get shelter from a sudden and massive thunderstorm.
The rest of the week was a bit odd. We had to leave St. Bernard Project -the organization with whom we worked for the first four days- because they had received too many volunteers. Instead, we moved to St. Paul's Homecoming center, an organization which didn't give construction jobs to volunteers, but instead sent us to worksites where we could paint, clean, or even do yard work. Although I know that these jobs are just as important in many ways, it felt a little strange to go from demolition and wall installation to a paint job that they swore would take three days, and instead took us a day and a half (including excessive breaks). In any case, we did all the jobs they assigned to us and more, and I ended up working on three different sites in four days.
I don't actually know the number of sites where we worked, but I know for a fact that it is bigger than ever before. Our group has grown so much that we've gone from a trip in which we work on one site to one in which I alone work on six different locations.
And now for why all of this matters. By doing work, we of course save the homeowner money on labor, which is the most expensive part of rebuilding. Besides that, we also do not so obvious things. For one, we help people who no longer trust contractors, or those who have lost their money to false contractors. Ms. Phoenix and Ms. Phillips claim to have been cheated out of their rebuilding money on three separate occasions, to the point where they both could and would not hire any more help. Our team was one in a line of similar teams to help after a local pastor noticed their need. Out of all of this, the most important and least obvious effect of what we do is hope. New Orleans was the center of so many problems post-Katrina, including bureaucratic negligence and red tape. Many residents of New Orleans were left on their roofs or at locations like the superdome for days with little to no help. After the flooding went away and people came back, people were still left without homes or even the hope of rebuilding or fixing what they had. They dealt with contractor fraud, looting, and a myriad of other problems and, understandably, began to feel all but forgotten. That is precisely where we come in. Teams like ours go to the area not only to rebuild, but to show the people of New Orleans that they are not and will never be forgotten. We build their homes when no one else would, we listen to their stories, and we try to fix what we can. Of course, volunteers cannot substitute for skilled contractors, but we do the best that we can and give homes and hope to those that would never have received them otherwise.
I know this post is long, but to be perfectly honest I left out a lot. There is so much to be said on the subject that I could write for days and never repeat myself. Thank you so much for reading this.
P.S. - I might just have to change or edit this post a bit, as I wrote this in one sitting and I'm certainly forgetting things. Any edits will be listed here.
Edit 1: Link to picasa attached (top)
