More from Margaret and Lou Church

 

This year, for our vacation, we wanted to do something useful as well as fun, so we decided to volunteer in the Katrina recovery effort. After thorough research, Margaret found the St. Bernard Project, online. She sent off an email and they replied almost immediately, saying that they’d be quite pleased to have our help. So we set the dates and made our plans.

 

One of the options when staying in the New Orleans area is to stay at Camp Hope, which offers dormitory accommodations, showers, and meals. We realized that the dormitory lifestyle just wasn’t us, so we stayed instead at a B&B—La Maison Marigny—on the edge of the French Quarter. (Even though it was the start of the high season for rentals, John, the innkeep, gave us discounted rates because we were coming down to volunteer.) Basically, we worked hard all day, and then enjoyed good food and fantastic music each evening; beat that with a stick!

 

We drove down from Maryland in early October, in a pickup loaded with donated tools and supplies. There was, just barely, enough room left in the cab of the truck for the two of us on the two-day road trip. We arrived Sunday afternoon and met Liz at the SBP office, where we unloaded the truck before going on a tour of the Parish and the Ninth Ward.

 

Liz showed us a house that SBP had nearly finished rebuilding, and then she showed us the house next door, which had yet to be gutted (all of the debris, including ceilings and wallboard, need to be cleaned out).

 

We drove along the levee in the Ninth Ward, where the barge broke through and demolished block after block of homes as it drifted with the winds and currents, like a giant pinball game gone bad. The rubble has been cleared away, leaving only concrete slabs overgrown with weeds. It looks like poorly maintained park land, but it was home to a whole lot of people.

 

Away from the levees, the true condition of the neighborhoods is less apparent. The houses here are sturdily built, and the external damage is not always significant. This means that aerial photos and newsreel footage don’t show the real story. The Parish and the Ninth Ward look, actually, like an abandoned township, fifteen years after a military base closes, or a factory shuts down—boarded-up storefronts, grass growing up through the cracks in the pavement, broken windows.

 

But it’s only been a year. And the people didn’t slowly up and relocate—they ran for their lives.They’ve come back, but they have a long way to go, and they’re running out of time.

 

The Parish is in a bad way, it’s as simple as that. The devastation covered everything, towns, suburbs, farmland, bayou. The houses are empty—37,000 of them. The people who have managed to come back live in FEMA trailers. They have to step over the pipes carrying water to and waste from the trailers just to get into their cramped living spaces. But they do.

 

The people—the Parish’s real resource—are strong, steadfast, resourceful. The houses are their homes, and the people are not going away. They are here to rebuild their homes and their lives. Their dilemma is that they can’t rebuild both at the same time. They need help. They need other people, people who are willing to give a week of their lives to hold sheetrock in place while someone drills the screws in, to transform a maze of 2x4s back into bedrooms, bathrooms, living rooms, and kitchens.

 

In return, you get to meet the nicest, most generous people you could imagine, and you get to hear, first hand, their stories, the stories that most of us only saw on the evening news from the safety of our own homes.

 

During the week with SBP, I worked on the home of Darryl and Christina. The house had been gutted, leaving the concrete floor, exterior walls, roof, and a forest of 2x4s. Most of the new insulation had been put in, and the work of hanging drywall had just begun when I got there (after getting completely lost on my way to the site and having to call poor Liz several times, asking where am I? I’d missed the turn and gone several miles farther down the road.)

 

At the house, there was a mix of volunteers made up of St. Bernard’s residents and out-of-towners. A crew of kids (to me, anyway) from the AmeriCorps program spent the week putting in insulation, hanging drywall, and mudding the walls. It was wonderful to see how hard these kids worked. Each morning, they’d pick up where they’d left off the day before, working in two-person teams, kidding each other throughout the day, and listening to whatever station we could pull in on the boombox.

 

The St. Bernard’s residents included John and Ellen, an amazing couple who have benefited from the SBP, and who are now giving back by teaching the volunteers how to measure, cut, and hang drywall, how to use the screw drills and utility knives, and how to tape and mud. Without their expertise and eagerness to share that with us, we could not have made the progress that we did.

 

Each day, at lunchtime, Miss Christina and her next door neighbor, Miss Mardelle, provided for us from the depths of their larders and their hearts. From ham and cheese sandwiches to red beans and rice to boiled shrimp, they fed us well.

 

Margaret spent the first three days helping out in the office. She worked on the webpage, organized files, drove the big yellow (orange?) pickup, ordered those fine banners that grace the office walls, and helped clean up for Media Day. (She even helped Frank—the owner of the building that houses the SBP—hang drywall!)

 

Wednesday was Media Day, arranged by Zack. A reporter and photographer from the New Orleans paper, The Times Picayune, came through the office and also visited the sites.

 

Thursday morning, we met Liz at Southern Roofing Supplies and picked up a load of sheetrock, which we took out to the site. Margaret spent Thursday and Friday working on-site, mudding the walls and ceilings of the residence, under the tutelage of John and Ellen.

 

In our week of work, we brought the house very close to completion. Now, there are certain parts of the refurbishing process that the volunteers don’t do, such as plumbing, gas, and electric, which need to be inspected by professionals. It can be difficult to schedule this work, and so, another team of volunteers will need to come along behind us and provide closure for the family. In the meantime, work continues on several other SBP sites.

 

At our jobsite, at the end of our week, we took Miss Christina on a walk-through. She said that her house looked like a home again.