The Lakes Of Pontchartrain

I survived all my finals. I wrote and revised a total of eight essays last week, I gave a gripping presentation on Robert Noyce and the Robert Noyce '25 Science Center, and I failed a Spanish test. I know what you're thinking and I'm almost positive I failed. Like, I hope I score in the two digits. Kathleen gave me some really sound advice the night before all of my stuff was due and I was lying in the hall ass up in obscure Spanish grammar: "It's not worth it; don't kill yourself for this." Then Noah came out and asked me if he could barrow my calculator. Of course I said yes because he's a cool dude. I jumped up off the ground, sprinted into my room, tore through the piles of crap on my desk, woke up Kathleen, found it, and ran back to the hall where I made the hand off. The Calc was out of AAA batteries. I'm pretty sure I haven't fired it up since May, 2006.

I'm in New Orleans now with finals behind me. Here's a really brief play by play of my life since Friday at 4:05 because the wireless is shaky and I'm on the porch in the rain in a sketchy neighborhood.

4:05 PM - Turn in my final paper for tutorial.
4:06- Receive a call from Kathleen- who has already left for Denver- asking me to unlock the door to our room because she forgot her towel and pillow.
4:07- Throw the keys up the fire escape. She catches them and leaves for Denver.
4:19- Run to Norris so Ryan can pick up his check to take to the bank.
4:20- Receive a second call from Kathleen. She needs her cell phone charger.
4:45- Visit Wells Fargo and Saints Rest. Wells Fargo is where all the Sub Frees bank.
5:05- Make a Wal-Mart run with Ryan, Carter, and Will.
6:00- Play Skip-Bo with the floor before dinner will Anna finishes a paper.
7:00- Go to Dinner. It was pretty good, I think.
8:00- Start laundry.
8:30- Ryan starts to pack.
9:00- Hang out with the flood- End of Mid Sems FIESTA. AYAYAYA…
1:00 AM- Finish laundry. Naked.
2:30- Shower.
3:00- Power nap.
3:30- Arrive at the wrong bus stop for the Alt Break Departure to NOLA.
3:45- Arrive at correct bus stop. Two very important parts of my body were frozen. They are on me chest.
4:18- Leave Grinnell. One girl is late AND forgets her ID so the bus driver drives twenty miles over the speed limit to make up for lost time. He sighs. I know because I was sitting in front.
5:35- Arrive in Cedar Rapids with plenty of time with “Wide Open Spaces” playing on the radio super loud.

And then a lot of other stuff happened. I snored for a good hour in the airport at Cedar Rapids before our 7:45 flight to Dallas. I think I was trying to sleep off the pain of having to surrender my brand new face wash, toothpaste, and Hemp Lotion from the Body Shop at security. All of the tubes of product that exceeded 3 OZ in volume I was forced to trash. When I asked the Woman Guard if she was “sure I had to leave the lotion,” she said “yeah, I’m sure” and then made a really obnoxious breathing-out noise under her breath. I slept the entire flight. We were so pressed for time in Dallas, we had to sprint up three flights of broken escalator. We made it to the top in exactly the same amount of time as the people who opted for the working escalator. We were big sweaty LOSERS.

The city of New Orleans hit me like a ton of bricks. While the water is gone, every road is covered in gnarly pot holes and homes are still tagged with spray paint from the crews that checked for bodies over thirteen months ago. Every block almost, a car is pulled over with a flat tire. The only thing “new” in New Orleans are the cars because everyone had to replace their vehicles after the storm. Today I saw a FEMA trailer with an Escalade parked right next to it. The distribution of wealth here is unbelievable. All the FEMA trailers are white. They’re issued to whole families for only a year. One block, the houses have two stories and are dressed for Halloween and on the next, they act like garbage cans, holding in crap and mud and debris from the storm. Many of the houses that we've seen from the street have not been touched since the homeowner evacuated. We’re staying in Orleans Parish at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church on 30 cots in the gym. The high school down the street from us is surrounded by police officers and every entrance has a metal detector. Apparently, every class has between 50 and 70 students because they can’t pay the teachers enough to come back and teach in such piss-poor conditions. We hit Bourbon St. our first night in town. To get to the French Quarter (which is incredible and full of life) we had to pass several full blocks of subsidized housing units. The projects are vacant now because the city can’t afford to get them back in order. I don’t know where the 1,000 or so families are now that once lived there. No one seems to know when the city will return to normal. Never, probably. Everything is abandoned and no one has money to rebuild.

The first house we gutted today was fairly easy but we’re only ¾ of the way done. The homeowners had already done a bit of work on the duplex. We met with them and they seemed to think they would be rebuilding within the next year. To gut a house, you have to remove all the contents i.e. refrigerators, photo albums, and left behind clothing then remove the walls including the molding and sheet rock. We ate our PB&J lunch next to Lake Pontchartrain- only a dream of mine since hearing the remix of “The Lakes Of Pontchartrain” by the Be Good Tanyas.

At the end of the day, we popped in the Mix CD our group compiled. I contributed “Jolene” by Dolly Parton. It seems to be growing on everyone. We had red beans and rice for dinner tonight- a Monday night tradition- with the other volunteers from the Episcopal Diocese. It was tasty.

I love it here and I know the city is important to many people but I don’t know if I would have come back to pick my life back up if I had lost my home, my family, and all of my personal belongings. It’s all so daunting. According to our leaders with the Diocese, homeowners are at the stage in the recovery process where they have many good days and only some bad days. I’ve had only good days so far but I’ve been trying to put myself in the place of the people who survived Hurricane Katrina. The houses must look and smell like they did this time last year when all the water started to drain but kids are going to school and new businesses are opening everyday.

I’d like to come back here with my parents and my friends. Only at different times.