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When my team leader announced that we would be spending two months in St. Bernard Parish house gutting, I didn’t see a single smiling face in the room. My teammates looked stunned, disturbed, apprehensive, and some on the verge of tears. Even those who had wanted a disaster project had an air of anxiety about them. We were understandably nervous about our mental health due to disaster conditions in the New Orleans area. We would be surrounded by destruction, living in uncomfortable conditions, and have virtually no privacy. Then, we got the blow that our time in disaster would be extended from two months to two phases.
Our first night at Camp Premier, a FEMA base camp, did not ease our minds. At first sight, Camp Premier is, in a word, depressing. It’s next door to what’s rumored to be the nation’s largest smokestack, belonging to an oil refinery. The stack is painfully visible from every part of camp. And, our grounds used to be a toxic dump, so we shower in trailers and only have access to Porto Potties. We live in M*A*S*H-like army tents that the wind rattles and rain pounds so loudly that we have to scream to be able to hear each other during the seasonal storms. There is little grass and virtually no plants; instead, there is gravel. Perhaps, I can best explain our reaction to Camp Premier by saying that four of my teammates cried within their first 20 minutes of arrival.
And, in no way can I do justice delineating the spellbinding destruction that we encounter daily. It looks like the storm hit yesterday. Driving to camp, we pass a sight where the storms threw three homes into the middle of a street, each one smashed against the next. Mold is everywhere, and water line marks come to my head. The homes are branded in spray paint to indicate how many people authorities found dead. And it’s not just what we see; the area has a poignant feel. It’s like a ghost town.
However, somewhere along the line—and I can’t quite figure out when—everything changed. For Mary, it was when a firefighter gave a tour of his grandfather’s destroyed neighborhood, and he teared up recounting his childhood memories. For Lauren, it was when she slaved away gutting a kitchen, and the homeowner expressed endless thanks, saying he had not received real help until she came. For Alex, it was when our directors wanted to cut the project short, which would have forced us to leave the parish. I really can’t pinpoint an exact moment for myself, but somewhere in between the horrible heat and uncomfortable cots and bad lunches, I knew that I wanted to be here.
Moreover, I knew we needed to be here. I stopped caring that I didn’t have a bedroom door or my laptop, and I started thinking about the parish. And not the way we had thought about it before. (After all, we always rationally knew that the work was important, and we always kept in mind that we were fortunate.) Thinking about the parish, we began to put our hearts into our work. One night, LaWanda worked in the reception tent until midnight, securing a huge wave of volunteers. I asked her if she was a workaholic, and she said, “Only when it comes to helping people.” After a long day of gutting, Katie told me that she wanted to help in the ops, or operations, tent. When I asked her why she wanted the extra hours, she explained that she simply believed in the project and wanted to do anything she could to help. Perhaps most telling, though, was when my team voted unanimously to extend our stay in St. Bernard Parish, forgoing another project that we might receive. Even the four girls who cried when we got to Camp Premier voted, hands down, to stay another month and a half.
To me, our work here is what life is all about. It’s about turning out the light at the end of the day and knowing that my time wasn’t wasted. It’s about agreeing when people say that I should be proud of myself. It’s about knowing the actual enjoyment that comes from making sacrifices for things that I believe in. And most importantly, it’s about surrounding myself with people who feel the same way. We have come full circle since first receiving the news that we were coming to St. Bernard Parish, and my only hope is that others will have the opportunity to gain the same insight. After all, St. Bernard Parish certainly needs it. |
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