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February 21, 2007
Louisiana Lessons
I'm just home from my week in Louisiana, Houma and environs to be precise. It was heartening to fly over New Orleans and see more roofs than blue tarps this time, a distinct contrast to the view out the plane window last year. Houma is about an hour southwest of NO, in bayou country. If you are limber enough, turn your hand upside down. Your wrist is the town and your five fingers are the five bayous. Katrina was merely a nuisance for these folks and Rita passed them to the west so few houses suffered wind damage but she wreaked havoc with the levees and many, many homes flooded.
The good folks in this photo are Chris and Shellen. Two months before Rita, they had finally bought up the last pieces (property is sold in orpins, rather than acres, in this part of the country) to reassemble the original family plot. They were living in a manufactured home and dreamed of building a house on the land. Then the storm surge hit -- Chris' barn-full of tools washed away and their home was destroyed. Insurance payments covered about a tenth of their home's value so it looked like the storm had washed away their dreams, along with everything else. But these are resilient people and they took stock of what they had and what they had was an old hay barn. So now their "dream home" is a cozy apartment atop a barn! The team I was on spent several days taping and mudding newly sheet-rocked walls and every day brought a broader smile to Shellen's face. She and Chris were a complete inspiration to me -- so upbeat. And so grateful! On Saturday, my teammates and I sat on the lawn to eat our sack lunches when Chris came running out of their FEMA trailer (don't even get me started on FEMA trailers!). "Shellen's cooking y'all gumbo!" Back into the brown paper sacks went our bagels. Chris and Shellen made room for us in their cozy trailer and we shared chicken gumbo (with a dollop of potato salad on top), Dr. Peppers and stories galore.
On Thursday afternoon, I visited the students at Pointe aux Chenes (Point of the Oaks) Elementary School in Montegut. Principal Dawn LaFont is not only a caring, compassionate educator, she is a great cook, treating me and my friend, Karen Keller, to some awesome homemade shrimp and crab bisque. I thought I was going to give my presentation to the kids and then be on my way. Oh no. This is Louisiana, honey, and you don't come to a school right before Mardi Gras without being appointed Grand Marshal of the parade! The kids were shocked that I'd never been to or been in a Mardi Gras parade before. Just when I got the hang of throwing out beads, I found out I also was required to do the Mardi Gras mambo. Luckily, it mostly involves shaking your booty (I've got plenty to shake) while raising an umbrella up and down. I think I did an adequate job!
Pointe aux Chenes has 150 students, all of whom received 4 books, donated by Scholastic in honor of my visit. How cool is that?! These kids were as darling and wiggly and smart as any I've met anywhere in the country. But after school, Ms. LaFont took me for a ride, showing me around their bayou. I am haunted by the image of the tool shed that one family lives in because they can't afford to repair their storm-ravaged house. How do little children learn when they've slept in a tool shed?
How do we sleep when there are children in such situations? Or when our neighbors are heading into their second year of living in FEMA trailers barely adequate for weekend camping trips? Or when Katrina victims turn into "old news"?
I can't answer these questions. But I can rest up, save up and head south again to sleep on cots in plastic corrugated tents, nail and mud and paint.
And eat a lot of gumbo, over rice, with potato salad. Like any good Cajun would.
Posted by kirby at February 21, 2007 05:05 PM
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