COLA to NOLA Day 2: Beignets, the Lower 9, and Falling Into the Mississippi

Contrary to the first day of our trip, Monday began relatively late; the earliest risers awoke at around 7:00, and one by one we straggled into the kitchen or to the showers. We are generally in love with our Nutella bagels; "y'all eat Nutella like it's going out of style," according to Slayden. The relaxed schedule allowed us to get out of the door at a comfortable hour, 10:00-ish. Monday morning's weather was consistently pouring rain, leading us to discover that more than half of the group left their raincoats in COLA. (Mothers, we should have listened!)

The first stop was St. Charles Avenue Baptist Church, where the Habitat for Humanity offices for New Orleans are located. Here we met Ms. Lorraine, the liaison with whom Rev Kev has been communicating for the past several months leading up to this trip. It was a pleasure to meet her before beginning our work, and hearing about our locations and the tasks at hand.

Following our introduction to Ms. Lorraine, we changed focus and began exploring the city. Per Elizabeth's recommendation, we headed for Jackson Square in the French Quarter and Cafe Du Monde, but first we bought some cute touristy fleur de lis ponchos to protect from the rain.

At Cafe Du Monde, we were treated to fantastic beignets and coffee, and even more riddles courtesy of David.

Next, we crossed the street to visit the St. Louis Cathedral, which was filled with icons and biblical stories told on the ceilings and in the stained glass windows. (Personal Note: One of the highlights of my day was discussing the Cathedral ceilings with Rev Kev and discovering that the details each of us noticed were drastically different, as were our interpretations.)

After some prayers and pictures in the Cathedral, some window shopping was in order, in and around Jackson Square. (Personal Highlight #2: listening to a street performer play the jazz clarinet; a toddler pedestrian was also fascinated, and the musician led us in song and dance to "The Isty Bitsy Spider" for our young friend.)

Our last activity in the French Quarter was putting our feet in the Mississippi River. Andrew led the way, and one by one we followed him ankle deep into the river on some dangerously slimy steps, until Grace Ann was the only teenager on dry ground. Turns out, peer pressure is not too great (surprising to us teenagers), since Grace Ann's reluctant joining us in the river led to her falling in, upon which David lunged to help her and fell in, leading to Rev Kev's almost fall into the river as well!

At this point, we headed to Episcopal Community Services to pick up Pete Nunnally, the Volunteer Coordinator for the program, who hooked us up with our lodging and working assignments for the week. Mr. Nunnally came to NOLA to volunteer a year after Katrina, and was so moved by what he experienced that he quit his job as a schoolteacher in Sterling, VA and moved to the city permanently to rebuild homes for those that lost theirs in the storm. After three months of manual labor (his favorite experience here in NOLA), the Episcopal diocese hired him as the volunteer coordinator. (In addition to managing volunteers like ourselves, Mr. Nunnally works with young adults that spend a year in the city, living and working together building homes 40 hours a week, with two "God-sessions," or spiritual development sessions each week.) Mr. Nunnally took us on a tour of certain areas of the city that were hit hardest by the storm and needed the most help, including neighborhoods such as Gentilly, Lakeview, the 9th Ward, the Lower 9th Ward, and Brad Pitt's 9th Ward. 

We learned that much of New Orleans is "checkerboarded." In other words, there is a wealthy upper class predominately white neighborhood adjoining a lower class neighborhood; back in the day, servants that worked in the wealthier homes needed to live within walking distance of their employers, so neighborhoods for each economic bracket sprung up in pairs. Of the neighborhoods we toured, Lakeview is relatively well off; compared to the other areas, there is much less evidence of a natural disaster. Many homes are new and completely remodeled, with only perhaps three or four vacant lots and gutted houses every block or so. Gentilly, according to Mr. Nunnally, is a working class neighborhood, with a much more diverse populace and includes homeowners of different races. Gentilly, to me, seems to be on the mend, but is still much more downtrodden than Lakeview. On the Lakeview side, there is much more recovery, but as we traveled through Gentilly in the direction of the Lower Nine, I noticed a gradual increase in vacant homes until we reached the 9th Ward. In the 9th Ward, the homes within approximately six blocks of the levy were completely gone, with almost no trace of life. Where homes once stood there are now only lots filled with tall grass. Farther from the levy in the 9th Ward, maybe half of the homes were vacant, and still boarded up, almost six years later. 

Lots of homes also had X's spray painted on them, which Mr. Nunnally said were marks of inspectors taking bodies out of the houses after the storm. The upper quadrant of the X marked the date of inspection, the left marked the inspector responsible, and in the bottom was the number of dead pulled out of the building. Mr. Nunnally had mixed feelings about Brad Pitt's Lower 9th Ward (Brad Pitt led a neighborhood rebuilding program in which all of the homes are environmentally friendly and equipped with solar panels). It's a good program, and provides shelter for many in need and has a smaller environmental footprint, but the entire neighborhood is obviously designed by the same architect, and are clearly transplants to the area. According to Mr. Nunnally, there is little New Orleans culture in this area.

I think what has irked some of us the most has been the controversy over the new hospital. Pre-Katrina, Charity Hospital was a large teaching hospital in the center of downtown, within reach of some of the most under-served of the community, and home to a free clinic. The hospital was destroyed in the storm, and still stands empty and gutted today, with stained walls and broken windows and has a pretty scary air about it. Instead of re-building this Charity Hospital, though, investors have decided to construct a new, state-of-the-art hospital -- which is good, in theory, having a new, better facility. But this facility will stand miles away from those that used the Charity Hospital, and pretty much out of reach of those under-served individuals in need of health care. This location will also require the eviction of homeowners from houses built by volunteers like ourselves in the past five years alone, so to people like us, it feels as though so much work has essentially gone to waste. People that lost absolutely everything in the storm are just now getting back on their feet, and here comes the city, destroying these new homes all over again. But the biggest injustice, to us, is the fact that the new hospital will be a for-profit hospital, unlike its predecessor, leaving those dependent on the free clinic without any source of medical care. (A note from Mr. Nunnally: The city had a hand in not reopening Charity Hospital, and the state fought with FEMA over how much FEMA would give to reopen. FEMA wouldn't go over around 150 million, the state said it should be more like 450. Behind the scenes (interested parties including people with financial interests) dealings began to simply create a mega teaching hospital that would include Tulane and LSU.)

After our tour, we returned to Episcopal Community Services with Mr. Nunnally and he talked to us and another group of ten youth from Texas about the layout of the city and how the city flooded and where the levees broke. As Rev Kev said, "I feel like my perception of Katrina is so different than what it was this morning."

As I am sitting here writing this blog, I think my overall high point of the day is sitting at the common room table, listening to David and Jessica and Slayden and Eliabeth play nuts (one of our favorite card games) at the coffee table, and Rev Kev and Grace Ann and Catherine Ann prepare dinner in the kitchen (Monday night is red beans and rice night, and laundry day, here in NOLA) and listening to Fats Domino sing about this city that he loved so much, inspiring us to love this city as well.

-Anna Frances Jones