I just returned from a 8 day trip to Southern Mississippi and New Orleans for a work tour helping re-build houses for hurricane Katrina victims. I left on Friday the 20th from Western Springs around 5pm with 24 other high schoolers and 8 staff members from my leadership group called C.E.P (Community Extension Project). We do many events throughout the year with surrounding communities as well as hold many leadership conferences.
We drove to Effingham,Illinois and stopped at a hotel. We got up Saturday and drove all day till we got to our camp in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi also called Mission on the Bay. We stayed on the property of the Christ Episcopal Church.
We dropped our stuff off and headed an hour away to New Orleans to spend the day shopping, eating and site seeing. We were there all day and shopped in the best French Markets and also on Bourbon Street. We had a traditional southern dinner of jambalaya, gumbo and corn bread at Johnny Whites on a balcony above Bourbon Street. New Orleans was absolutely beautiful city, basically re-built after Katrina. But once you drove 5 minutes outside of the city you saw the devastation of the hurricane. It has been 3 and 1/2 years since Katrina and some people still don't have homes. We saw countless numbers of destroyed houses; concrete slabs and steps but no homes there.
Monday through Wednesday we worked. There were 3 work groups who all went to different sites. My group went to a women's house who's name is Lori-Ellen. She was a middle-aged women with 2 sons and a daughter. She luckily wasn't home during Katrina but her house was demolished; her roof was ripped off, house completely flooded, and walls ripped apart. She basically had to start over after the hurricane. So right now she's living in a double wide trailer which is crammed with enough furniture and stuff to fit 5 trailers.
What my group did while we were down there was hardwood floor most of her house (kitchen, hallway, 2 bathrooms and a bedroom), clean and organize 2 sheds of stuff, paint as well as hang doors and put trim around her entire house. We worked 8am to 4pm everyday and managed to accomplish all of our tasks. It was a sad goodbye but we knew we did all that we could. After work each day we went back to camp, ate dinner, then did some fun activity such as playing basketball, going to the beach (which we did everyday sometimes twice), bowling or having a bonfire with smores.
One of my favorite moments was when we went bowling on Tuesday night. All 32 of us went bowling at a local bowling alley and we were talking to some of the locals. They were so happy that we were down there helping with all that we could. They couldn't express their gratitude in words to us. One man that we were talking to who had his house gone completely invited us all over for lunch on Friday. We were so sad that we were leaving on Thursday and couldn't go. We asked him why after 3 1/2 years, things still weren't back to normal. He said that most people were just sick of trying to re-build. They put all their time, effort, and energy towards re-building that they just did not want to do anymore. These people have been living like this for 3 years and some of them aren't even back in regular houses, yet they are so willing to give whatever they can and do whatever they can to somehow pay us back for our volunteer work. We all wanted to stay another week but everyone knew a stack of spring break homework was waiting at home.We left with a sad goodbye Thursday morning and returned home Friday around 6pm.
If you would like to see more photos from this trip please visit my Flickr.
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