In the morning Patsy fed me a great breakfast of fresh fruit and cereal before she headed off to work about 7:30. I read the paper until Bob was ready to head out and he kindly directed me how to get out of Birmingham. He suggested that if I had the time that I should take a brief side trip to see the statue of Vulcan that overlooks the city of Birmingham.
I did take the minor detour and drove up to the top of the mountain that overlooks the city. Unfortunately the stairs up the statue tower weren’t open at 8 a.m., so I didn’t get that view, but the panorama was beautiful on that clear day. I’m sure I knew and I’ve forgotten that Birmingham is a steel city, built on the fortune in iron ore and coal that existed here. In the distance, from the top of the mountain, I could see what was described in one of the information panels as steam that results from water being poured on super-heated steel. I can also see what’s called the Civil Rights Historic District, where a church was bombed in the 60s killing some young girls.
I noted that despite this heavy industry, there was remarkably little evidence of pollution. The University of Alabama Birmingham is downtown and a big presence and a fairly ‘clean’ industry that brings many people to the city. It’s just occurring to me that Alabama’s Birmingham is probably named for the city in England that’s also known for steel production. Duh.
On the road through Alabama and into Mississippi. As I approached Meridian, MS, I’m reminded again of important events that took place there during the Civil Rights Movement. If I’m not mistaken, it’s the place where some voting rights activists from the north were murdered as they went about helping Black people to register to vote.
For some reason it occurs to me that I don’t have a ground cloth for my tent and I think I’ll be needing one when I get to New Orleans. At one interchange off I-59, I see a big mall and several gas stations. I fill up the car and check the oil (it’s fine) and head over to the mall to see if I can find an outdoor store. There’s no EMS, REI, L.L. Bean or local equivalent, so I head to Sears to look for plastic tarp in the paint department. Found what I need easily and I also buy a down comforter that’s on a deep sale. Although I have a nice down sleeping bag, I figure I can use the comforter as additional padding, and if the nights turn out to be warm, the cotton facing will feel better than the silky sleeping bag.
I briefly tried to find an internet connection in a coffee shop that’s part of a big independent bookstore, but no luck, so I hit the road to New Orleans.
I arrived at the Emergency Communities compound a little before 4 and Benjah checked me in. Benjah is tall and thin with a long pony tail, and he face is peaceful. I filled out a volunteer form and chatted with Benjah for a few minutes. He told me the first thing I’d want to do would be to get some pallets and corrugated cardboard to make a platform for my tent. This would keep the tent up off the ground in case of rain and the cardboard would offer a little padding and also smooth over the openings between the boards. I found a suitable plot in the tent city and started bringing my stuff from the car.
There are pallets all over the place, but most are in use. I find some and drag them to my site, but a passing guy helpfully notes that I should look around for the pallets with the blue painted ends, they have closer slats and they’re more sturdy. He helps me find four of the blue pallets and also points me to a hand truck that makes it easier to haul the heavy wood devices to my campsite. Once in place, I cover them with cardboard and set up my tent. There’s a pretty good breeze blowing, and I’m having a little trouble. Two young men come to assist and the tent goes up quickly. It’s my first sample of how welcoming and helpful this community is.
First the pallets...
Tent ghetto
I’m all set up by about 6 pm and I take a walk around the grounds. Orientation for new volunteers is at 10 the next morning. It’s a warm evening. I can hear music coming from various places. I can see that there’s a tenting area where people like me have erected all manner and forms of tents and other shelters, including large cartons covered with tarps. There’s a porta-potty area with about 20 units in place. The largest feature on the landscape is a huge dome tent, where the eating takes place. Adjacent to the dome is another tent where they’ put together a true commercial kitchen, complete with huge gas ranges, two convection ovens, prep tables and storage shelving.
There’s a dishwashing tent next door with multiple sinks and bins and several people washing dishes, pots, pans, tableware. I’ve since learned that this group takes special pride in not using disposable dishes except for people who need to take their meals with them. Instead they use what they call ‘blissware’ – a hodge-podge of donated or found dishes of every style and design that need to be washed.
Rejuvenation Station
There’s a laundry area under a tent, a community store where free goods (food and clothing) are distributed, storage tents and various other structures. There’s even a ‘Rejuvenation Station’ where first aid is administered as well as massage and other therapies. There’s a sign announcing that Reiki is also available in one of the tepees (also spelled teepee or tipi, I’m told). There’s a recycling area where plastic, cardboard and other recyclables are accumulated for collection. And finally, there’s a shower structure, a small open building with four shower stalls. I’m told that a group from Bellingham, WA came down and donated a solar water heating system that’s in use for the showers, in conjunction with an electric heater. (Showers have always been hot!)
Solar water heaters behind the shower shed
It’s a little city where people live and work together, and other people, the residents of Arabie and other communities, come to get good food and other stuff for free.
I wasn’t familiar with how things work here, so I didn’t eat dinner in the Made With Love Café this evening. I sat outside my tent reading for a while and people greeted me frequently as they passed by, some pausing to talk. My neighbor Paul is a very friendly sort from Texas. He talks kind of like Johnny Cash. A little later, I meet my new friend Sunny D, aka Lewis Davis. Sunny is from Pittsburgh and offers me a ‘fat burger’ from the grill outside Paul’s tent. I accept it without question, placing the burger between two slices of white bread and smearing on some ketchup, but declining the offer of sliced onion.
To bed by about 9. I’m a little ashamed to admit that I watched a few Seinfeld episodes on my computer before turning in for the night. I’m still with one foot in the ‘real world’ and I’m pretty apprehensive about camping out – it’s been at least 23 years since I’ve slept in a tent. Despite the droning of the diesel engines on the ‘reefer’ trailers nearby (where perishable food is stored), I fall asleep easily.
(The internet connection is not working, so I’m not able to update my website. Sorry, faithful readers. And I have much to say.)
As I settle into life here, I realize there are two stories to tell. The obvious one is about the complete devastation of this area as a result of hurricanes Katrina and Rita last summer, and the extraordinary people who are now slowly trying to return here. The not so obvious story is of this amazing community that has come together to assist by serving anywhere from 1,200-2,000 meals each day to the people who’ve been displaced by the storms. I suppose a third story still is that of the many other volunteer groups that have come here and set up locations where local residents can come for free clothing, food or help in the heartbreaking and horrible job of gutting their homes; there are countless church, college and high school groups that have come here from around the country to help.
The second day I was here, in the afternoon, my new friend Sunny took me on a tour of the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans, the area of the city that we’ve heard so much about in news reports. One of the levees breached and that whole area was submerged. The Emergency Communities (EC) site is located in Arabie, in St. Bernard Parish, adjacent to the Lower Ninth Ward, an area also flooded by the tidal surge that I’m told was up to 30 feet high. Even to get to the 9th Ward, we drive through at least a few miles of Arabie, where the devastation is equally bad, virtually indistinguishable. The way you know you’ve left Arabie is you cross a bridge into New Orleans. When you’re across the bridge, you still travel through blocks and blocks of ruined homes, cars not moved since the flooding and covered with dried muddy silt from the receding waters, and piles of debris hauled out of homes.
It goes on like this for miles in all directions
The scope of this really is difficult to grasp. I’ve taken about 175 pictures but there are thousands more untaken, every one offering a different account, but after a while they all seem the same. There are only so many different views of houses that have been tossed, crushed, pushed off their foundation and otherwise demolished, often beyond repair. The first few overturned cars are shocking, but I hardly noticed the next several hundred. The first house on top of a car was amazing, but there’s no need to take pictures of the next several dozen.
And I ventured barely five blocks from the main road.
And what about the people who used to live in these homes? Where are they now? I see the spray-painted markings on each house with the code they used to show when the searchers were there and what they may have found. A few of the homes have numbers larger than zero in one quadrant of the code, indicating that one or more bodies was found there. Those homes are sacred space, I think.
Gutting a home
Some of the people were good, hard working people. Many just struggled to get by in life. I imagine that a portion of this population abused drugs or alcohol, or cheated on their spouse. Some cherished their children and there were probably a few who abused their kids. The good, the bad, the ugly. The beautiful, the sad, the promising. All gone away, some trying to find a way to return.
Left behind
The people who lived here are mostly cast to the four winds, separated from their friends and neighbors and everything that’s familiar. I’m told that in this part of New Orleans that the literacy rate is quite low, one person said as low as 40%. I find myself thinking about what I’d do if there were a similar catastrophe in my own community. I imagine that in a few months we’d all be reconnected because we could be in touch through email. If you’re illiterate, you probably don’t know how to use a computer, never mind have one in your home with a high-speed internet connection. How, then, do communities like this reconnect?
At the Made with Love Café, we’re privileged to hear first-hand the stories of many residents. It seems that as often as they’ve told them, they don’t tire of telling them again to other strangers. In fact, many people seem to appreciate the chance to talk. I imagine it’s an informal form of therapy that will help over time.
My friend Sunny D is not bashful at all and he’s here to help. One day as he and I are getting ready to go into New Orleans to see about getting his bus ticket home to Pittsburgh (courtesy of Travelers’ Aid, an organization I need to learn more about), he sees three women sitting under the open-sided tent at one of the tables. Sunny approached them and asked if they needed any help. They did. So he saw to it that they had ready access to clothes for children and women, and also some of the commodities they needed that were available at the distribution tent. Under his instruction, I found some empty cardboard boxes and ultimately loaded the stuff into the women’s car. And I heard their story. The storm displaced them to Houston. They stayed to try to ride it out in their home, but they needed to be rescued from the second story of their home by a boat. Although they’d gathered some personal belongings on the second floor, they weren’t permitted to bring the boxes into the boat in order to leave room for more people. So they lost everything, including their car.
Sunny and Tamia at the Common Ground Center
When they arrived in Houston by bus, life was a struggle. One of the women had enough money to buy a vehicle from someone who needed desperately to sell one. But it was a challenge to get the funds out of her credit union, which, of course, was disrupted by the storms. Ultimately they’ve come back to their community and will try to put their lives and a new home back together, but they’re not sure how, and they have no idea where their friends and former neighbors may be. These women were extremely grateful for the second-hand clothing they were able to get here, and a few cases of canned water. And this is just one story.
Mary Nunez, whom I mentioned earlier, told me that the museum housing artifacts of her family’s ‘Islenos’ heritage was completely washed away. She’s in her seventies and on a fixed income, a widow, and she lives in a FEMA trailer (you see them here and there, parked beside homes, but remembering the acres and acres of them I saw on the drive down, I’m wondering what’s going on). Mary doesn’t know how she’s going to get her house back in order. Some Habitat for Humanity volunteers did the gutting work, and the electrical has been rewired, but it’s very slow going. Who will do the sheetrock and painting and all the other stuff that will complete the restoration of her home?
John is a fascinating guy, also in his seventies, who makes the coffee here each morning. As Sunny D says, “John has a bad bean habit.” First he boils water in probably a 5-gallon vat. Then he sprinkles two one-pound bags into the water and turns off the gas flame on the outdoor burner. The brew sits for about a half hour to 45 minutes until most of the grounds settle to the bottom. Then the magic potion is poured into large insulated serving urns. The coffee is the kind they drink in New Orleans and it contains chicory. John tells me that chicory was first added to coffee during the war to extend the limited supply of real coffee. John is also a native of the area and of the Isleños heritage, at least in part. When I first heard him, though I almost thought his accent sounded New York-ish. Now that he’s retired, he used to spend his time as a docent at a local cultural heritage museum that’s not in operation. He tells me that the EC compound is actually located on the site where the Battle of New Orleans took place.
There are many fascinating characters residing here. Robbie is gay and says he left medical school in Portland OR to come here. He says he was raised between South Africa, England, France and Oklahoma. Chance rides around the compound on the three-wheeled cycle with a large basket collecting bags of trash. Some people who live here appear to be truly down and out, a few are probably alcoholics, but it looks like most are making a contribution of some sort to life in the community. A few people who live here are working as truck drivers, hauling the debris to landfills around the region. I hear about controversy concerning trucking companies not being paid for many months and heavy wear and tear on trucks, tires, axels.
Here’s a personal revelation: I’ve always thought of myself as liberal and not racist at all. Now, here in this extraordinary cultural stew, with people of all shapes, sizes and colors, I realize that I’ve never really been tested in this regard. Between the local people of every possible color and the very free-spirited hippies who run this place, I’m in the distinct minority, as a white middle class male. I do feel quite out of my element, but I’m loving it immensely. Everywhere there is music playing and it’s usually music I’ve never heard before. I realize that I haven’t looked at myself in a mirror since I arrived here. There is virtually no judgment here. Everything and everyone is taken at face value. I don’t think I’ve seen anything like this since the 70s.
How this place ‘works’ is also pretty amazing. As Sunny D explained it, you should just look around and see what needs to be done and do it. There’s no need to ask someone if it’s ok. Just do it. There are signup sheets for various tasks and shifts – serving line, dishwashing, kitchen help, menu planning, receiving, distribution and so forth – but most of the people here don’t bother signing up. They just show up and do it. I know there’s a leadership group and I’ve spoken with a few of them, but there’s no real discernible management system or hierarchy. I did witness one person being called to task by peers for his attitude, and it was done very nicely but firmly.
There is a volunteer ‘Peace Patrol’ that walks around the grounds continually. It’s my understanding that they’re helping to ensure that things are safe. They’re also on the watch to see that people who are living here are participating at a level that merits their living here. There are to be no slackers here. Everyone must serve in some way. The recommendation is that people should work at least 40 hours per week. At dinner each evening, as we’re being checked into the serving line, the person asks for an estimate of how many hours we’ve each worked. I’m told that FEMA reimburses the community of Arabie (not Emergency Communities) at a rate of $17 per hour for volunteer labor, so they track it as closely as they can.
Sunday and Wednesday evenings, the EC community holds what they call a ‘Circle.’ I experienced Wednesday evening’s Circle. Everyone gathers in the dome tent. The eating tables are moved aside and chairs are arranged in a circle around the perimeter. I would guess there were about 100 people in the circle, two deep in many places. There’s a moderator who begins by letting us know that the Circle consists of first going around the entire group offering everyone a chance to speak. Each person should say her/his name and then whatever they wish, including any item they’d like to have added to an agenda for that evening. The process of going around the whole group was very slow, but quite absorbing. Many people ended their brief statement with “I love you all” or something to that effect. But the word ‘love’ was used very frequently. I found myself thinking that I’ve certainly never heard the word love used in the context of a business meeting. I’m not sure how relevant that thought was, but it happened, so I paid attention. And I marveled at the powerful love that was apparent in the room, and the spirit of selfless service that also resided there.
Saturday morning about 6:45, I finally drive Sunny D to the Greyhound station in downtown New Orleans. Now that this is our fourth trip down there, I know the way. He must have about 200 pounds of stuff in two huge duffel bags, one old large suitcase and a couple of other bags of different sizes and descriptions. His trip to Pittsburgh will involve eight different bus changes in eight different cities and it will take a day and a half. I have no idea how he’s going to manage all that stuff, but we haul it out of the car and he does some rearranging to try to distribute the weight better. I hear clanking of iron and it turns out that he has several pieces of steel that he tells me are part of the barge that hit the levee and caused the breach that flooded the Lower Ninth Ward. He says the barge was cut up for salvage in the repair operation and he knew one of the security guards who let Sunny have a bunch of pieces of the steel to try to sell on EBay. Sunny inscribes one piece for me to take with me. I give Sunny $20 because I’m quite certain he has no money at all and he gives me a hug. I also give him my cell phone number just in case he doesn’t get on the bus for some reason and needs a ride back to the EC compound. He’s heading home for two weeks to see his three kids for Easter. As it is, getting on the bus Saturday morning, he won’t arrive home until about 7 pm Easter night. He says that’s ok.
As I wait with Sunny while he shifts his belongings around, I notice enormous murals on the wall in the cavernous bus and train station. I see a corner stone that reports that the station was opened in 1954. The murals are quite beautiful, very colorful and kind of reminiscent of WPA murals found around the country in various public spaces. These are very vibrant and appear to reflect the many cultures that have come together to create New Orleans. I wished I had my camera so I could take photos, but I know that I could never do justice to the art.
I drive back to EC and for the first time I don’t get lost in downtown New Orleans. On each previous trip, we’d gotten lost, but as a result I ended up seeing the French Quarter twice, and another time Sunny and I found one of New Orleans’ famous aboveground cemeteries. I took many pictures of these unusual tombs that are above the surface of the ground in case of flooding. This particular cemetery also included a shrine to St. Roch, the patron saint of miracle cures, according to a sign. There was a room adjacent to the shrine itself where hanging on the walls were many leg braces, crutches and other devices apparently used by people who came here to be cured. This display would leave one to believe that many people indeed were cured miraculously and no longer needed these things.
All morning I’m a little concerned that Sunny will call and want a ride back, but he never calls and by about noon I stop expecting a call.
Tomorrow morning I’ll pack up and clear out of my campsite, hitting the road westward across Texas. I still haven’t figured out what route to take, so I’ll spend some time with maps later on.