new orleans

I recently had the opportunity to travel down to New Orleans and help with some of the disaster relief effort that is ongoing in the city. I went with 21 other students from the Baptist Collegiate Ministry at Southern Illinois University. We had an amazing experience working in the city and building relationships with the other groups we met down in New Orleans. We worked with an organiztion called Hands on Network that is working year round with disaster relief. We arrived down there on Saturday night after a very long bus ride that was turned out to be longer than normal because of some trouble with one of the vans we were driving. But, we finally got into the city and found the church where we would be staying for the week. We went to church on Sunday morning at the church where we were staying, First Street United Methodist Church. After church we went on our first gutting job in the city. It was the first time that we had seen the city in the daytime, and I was completely shocked by the devastation that I saw. I have lived in Florida almost all of my life, and I am pretty familiar with hurricanes and the damage that they can cause, but I wasn’t prepared for the amount of damage that I saw in New Orleans. We drove for miles and miles on the raised I-10 highway, and everywhere I looked there were only flooded, deserted houses. What is amazing about the damage is that it is not confined to a small area of the city, but it is so widespread across the entire Eastern side of New Orleans. Every neighborhood we drove into was completely deserted, complete with flooded cars strewn about the streets and yards. Many of the neighborhoods looked like no one had come back since the stormWe worked hard for 5 days gutting houses down to their studs and rafters. I also had a great time getting to know people from other universities that came down to volunteer alongside of us. There were groups from the University of Wisconsin, Gonzaga University, and St. Louis University. On Wednesday night we held a talent show for anyone who was brave enough to get up in front of everyone. I did my normal thing of staying off to the side and taking pictures.

As far as going to New Orleans to photograph, it was a very hard trip to find time to get away and photograph. Every afternoon as we drove home from working, I saw portrait after portrait that I wanted to make, but I was not in the position to go out on my own and walk around. People were sitting outside their homes around sunset just watching the cars drive by. To me it seemed as though the city had gone back a few decades and people were out and about working. I made the remark to one of my friends that at 8:00 AM you didn’t see any businessmen driving to work in high-paying corporate jobs. It was as if the entire city rolled up their sleeves and set out every morning to rebuild the city one piece at a time. Almost every car on the road was a truck or van that was carrying people volunteering or working in the building industry. Gone were the businessmen and women that normally would fill the streets of a major metropolitan city at 5:00 PM. On the issue of community, I think it is remarkable to notice the difference between a community when it is struck by a natural disaster. Our normal lives our so self-centered that we forget to invest into what really matters in life: relationships. We strive and strive to get ahead in careers and financial status, and soon we retire and realize that we let life pass us by. I think New Orleans is a good example of a large community of people that have awakened and realized that life without the comforts of 21st century can make us appreciate the important social function of the local community. I don’t want this to sound like an optimistic feel good statement, because the reality is that New Orleans is in dire straits, but I do believe that some good can come out of this catastrophe. I think our country should enact a holiday from mass media. One day a year all mass media outlets should be completely shut down…..television, radio, internet news sites…etc. On that day, local communities should organize various events throughout the community that will bring people together. I think the nation can learn a lesson from New Orleans if they want to. Come out of your houses and learn to develop communities. I think I’m writing this as much for myself as I am for anyone else. I can’t even begin to think about how much time I waste on this computer and watching the television. What would happen if we all invested our time into other people instead of wasting it on a computer or television screen?

check out some of my photos from the trip here