Tools, toil and tan: alternative spring break diaries (part 3)

 Editor’s Note: For many, Spring Break was a time to get some tan and sun, a little bit of cash, writing papers, or a relief from the hectic semester. Three Colonnade staff members however traded their breaks for some tools as they witness first hand  the on-going reconstruction of the Gulf coast as Hurricane Katrina’s devastation still pulse through the communities nearly three years after. But amidst the struggles, these spring breakers found hope, survival and friendship.

   To be honest, I had no idea what I was expecting when I signed up for the American Democracy Project spring break relief trip. I had done volunteer work before with Habitat for Humanity and church mission trips ages ago, but for some reason I knew I had to forgo my plans of sleeping and procrastinating. Maybe I was secretly hoping to catch a glimpse of a shirtless Brad Pitt hammering away on a roof of a Katrina-hit home in New Orleans, or maybe it was a more meaningful desire to forget my trivial stresses and worries and focus on helping someone who had actual real worries and troubles.
    Either way, I did not expect a life-changing experience.
    I had no idea that in one short week, the bonding experience of painting four houses and grumpily waking up at 6 a.m. every morning together could forge such close friendships between 22 people I never would have known otherwise. During the 20 or more hours driving in our red minivan, better known as “Big Red,” I had some of the deepest and meaningful conversations I’ve ever shared with four young ladies and a professor before.  Between practical jokes, walkie-talkie banter, music dance-offs, a falling ladder, and one unintentional bloody lip, all 23 of us shared some of the best times probably ever had in four rented minivans.
    I never thought that I’d be so taken aback at the immense amount of gratitude we received in Mississippi and Louisiana. Everywhere we went—whether it was out to dinner at Sicily’s Pizza Buffet or the corner gas station or even just walking down the street—people stopped everything to thank us for being there and told us their incredible Katrina stories. We heard horror stories about FEMA trailers (a two-foot wide shower?!)  and inspiring stories about rebuilding everything with nothing but a foundation slab to mark all of your former memories.
    Everywhere we went we took pictures of rusty mangled signs, water-rotten hollow buildings and giant piles of decaying debris. In the ironically named town of Waveland—where the eye of Katrina hit—there were still only dirt roads in neighborhoods and constant construction in every direction. All we could wonder aloud to each other was how can these people stay here and live after everything? At times I often forgot I was in America; some of the places we saw looked more like a forgotten war-torn third world country you see on the news. And remember, this is nearly three years after Katrina! I can’t even imagine what it must have been like back then.
    Yet amid all the destruction and construction, the one unexpected thing that stayed with me the most was the humbling feeling of optimistic pride and toughness that seemed to radiate off the people and places we encountered. From Ocean Springs, to Waveland to New Orleans, the energy and drive that I felt was nothing I had experienced before. Everyone I came across had this infectious mix of survivability and appreciation; almost a self-empowering feeling of being indestructible yet at the same time being unendingly thankful for every single thing in life.
    As I wandered around the French Quarter in New Orleans, I stopped and talked to a local artist selling his paintings on the corner and he said something to me I’ll never forget: “This town is all I got left, and it’s still here and I’m still here, so what more could you ask for?”
    Even without spotting a shirtless Brad Pitt, I couldn’t have unknowingly asked for a more soul-inspiring spring break than this one.

Posted by Colonnade Archives on Apr 4 2008. Filed under Features. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry