Hello New Orleans, this is America calling...

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Day Three

 

New Orleans.

 

One of the students said it best… New Orleans has so much potential.

 

We started the day in the Lower 9^th ward working at the St. Bernard’s Community Center.  Hurricane Katrina hit in August of 2005.  Bourbon Street was up and running by January of 2006.  Almost 4 full years later, the 9^th ward is still in utter decay.   This was one of the first days that I heard anger toward the country.   Up to this point, I have heard pride, perhaps some division, but not all out anger that stems from feelings of abandonment. 

 

Words cannot fully articulate what one sees when they travel to the 9^th ward.  The sights resemble a war torn country more so than a great city with a rich and vibrant history.  Café Du Monde (and the rest of the French Quarter) is still in tact.  We had our Beignets and Café Au Lait as we walked around the area looking for a place to grab lunch.  The French Quarter is nice and offers the average tourist a lot of options.

 

However, I can’t help but reflect on our work earlier in the day.   I was always raised to believe that education and privilege come with a certain responsibility to your community.  My community is East Nashville, but it is also Nashville and Tennessee and the United States.  I am not trying to solve all of the problems in this land, however, I don’t want to turn my back on them, and I certainly don’t want to contribute to the problem.  That said I really didn’t want to include service initiatives that provide only a bandaid to the larger problems.  However, given the nature of this trip, we need to work with what we have.  Everyone seemed to embrace the work that we did.  Some of it was basic grunt work, but it was grunt work that needed to be done.  All in all, I am glad that we were able to lend a hand, if even for only a few hours. 

 

I spoke with a ‘family’ who was living in a shell because their homes were destroyed.   There were three different sets of families that formed this new family, but they were all pulling together to help each other through the difficult times.  It made it difficult to talk about my own privilege of being able to travel across the country on a bus that was far nicer than their current living conditions.  Furthermore, we are being overwhelmed with opportunities and possibilities, while they were working to just simply survive the aftermath of the Katrina tragedy.  We have carved out some time to do service, but after our half-day stint we were able to go to Tulane and take a warm shower, drink smoothies and lay around in the AC on couches.  Meanwhile, when we said that we mentioned wanting to integrate service into the trip, two of the members of the family asked if we needed help.

 

It sure put things into perspective, and spoke to the potential of New Orleans.  This potential is certainly different than what is being promoted in the brochures for New Orleans.  I may be one of the few that doesn’t bask in the debauchery of Bourbon Street. Instead I choose to reflect on the spirit and passion of those that walk the streets of New Orleans and refuse to leave their situations because New Orleans is their home, and their community.  They need each other.  They have a marriage that they refuse to give up on.  Perhaps this is the ‘hope’ that Americans keep echoing.  Perhaps this is the potential that we are embracing.  In any case, I haven’t given up on New Orleans, and I continue to learn a bit more about the spirit of our country with each day.