Reflections a week later

We have been back for just over a week and it has taken me this long to be able to write my blog. The emotions of what we experienced catch me unawares at random moments. Tears well while preparing coffee purchased at Cafe Du Monde in the French Quarter; looking at the many photos we all took; while watching "Studio 60" (of all shows) or phoning a friend. And, even worse, when I realise that I haven't thought about New Orleans for a while, the tears start again. How quickly we settle back into LA life and forget. Mind you, I am sure that my emotional state is not helped by the "moldy lung" (a virilent fungal lung infection) that I seem to have brought back as my souvenier from NOLA!

I still don't really know how to put into words what we experienced this past Thanksgiving week. Immense sadness, physical exhaustion, new intense friendships, drunken nights, breathtaking live music, tears, laughter and too many beignets. But the overall feeling that I left with, and still stays with me, is a feeling of being overwhelmed. I left New Orleans angry. So angry. Angry at everything. 100 of us worked for 10 hours a day for a week and stripped no more than 6 homes to their bare bones ("gutting"). Each home will then have to be "molded" (de-moulded I guess would be the correct technical term). This requires more volunteers scrubbing away the mold with wire brushes and PineSol. And what does that acheive? It leaves a house ready to be rebuilt - new electric wiring to be installed, dry wall to be put up, walls to be painted, furniture to be bought and lives to be rebuilt. But these people have nothing. How can they afford to rebuild? And what is left of the city? And even more overwhelming - it took a 100 people to start on 6 houses. The number of houses on the Hands On waiting list is in the thousands. I left asking, what was the point? The city is corrupt. The money is running out. And people have already forgotten. In fact, back in LA, I am already starting to forget.

But when I reflect, I know that in one week we made a dent in the rebuilding of the new New Orleans. In gutting Patricia's house alone, we saved her $10,000 (the price that contractors charge). When we met her, her gratitude was effusive. On our last day we drove through a neighborhood that you or I could live in, save that now, post-Katrina, the streets are deserted and the houses empty and gutted. But on one of those streets we saw hope - one house, rebuilt and newly painted, standing alone amongst the empty houses, flamboyantly decorated in preparation for the Holidays with a huge inflatable Santa and a snowglobe in the front garden. Defiant. For me, this "Christmas House" represents so much - Hands On, Habitat for Humanity, the residents who are able to return and all the others who are part of the re-New Orleans effort.

I am glad that I experienced what I did. I am not sure if I will be ready to go back in February as others on our team are (I don't think my lungs are strong enough), but I do want to go back. As a final note, I want to thank all our colleagues, friends and family who generously contributed to our travel funds. It meant so much to rebuild the wall of "bricks" in the Hands On bunk house and the metaphor that it represents. THANK YOU. You all were part of that dent in the rebuilding of New Orleans.