A Safe Distance from Hurricane Season

As we approach the one year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, I have found myself a little more anxious this time during hurricane season. Any time I hear a report about a hurricane on the news, I immediately stop moving and try to figure out where it is going. A part of me doesn't really understand this feeling. Last year I was in New Orleans during hurricane season, had to evacuate for Hurricane Gustav, and sat out Hurricane Ike as our 100+ year old house swayed in the wind and the rain leaked into our house through the ceiling and the windows. I didn't really feel a lot of fear then. I was a part of it all. I knew what was going on a lot of the time and maybe that made me feel more control. After my experience last year, I feel much more confident that the city is capable of handling an evacuation in a timely, safe, and respectful manner.

My anxiety rests more with what I heard Bama say around this time last year when we were waiting to see which way Gustav was going to go.

He said, "I just, I just don't think we can handle another one yet."

I laughed out loud because I knew New Orleans couldn't handle another one. Not anywhere close. People are still using buckets as toilets and are living in gutted houses. Some STILL haven't even had their house gutted yet. It's 4 years later people.

This year, not only do I know that the city cannot handle a hit, but I also wonder, what will happen to my work? Did I do enough? Were my construction skills good enough? Is everything sturdy enough? Is the house on Hollygrove going to survive this year?

I worry because this year, I'm not doing anything to help for the first time in 3 years. If something happens, I won't be able to help for over a year. I'm scared. In Breach of Faith he writes, "Unlike earthquakes, which tended to ease seismic pressure deep beneath the earth, at least for a few decades or centuries, the hurricane's gun to the skull was fully reloaded after each and every storm." Every year people in the gulf have to go through this. And with the disappearance of wetlands it's only going to get worse over time.

 

In One Dead in Attic Chris Rose writes, "From time to time, I talk to a retired New York City fireman named Jim Kearney on the phone. He has made several trips here and to the Mississippi coast to give free massage therapy to first responders, rescue workers, and volunteer house gutters.

He says that every time he goes back to New York, he flounders with a sense of loss of purpose and direction. He says his friends who have volunteered to work here feel the same way.

'They go through their own grieving hell when they leave New Orleans,' he said to me. 'It's like leaving the Titanic for a safe distant shore – and leaving all the people behind. There is such a dissonance between what's going on down there and everywhere else in America.'"

 

And for me it's really true. When I'm not in New Orleans, I feel like a chicken running around with my head cut off with no general direction. Yes, I am going to India and that will be a great experience. But where can I make a bigger difference? What matters more to me?

In India I will be a foreigner who doesn't even speak the language. The change in their community will come from inside the community and they will make it work. I'm scared I will be more like a volunteer where you go to have a good philanthropic, hands on experience, and the job of those hosting you is to make you feel like you are making a real difference. In reality, a great deal of the time volunteers are more trouble than they are worth. I worry I will be in that position in India. Of course this knowledge also motivates me to challenge myself to find my skills that will most benefit them so I don't simply wind up being a burden on those I am trying to help.

In New Orleans, I may not have been the most qualified for my position at first. But I learned. I know I was needed and I know I made a difference. New Orleans is where I am from. Southeast Louisiana and the spirit of New Orleans make up a great deal of who I am and after living there for a year, I definitely see where a lot of my innate personality traits come from. My service to New Orleans and the Gulf is not isolated to one year of service in AmeriCorps. I went down before I was in AmeriCorps and I will continue to go down and try to help heal the area. And try to prevent wetlands from deteriorating. After my year, I know I am a really valuable volunteer. And I know that in combination with the hurricanes and tornadoes and flooding and loss of wetlands, there is a chance that the land of my heritage will not exist in 80 years. Literally. That kills me. I cannot imagine this world without Southeast Louisiana. I cannot imagine my life without it.

I feel stranded when I know there is nothing I can do.

So why have I made my life choices to leave? Mostly for selfish life experience reasons which aren't invalid or bad. People are continuing to flock to New Orleans to help. Because as much as I come from Louisiana, as big a part of me as it is, it is not my home. My home is Northern Virginia. I can't really help that. I love it and plan to return after my adventures in India are over. As anyone in Louisiana knows, there is no place like home.