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"New Orleans for Spring Break"

March 27, 2005

I’m setting the bar low for future R-Journalists. My writings are few and far apart. However, I think you, my loyal readers, appreciate the quality writing, eh? Regardless, you can expect a barrage of new R-Journals over the next month or so. I think that often I’m so busy with other activities that I don’t even have the time to write about them…crazy how that works out.

Let’s jump back a few weeks to Rollins’ Spring Break the first week of March. If you’ve been reading a lot of my previous articles, you will remember that I was leading a group of students, faculty, and staff to New Orleans, Louisiana to help out however we could. Our trip really exceeded any expectations that I had.

Prior to the trip, the 12 other team members and I only had a chance to bond over a couple of causal meetings. If there is anything that you might find at college, it’s that it is very difficult to get groups of people together for meetings. This is derivative not out of apathy, but rather out of the opposite—students, faculty, and staff are busy people with crazy schedules. In our meetings, we discussed our expectations and plans for the trip—many of the details were largely unknown. We were literally going to a disaster area.

Our flight arrived in New Orleans on Monday afternoon. I was sure to pay careful attention to the surrounding landscape as we landed. Having never been to New Orleans prior to this trip, I really didn’t have a perfect frame of reference, but the destruction—felled trees, homes, roads devoid of traffic—was visible from the plane. The airport was eerily empty; I can’t remember too many times in which I’ve walked through an airport so empty.

Our vans dropped us off at Camp Premier, a FEMA tent city, a couple of hours after we arrived. Our van ride took us through the entire city; we saw massive destruction from the highway, with plenty of vacant and destroyed buildings. It is very difficult to describe the devastation of New Orleans and the surrounding areas. It’s not necessarily the destruction itself (which is singularly troubling), but rather the scope of this devastation which is truly horrifying. Picture driving down one of your hometown’s most populated areas for twenty miles, looking to the left and to the right and seeing no open stores and no traffic. It’s really something else.

After check-in at Camp Premier, we explored a bit. Security was amazingly tight—we had to wear photo ID badges and the place was littered with security officers and federal government employees. This security was a necessity, as we were living with 1,200 other relief workers all operating under a lot of stress and limited privacy. Our living quarters were tight to say the least. The men of our group (three others and I) lived in a tent with thirty or forty college students from my home state of Ohio. Each tent member received a small cot. Our particular tent was so packed that the cots touched each other. Luckily, by Thursday, many groups had begun to move out, so we were able to move into the neighboring tent. We referred to this tent as the “Ritz” of Camp Premier—it had multiple lights and comfortable, roomy cot spaces. As far as bathrooms, Camp Premier had a variety of “upscale Port-A-Potties,” or bathroom trailers that really weren’t that bad. There were multiple trailers with toilets and multiple trailers with showers. Hot water was a problem, however—there was never a happy medium in terms of water temperature. I ended up taking a few of the coldest showers I’ve ever taken in my entire life on this trip. Nonetheless, we had two hot lunches (and one bagged lunch) per day that were more than adequate. We certainly had nothing to complain about.

Our daily routine was fairly consistent. We’d all wake about 7:30 a.m., grab some breakfast, and head out to the work site. We worked on a few houses throughout the course of the week, with one house being our main focus and success. So, what did we do at these houses? In a process known as “gutting,” we ripped out all of the insides of the houses so that they might be rebuilt. All furniture, appliances, drywall, insulation, and flooring had to be removed. Only the wood studs of the homes were left in a properly gutted home. The houses within St. Bernard Parish, where we worked, had all been flooded up to their roofs; so naturally, there was a lot of work to be done. The work was hot and smelly. We were wearing hard hats, masks, gloves, and goggles, which helped as far as safety, but certainly did not make movement easier. The process of gutting a house was very tough, both physically and emotionally. On the physical level, it was extremely difficult to remove many pieces of large furniture and to deal with some of the terrible smells and putrid water. On the emotional level, however, it was very difficult to reconcile with some of the items that we removed. I feel that we really got an accurate picture of the families we helped through the items we found. I think it was these items—and the way that I could relate my family or relatives to what we found—that made removing them so difficult. This difficulty compounded with the appearance of the homeowner and his son one day. We were able to put faces with names and debris.

In the end, our trip was absolutely amazing. We have a lot to take back to the Rollins community and many stories to tell. The work in New Orleans (and in many of the Gulf Coast areas) will not end this year. It won’t end next year. The only way that we can get these amazing residents back up to speed is through our commitment and support. Thus, I am actually planning a few other trips back to New Orleans in May. I think it’s vital that we support the residents of New Orleans and that we continue giving the Rollins community this important experience. One really learns to value people and gains perspective after a trip of our proportions.

Because it is so difficult to summarize an entire week of activities in just several hundred words, e-mail me for more information or with your questions. Thanks for your continued readership. Oh, and for my R-Journal fans, I’m going on tour this weekend. I’ll be in the Baltimore area on Saturday and in D.C. on Saturday. If you are a prospective or admitted student, e-mail me for more information on the sessions that we will be having there.

Seniors, you’re almost there. Rollins is only a few months away…

Steve

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