Letter from Louisiana

My good friend Dan just returned from Cameron, Parish Louisiana. He took a group of his students to volunteer there. His letter offers a unique perspective on recovery in post-Katrina land.

Greetings. I wanted to write to you all on return from our relief efforts in Cameron Parish, Louisiana. Rather than write you all individually, I thought for the sake of expedience I would forward you some thoughts I wrote to our College President. The trip involved 44 students, 3 faculty members, a staff person, and two drivers. It was a life changer for many of our students and one of the most intense scenes I've ever witnessed.

For those with the desire and wherewithal to do something, they desperately need volunteer labor. Short of that, money would be helpful but I would definitely avoid the Red Cross or FEMA. The best groups on the ground were local churches. We worked closely with the regional office of the Methodist church and two Methodist church communities. They have the best sense of need and are the most efficient with resources. I hope all is well with all of you. Cheers.

d

Thanks for passing this on Jay, and thanks for spearheading the college support for the trip. We certainly saw ourselves as ambassadors of a larger community effort and sentiment. You would have been proud of the way we represented both. I certainly have never been prouder to be associated with this place or these students.

That being said, I think a number of our students are reeling from the trip. What we witnessed was a calamity that has been largely ignored. Certainly, the residents of southern Louisiana feel that way. The level of misery and disorientation is high.

I think we are under the impression that FEMA and other voluntary organizations are all over this and help is there or on the way. It isn't. Two months out, there is still wide spread destruction. FEMA is managing dumps and the Army Corps of Engineers is picking up debris if you can get it to the road, but many can not. We saw no sign of the Red Cross. Those who have the means to hire clean up are getting it done, those who can't are living in utter destruction. Social class is dictating the outcome. Many local churches and groups are doing what they can with very limited resources.

Some of the fields we cleared for poor farmers had debris that took 15 people to move. In two of the houses we cleaned up, we piled debris 10 feet high, fifteen feet wide, and over 200 feet long. Single widows with children lived there. We toured the area we originally thought we would be working in southern Cameron parish. There is nothing left to rebuild. It is completely destroyed. I know that your primary responsibility is to this college but your influence in letting people know of what is going on in these areas would be greatly appreciated. I think people are not aware of how bad it is in these places.

While this may sound pretty dire, and it is, let me convey a couple of lessons that I learned. First, it's often not the big things but the little things that made a difference. While moving big stuff was critically important, the two most profound images in my head were more delicate. I watched a group of students working with a women cleaning up what others may think of as junk and trinkets but that were the remains of 25 years of living in her house. Their sensitivity in dealing with her made me weep. On another occasion, Mary Mike Hailey and my group stopped to clean up garbage in a ditch outside of a neighborhood that had been hit pretty hard. People came out of their houses and wept. A women told me that on one level, she could take having a house leveled, but driving by your neighborhood day in and day out that is littered in trash was so demoralizing and overwhelming. Doing something as simple as picking up garbage out of a ditch had a profound moral affect.

Second, this trip hammered home for me the importance of community. In touring Cameron (the place that was completely wiped out), I kept wondering what the name of the school team was. I wondered what the town gossip was like, who was on city council, what they though of their local police officers, and what it was that they loved about their town. I wondered if the stuff of community would transcend the disaster so that people might come back. The only thing to come back to would be that. Conversely, it made me appreciate the sense of community that I have always sought and that I have found here. Being part of Gunnison, and especially a part of this college and these students has empowered me. Community makes us stronger. We swarmed like an ant colony over lots of projects and it was empowering to see what we accomplished, even if it was only a drop in the bucket of a huge disaster and a national disgrace. At any rate, it's been difficult to put these feelings into words and I appreciate the opportunity to vent them.