After it was nominated for 13 Academy Awards, I figured I should see what all the “Curious Case of Benjamin Button” hype was about. Besides being surprisingly good, the movie made me so nostalgic for New Orleans that I am trying to plan a trip there for after I graduate in May.
In March, 2007, I helped organize an Alternative Spring Break trip to build Habitat for Humanity homes in the Ninth Ward. It was about 18 months after Hurricane Katrina hit on Aug. 29, 2005, and I have never been to a city with such incredible history, culture, and ecology. The following fall, I did a website about the trip for an online journalism class. I decided to re-publish some of that material here because it’s actually pretty interesting. It’s also an example of something young people all over the country do now, but that they didn’t do when my parents were young: service trips during Spring Break.
I know some people might think of New Orleans and Hurricane Katrina as old news, but it’s going to take decades to rebuild the city. I am excited to see how much progress has been made in the two years since this photo was taken.
Habitat for Humanity Executive Board members Samantha Kacos, left, and Janna Brancolini, right, paint a gable on a roof in the Ninth Ward in New Orleans, March, 2007. Photo courtesy of Alternative Spring Break.
It was already dark outside when a group of 19 USC students and I arrived in New Orleans on the evening of Sunday, March 11, 2007, to build Habitat for Humanity homes in the Ninth Ward. Thanks to our pre-dawn wake-up call the next morning, it would be almost 24 hours before we finally saw the place we were staying — an elementary-school-turned-volunteer camp — in the light. The single bare bulb in the middle of the converted classroom where we slept barracks-style with 40 other girls didn’t shed enough light on the cots and bunk beds for us to actually see where we were laying down our sleeping bags; mostly we had to just feel around as we tried to get ready for bed on the edges of the room.
There were 18 women and two men in our group, and the long lines snaking half-way down the hall out the doors of the ladies’ rooms indicated that many other groups were equally estrogen-dominated. The volunteer camp, which is called Camp Hope, had a weekday curfew of 11 p.m. and a weekend curfew of 2 a.m. Lights out and quiet time began promptly at 10 p.m. during the week, which made me feel like I was back at violin camp in the 7th grade — except now I was legally an adult and wondering why I was allowed to vote for state resolutions but not talk after 10 p.m. It didn’t take me long for me to appreciate the quiet rule, though, because not only did we have to get up at 6:30 each morning, every noise in the building was audible from my bed, thanks to the camp’s open ceilings and curtains that served as doors. (There was a roof on the school, but the two feet below the ceiling was open space where the duct work visible. The walls were framed all the way to the ceiling, but the dry wall stopped about two feet short.)
On Monday morning, we drove through the parish just as the sun was rising, toward the center of the city where we would be building. This was the first time we saw the natural beauty of the area, and I wished we had time or space to stop and take pictures. Sloping hills shrouded in early morning mist were framed by arching trees and ground flora. Everything took on a supernatural quality in the diffused light.
Once we were out of the countryside, the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina became apparent. Driving north on Highway 46 towards downtown New Orleans was like what I imagine driving through a war zone would entail as we passed miles of abandoned businesses. Entire sides of buildings were missing, gas stations were literally tipped over, windows were boarded up or blown out, and vehicles had come to rest in random places. Houses had been gutted, and the entire contents rested in the front yards. The eeriest part, though, was that you could go miles without seeing anybody walking on the streets. (Interestingly, the next spring I found this same deserted quality on the streets of the South Los Angeles when I did a class reporting project there — and this without a preceding natural disaster.)
The devastation in New Orleans takes a hiatus just as the highway approaches the still-pristine French Quarter, but a few more miles after that, the downtown was completely sacked. Heading on to the Tulane neighborhood through the Garden District we saw that the historic mansions were also untouched, as if everything historic in the city had a giant dome around it to protect it from the flood waters.
I noted with interest that Bourbon Street, which is in the French Quarter, suffered literally no damage. The sun-faded posters of naked women outside the many sex shops that advertised live acts seemed to mock anyone who dared suggest that the hurricane had punished the city for its sin. If I believed in religious absolutism or God’s wrath, Bourbon Street would have confused me. Distinctly lacking those things, I just thought a lot of the street was equal parts disgusting, amusing and sad. The girls I saw standing outside the sex shops in bikinis, chain-smoking cigarettes during their breaks, were usually pale, skinny, and prematurely aged. They were not the voluptuous women being advertised in the posters, and I thought, Ha! False advertising! just as I wondered how they got there.
In spite of the sex shops, New Orleans has always been a romantic city, and I think the romanticism has only increased since it was partially destroyed. It seems to have become a haven for young people who don’t know what they want to do with their lives. They take a year off from school to go down to Gulf and figure it all out. It seems like an intriguing way to spend a year: living with people your age, building houses during the day and soaking up the city’s still-intact culture at night and on weekends. It’s a good place to party on a budget since live music is rampant and cover charges were nowhere to be seen.
The main Habitat for Humanity site in New Orleans is an area called “Musicians’ Village.” It consists of rows of brightly colored new houses, and a certain percentage of the residents must be musicians or families with kids. The neighborhood will eventually have a community center with a stage and practice rooms where the musicians can teach their traditions to the next generation.
The USC Alternative Spring Break: New Orleans group gathered in front of the sign we assembled and houses we worked on. Photo courtesy of Alternative Spring Break.
That first Monday morning, every Habitat for Humanity volunteer in New Orleans — a whopping 600 college students plus 40 or so Baptists — gathered in a dusty lot to go over their work schedules. It struck me that many of the groups were treating the event as though they were at summer camp, singing songs and playing games. One group ran around in circles, dancing and grinding on one another —at 7:30 a.m.
As I shivered in my sweatshirt, my sleep-deprived internal monologue went roughly like this:
It’s too early for this. And even if it weren’t barely light outside, we’re in a devastated city. “Ride, ride, ride that pony” songs are not exactly appropriate considering how many lives were destroyed here not that long ago.
The songs continued.
Oh God. They’re coming over here. They want us to join. Maybe if I don’t make eye contact…
I recognized that, arguably, the trip should be about camaraderie among volunteers, and before getting there I had hoped to meet a lot of people from other schools.
As soon as we arrived, though, my priorities changed. While other groups spent a lot of time at Camp Hope and made lifelong friends there, I realized I cared more about getting to know the other USC students and experiencing the city as much as possible. Our group often went straight to the French Quarter, the swamps, or the Garden District after we finished working at 3 p.m., and we didn’t return to the camp until just before curfew most evenings. We rarely worked with other groups, and it wasn’t until the last day of building that we were paired with another school and were able to meet people, none of whom we kept in touch with.
But on that Monday, a man who seemed to be some sort of authority figure climbed up onto one of the storage sheds and addressed the crowd.
“Good morning!” he called.
“Good morning!” we replied.
“Who’s here to build some houses?” he yelled, more enthusiastically this time. Everyone cheered.
“No!” he replied.
No?
“You are not here to build houses. You… are here to LOVE SOMEBODY!”
I don’t remember how everyone else reacted to this statement, but I would have loved to see my facial expression as I mused:
You have got to be kidding me.
The man whipped out a pocket Bible and began reading passages.
Oh no. It’s getting worse.
“You are here to dispel the darkness!” he told us, referring to the verse he had just read. “You are my army of light, and I want you to go out into the city and love somebody in everything you do today!”
No! I could be loving someone in Cabo right now. I am here to build some houses!
I was there to build houses, experience New Orleans, and gain an appreciation for cultural, political and economic factors at work in the city before, during and after Hurricane Katrina. The sermon on the shed had been entertaining, but c’etait toute.
Our assignment that day was to install baseboards on a nearly completed house. Our crew leader was a male college student from New York with curly hair and a paint-stained t-shirt. The girls in my group immediately began to whisper and giggle. The crew leader explained that he liked to start the day off with a game to learn everybody’s names. “Basically you just come up with a word to describe yourself that rhymes with your name,” he explained. “I’ll go first. I’m sneaky Pete.”
Wait a minute. Since when does sneaky rhyme with Pete?
Pete was cute, but he seemed a little bit confused. I was still trying to figure out if it was in any way linguistically possible for sneaky to rhyme with Pete when we got to me.
“I’m Janna from Indiana,” I told the group. Now that’s a rhyme.
(Later that week, we ran into Sneaky Pete in front of a bar on Bourbon Street. He told us he had been hung over that day, but that he would have used “Sneaky Pete” regardless.)
Monday was a good day on site, except that lines kept forming behind the circular saws because there were only two of them. I decided that if we ever returned, we should bring circular saws with us.
The next morning, we all gathered in front of the shed-turned-pulpit for our building assignments.
“What are we going to do today!?” our pastor friend yelled.
“Dispel the darkness!” I called back, a little louder and a little more enthusiastically than I had intended to. It didn’t help that we were right in the front. Everyone in our group burst into laughter and started smacking me, making it very clear that:
1. I was responsible.
2. It was absolutely meant as a wise-ass remark.
The man on the shed shot us a very angry look. As he called out different tasks that needed to be done that day and asked for volunteers, the members of our group raised our hands on multiple occasions. And on multiple occasions, we were ignored. Even when nobody else volunteered but us, we were ignored. Finally, we were the last people standing in the lot. The man on the shed had no choice but to finally give us a job. Apparently he decided he wanted us out of sight and mind because he banished us away from Musicians’ Village, all the way to the other side of the Ninth Ward, by the railroad tracks, where there was not a single other group working. This turned out to be a good thing, though, because we were given an assignment with a very capable female crew leader who was taking a year off from Stanford to figure out what she really wanted to do in life. (Didn’t I tell you New Orleans is a magnet for this stuff? Pete left school a year early to sort things out too.)
As we drove away from the crowded central area, we realized there was hardly anyone in the neighborhood besides the Habitat volunteers. When we got to the houses we would be working on, we saw a group of black teenagers hanging out at one of the gutted homes nearby. They seemed to just be standing around the house while a middle-aged man with a large red truck did work on the destroyed residence, and there was no one else in sight.
After we had been working for about an hour, two National Guard members rolled up in a tank and got out to talk to us. They had been patrolling the nearly empty streets for weeks, and they said there had been complaints about things being stolen from the volunteer’s vehicles. They asked if the loitering teenagers were bothering us; we said no and asked if the Guard members got bored here. They said that there was lots of activity at night, and some of the Habitat for Humanity homes had actually been broken into. They told us the teenagers at the house nearby were selling cocaine, and I wondered if it was true or if they were just saying that to impress us. There didn’t seem to be many customers left, but who knows? After about 20 minutes, the guard members got a call and had to leave. They said they’d be back later in the day to check up on us.
When the guard members returned after lunch, Sam and I were on a roof painting. The roof overlooked the neighborhood behind the house, and railroad tracks and Downtown New Orleans were visible in front of it. The tank rolled by and we waved from the roof, pausing for a minute to look at the skyscrapers whose windows were still covered with plastic sheets a year and a half after they were blown out. Later we went on a bus tour and could see the water lines on the buildings downtown. The water had flooded almost to the second story on some structures.
I had been building on roofs for almost three years by the time I climbed up in New Orleans, but this roof was easily the steepest I had ever been on. This is because the house design in Musicians’ Village is long and narrow. Even though I had never felt nervous on a roof, my footing was shaky when I climbed up for the first time. After climbing on and off the ladder a few times, my muscle memory had me stabilized. though. Although there was only enough work on the roof for two people at a time, I encouraged other girls to climb up just to experience being up there. Some were excited, but many were so nervous they didn’t want to try. With the help of a couple other confident builders, I coaxed girls on and off the roof until each one had faced her fears. I felt more accomplished then than I had all week, and I felt that I had finally done something that only a few of the other 599 Habitat volunteers in New Orleans were capable of.
My incredible roof climbing/coercive skills were nothing compared to the skills we would see a few days later, though. A group of us decided that we wanted to go on a fan boat ride through the bayou, so one day we went straight from work to the wetlands south of the city. Our guide was a 5-foot-6 Cajun man named Louis, who was essentially a solid block of dark tan muscle in cowboy boots with a thick, thick Louisiana accent. He said his family had owned the bayou for generations and had made money fishing and giving tours. He had spent his entire life in the water, handling alligators and continuing the multiple family businesses.
Louis told us that when he was a baby, his father put a baby alligator in his crib with him. When he was six, his grandfather would ask him to make coffee and then place a baby alligator in the middle of the kitchen floor, between Louis and the coffee pot. The idea was that a baby alligator, which is too small to bite, acts exactly the same way a grown alligator acts. If you can figure out how to anticipate the baby alligator’s moves, you will eventually learn how a grown alligator will respond to you too. Louis explained that Louisiana alligators are much less violent than Florida alligators because unlike Florida, New Orleans gets relatively cold in the winter. The New Orleans alligators have to hibernate during the cold winter months, so they spend the spring, summer, and fall building up fat stores to sustain them during the cold. They are therefore less aggressive than the more-agile Florida gators, who never have to build up these fat reservoirs, and they are unlikely to bother people unless they’re bothered first.
Louis impressed us by luring alligators over to the boat with marshmallows and then grabbing their tails when they got close to the edge. He told us stories about swimming in the bayou at night when you could see all the alligator eyes lit up in the moonlight, implying these nightly trips were common practice among the people who lived there. Louis then pulled the boat over to a picturesque area and brought out a surprise: a baby alligator named Boots. “Why do you call it Boots?” somebody asked. “I call all of them Boots,” he replied. “They make good boots.”
We got to hold Boots and pose for photographs with him, and I volunteered to go first. I gave Boots a kiss while my friend snapped a picture. “Can’t take you anywhere, can we?” Louis asked.
If only he knew… I thought, reflecting back on my “Dispel the darkness!” quip. I started laughing. I’m not convinced I dispelled any darkness in New Orleans, but through Boots and the city’s many other charms, New Orleans had dispelled mine.
