Bruce's perspective

~By Bruce Johnson

April 12

The town of Slidell sits at the edge of Lake Pontchartrain some twenty miles north of New Orleans. It is also below sea level. When Hurricane Katrina hit, Slidell was inundated with a 28 foot wave of water from Lake Pontchartrain which is averagely only 12 feet deep. High watermarks on walls fifteen feet or more above the doorsills of many houses were common.

It was into this community that our 14 person church group from St. Mary’s in Barnstable came to build houses with the Habitat for Humanity organization. We were assigned to the East St. Tammany Parish where the homes of poor people were especially hard hit.

The schedule we followed for the week was rigorous. Up at 6:00 AM, on the bus at 6:30, report to the work site ready to build at 7:00 AM. Lunch at noon, clean up and back to the Holiday Inn at 3:30PM for shower and rest. On to dinner at 5:30, sometimes locally and sometimes driving 45 minutes into New Orleans for the special cuisine of that city.

The work itself was both hard and rewarding. Of the fourteen in the group we had a mix of highly skilled craftsmen and some who could barely manage a hammer. Somehow our two foremen, both young men doing tours as “paid” volunteers, sorted us out into work groups according to our abilities. Pounding nails, moving scaffolding, painting, picking up trash by itself is just hard work; building a house for a family that has lived in a trailer for almost three years is rewarding. We met several owners and prospective owners, all of whom had their stories to tell and were most grateful for the efforts of the volunteers. Hearing their stories made the work easier.

On Friday we knocked off early to do a food distribution for Katrina victims in New Orleans still homeless and living in tents under Interstate 10. Thos was followed by a tour of the most devastated part of the city, the Lower Ninth Ward. As much as I had read about it nothing prepared me for the utter destruction of those neighborhoods. Block after block of concrete pads where houses once stood. Other blocks of houses with large red X’s painted on indicating that they were condemned. Perhaps most poignantly were the red symbols painted on the front doors that showed: date of inspection, number of people found, number of dead people found, number of dead pets found. You cannot see these symbols and not be moved.

I am waiting at the New Orleans airport for our flight back to Boston and on to Cape Cod. I am tired, a bit nicked up from a misdirected hammer and with a bag full of dirty clothes; but I am also refreshed with the satisfaction of having participated in something extraordinarily worthwhile.