Day 6 - Sunday in N'Awlins

We got up at a later time today because we had no work assignments. However, we did have to pack up and be ready to leave Chalmette. After making sure all my things were accounted for in my suitcase, I finished packing my duffel bag for the overnight stay we would make in Alabama. The plan was to leave the bigger luggage in the trailer and only unload the smaller items and essentials.

After breakfast, a group of us went to a coffee shop nearby. I got an iced mocha which packed enough of a wallop to get me properly awake after a week of work and fun, and we returned to Hilltop Rescue to finish our preparations. One "preparation" we made was to sing "Happy Birthday" to one of the volunteers from our group. A small prepackaged cake was unwrapped and loaded with enough candles to create a fire hazard when lit. It was a nice touch to end a week of work. We also spent time signing t-shirts that some of the group members passed around. I found out that it is easier to approach this the way a dot matrix printer would print.

At a local church, we all got to write on the walls. The sermon was about a New Year's Restitution, giving our lives back to God. We left scriptures, song lyrics, and other inspirational messages on the walls of the unfinished auditorium. The next day, the church planned to prime and paint the walls, so our messages would be hidden away in the building. One message stood out to me: "I thought I came here with everything, but I'm leaving with so much more."

I felt the same way. Before we left, we were greeted with a familiar song, in a familiar voice: "My father is in heaven above!" The jodel rang through the church auditorium, drawing attention not to the jodeler, but to God: "I cannot praise Him loud enough!" I got to talk to her again after that.

After we left the church, we headed into New Orleans, where traffic had piled up and streets were busy: the Saints were scheduled to play in the Superdome today. We didn't go to the game, we only went to have lunch. At first, we dropped people off at a local restaurant to place our reservation, but they found out that the line went out the door, down the block, and wrapped around the corner!

We picked up the people we dropped off, and headed to a familiar restaurant: Bubba Gump's Shrimp Company. I had eaten there in August. Since our group was so large, we had to be seated separately, and the group I was with got seated at the same table that I'd been at in August. I thought that was an odd coincidence.

After lunch, we headed back to Chalmette, to load up our trailer, and then we hit the road. The sun set as we crossed the I-10 Twin Spans Bridge across Lake Ponchartrain.

The drive to Alabama was uneventful, except for a quick stop for fast food. We listened to music CDs and I remembered my recorded jodel. Once I got home, I planned to get a patch cable so I could play my tape into the computer and burn the jodel and the interview to a CD.

At a church in Alabama, a church member let us into the building around midnight. It turned out he was able to use the audiovisual equipment in the auditorium, and he offered to burn my CD there. That saved me a few steps, and I thanked him for the favor.

As the seconds ticked away and 2006 came to a close, there was no ball to watch, no fireworks, and no loud celebration. We were all very tired. I watched the seconds tick away to midnight, and said "so long 2006" before going to bed. 2006 had ended, and our trip home would end tomorrow, in 2007. I felt that was a fitting end to a good trip helping others and serving God.

Day 5 - The Jodel...

While washing laundry before packing to go home, I ran into a familiar-looking woman in the laundry room: it was the woman who jodeled at the beginning of the week. We struck up a conversation, and since I had brought a tape recorder, I asked if I could record her jodel.

She gave me permission, and we went to a less noisy room to record. After she finished, the other people in the room gave loud applause which was also caught on tape. I also asked her to explain where jodeling came from, and recorded the story of the jodel:

In Switzerland, in the Alps, villages and communities send young men up the mountain slopes to tend to the flocks, make mountain cheese, and farm the land. In one of the villages, a problem arose. One year, when there were no other men available, a boy volunteered to go into the mountains to do the work.

His mother asked him if he was sure he wanted to do this: "You are only a child, and it's very hard work," she said, "and you could be hurt. How will we know you are safe if you are all alone?"

He said he could handle the hard work: "In the morning and in the evening, you will know I am safe because I will sing my prayers as loud as I can."

The villagers sent the boy into the mountains. At sunrise, everybody was awakened by the loud echoes of the boy's strong voice. They knew the boy was safe. And as the sun set in the evening, the boy's voice would echo through the valley again, and the villagers knew they could rest assured that their boy was safe.

As the farming season went on, one morning, the sun rose and no echoes came.

The villagers hurried up the mountain and found that the boy had fallen and been injured. His voice had reassured the villagers when he was safe, and his silence had warned them of the danger he was in!

Thanks to his jodeling, the boy was able to get help when he needed it, and after his injury healed, he returned to his work in the mountains.

After the interview was over, other people joined our conversation, and it changed to discussing mucking and gutting houses, to reconstruction, and other things in between. I have always enjoyed meeting new people while volunteering, and this evening was no different.

Day 5 - Finishing

A general order went through our team in the morning: there will be no more mucking. I could understand the order fairly easily. It isn't that mucking isn't necessary or helpful, it's that mucking wasn't our main reason for being in Louisiana. We had gone to all the hassle of packing building tools to build things up, so why waste our chance to use those tools? There were hundreds of teens who had come to Louisiana to muck and gut houses, so there were enough people doing that kind of work anyway.

I would have liked to muck a house on this trip, but it was not necessary for me. In fact, I think I belonged with the mudding crew. We went back and finished the job we started at the beginning of the week. One person took care of that terribly small closet in the master bathroom, and I got to help install drywall in the master bathroom. Other people finished applying mud to the cracks and screw holes in all the walls.

I know about two kinds of drywall: one that is for normal rooms, and one that is water-resistant, for bathrooms. We began to run out of the water-resistant drywall, but the person I helped figured out how to do it with the scraps that were still left in the house. He figured that it would all get covered up with tile or wallpaper, and if the second and third coats of mud were done properly, nobody would notice that the walls were assembled from several small pieces of drywall instead of two or three large pieces.

Once that was done, I used mud and finished up covering the cracks in the newly installed drywall. I had to work around the bathtub, which was weird, because to reach the ceiling cracks, I needed to have a ladder. We ended up setting the ladder half-in, half-out of the bathtub. It was only difficult to finish the cracks because the ladder was uneven, but I was able to finish.

I went back to reload the mud in my trough and saw the tail end of a mud fight. Two people had tried to smear each other with the drywall joint compound, and one person had gotten it on her face. It dried on her face and cracked. Nobody thought about it until the end of the day.

For lunch, we had Jambalaya. Instead of eating outdoors like we had on all the other workdays, we ate indoors. It was raining and chilly. The Jambalaya had shrimp, sausage, and a strong spicy jolt that I really enjoyed. It also cleared out my sinuses, but I think that was a perk of getting to eat Jambalaya.

We finished the first coat of mud today, so only two coats have to be applied later, after it gets sanded. We were glad to find out that it was finished, and we had finished at the end of the day. We cleaned our tools one last time and got ready to leave, when the person with mud on her face had an emergency: a piece of the drywall compound had broken off when she was wiping her face, and it got into her eye.

Somebody got the first aid kit and found out that we had saline for washing debris out of wounds and eyes, and I offered to use it. I had experienced eye problems during my second trip, so I felt that I could offer some help. The mud washed out fairly easily, but it left the person's eye feeling irritated and swollen. I'd had eye problems in October and November because of getting gunk in my eyes all the way back in August: corneal abrasions had formed. In November, an ophthalmologist suggested some over-the-counter eyedrops that were for lubricating my eye so that the abrasions would smooth over and heal.

I suggested the same eyedrops for the person who'd gotten mud into her eye. I joked that this situation made the saying: "here's mud in your eye" mean something entirely new. We stopped to buy more eyedrops at Walgreen's on the way back to Hilltop Rescue. She put some of the new eye drops in her eye after we got back, and I told her what the ophthalmologist had told me: "Use the eye drops if your eye feels scratchy or irritated. And don't rub your eyes."

Day 4 - Muckers Anonymous

There was an element in our group who wanted to go mucking, tearing out debris from houses and trying to dig up sentimental items for the home owners. I would have been happy to go mucking also, so our team leader said a crew could go mucking if they could join up with Chuck. Chuck was our mucking crew leader in August. I did not have my heart set on mucking or gutting houses, though it would have been good to do it, I was not disappointed when Chuck told me his van was full of volunteers already. Since he had no room for additional volunteers, we headed back to the St. Bernard project office.

The Ohio Seven headed back to continue the mudding project at the same house. I was amazed at how much work there still was to do, even though we had worked there two days already.

I got to do something new today when our mud ran out. I asked if I could use the mixer, which is a special bit that attaches to any standard drill. Since our drywall compound came in boxes, it was too thick to use directly on the walls. Each time we needed another batch, we had to add water to it, then mix it up. So I got the chance to mix the mud and try not to splatter it all over everything in sight. I managed to do both somewhat well, and we loaded up our troughs again.

We also moved some drywall out of our way so that we could finish mudding in one part of the house. When it is dry, drywall is not very brittle, and it is not very heavy either. It was fairly easy for us to move sheets of drywall with two people: one person at each end can make sure that the drywall sheet doesn't get damaged.

Lunch was different again: the home owner bought us "po' boys." One was a cheeseburger sub a few feet long, and the other had roast beef. Yesterday's planned lunch of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches remained untouched today, and the home owner promised to make Jambalaya for lunch tomorrow.

After lunch, we walked up the street to see what the other houses were like. On the way up the street, we met another volunteer who was installing insulation and drywall in a house. After we talked to the other volunteer, we looked at an earthen levee which was at the end of the street, and crossed a bridge to walk to the top of the levee. There was a marsh on the other side of the levee. After that, we went back to the house we had worked on for three days.

On our way back, we saw a house that still had the "X" logo on it, with the date it was searched, the code for the regiment responsible for that search, and the number of bodies below it. I had seen a lot of zeros, but this one had a number: one person had been found dead inside. It was a sad reminder that even as rebuilding could help some people return home, others would never return.

We sanded some of the areas that had been mudded earlier, and I had to touch up a window where I messed up the mud that somebody else put around the sill. The rest of the day, we continued mudding the house. There was still so much left to be done.

When we got back to Hilltop Rescue, I found out that a couple of the people from the team had managed to join a mucking crew. They hadn't done that kind of work before, so they had stories to tell of all the things they had discovered. It brought back memories--some happy, some very sad--from my other trips.

Day 3 - New Orleans in December

It was dark by the time we made it into New Orleans and parked. Since I have Seasonal Affective Depression, I reminded myself that the days were getting longer again, since the date was now several days past the Winter Solstice. The city lights were bright in the distance, and since it had rained, sidewalks and streets glistened, giving the Crescent City a magical appearance. I'm sure winter is less of a tourist season there, so there was less activity than I remembered during my other trips. It seemed quieter to me.

Some of the group went to a local restaurant near the Market, which was not open. Jazz music filtered in from outside. While we waited for our table, cell phone calls came in, and we asked for more tables. A few minutes later, several staff members from Hilltop Rescue arrived and joined us for dinner.

One volunteer ordered an appetizer of alligator tail. It arrived cubed, fried in a spicy batter. When he shared it with everybody else, I took a piece and tried it. Remarkably, it did not taste "like chicken," it tasted like alligator tail. There wasn't any meat I could think of to match that taste to, although the texture reminded me of shark.

After dinners ranging from jambalaya to grilled shrimp were served, we headed to Cafe du Monde to round out this trip with coffee and beignets. On our way into the cafe, somebody recognized Mayor Nagin, who was on his way out. He was gone before anybody really would've had a chance to talk with him.

After we finished getting a sugar and caffeine buzz that would last well into the morning, we returned to Hilltop Rescue. I didn't go to bed until I had finished drying my laundry load, at about 1:30 in the morning.

Day 3 - The Ohio Seven

With all the people from Youth in Action, there was a larger crowd in line for breakfast, and the morning devotional had to be moved outside to accommodate the crowd. This was almost unreal to me. During the first trip, there had been about 400 volunteers at Hilltop Rescue, the place was packed, but everybody fit into one room for devotional. During the second trip, there were at least 50 volunteers, but not more than 75.

The group I was with got to return to do more mudding at the same house as yesterday. We stopped at the office of the St. Bernard Project in the morning for updates, and we found out that our group had been given a name: The Ohio Seven. I don't know if any of the other groups got named by the home owners they were helping out. We got to return to see if we could finish the job, and there were things that had been left undone the day before that we would get back to. Everybody was excited, and we hoped we might finish the first coating of mud this time around.

On the way to the house, we stopped at Home Depot in Chalmette and picked up a lock for the front door of the house we were working on. At the house, the group leader worked to install the lock while the rest of us got our troughs of mud and went back to work.

I got to return to what I called "the worst closet mudding job in the house," something I called the closet I was working on yesterday. However, there was a "worst closet" and it wasn't the one I was in. There was a worse one adjoining the master bathroom. I could've stood inside it, but only if I squeezed into it sideways and then stayed still with my arms at my sides.

That gave me a good dose of perspective as I worked to finish the closet I started yesterday. I had to do the tape on the ceiling and in the corners around the sides of the ceiling.

Before we had the chance to break out the lunch we packed, the home owner's pizza arrived. She also let us have pop from a refrigerator behind the house. She also offered to let us use the bathroom in her FEMA trailer.

We went back to work in the afternoon, but we did not work for as long, because we had planned to go to New Orleans, see some of the sights, and eat dinner in town.

Day 2 - A Walk in Chalmette

We took a walk in Chalmette before our workday began. Most of this day was summed up in the Servants Unite blog.

But something that stood out for me was the driver who stopped beside us as we walked around the block. She asked us if we were volunteers, and we answered that we were. Even though we hadn't done any work for her, and she barely even knew us, she thanked us for being there.

"You don't know how much this means to all of us," she said.

We got to work later in the day. I joined a team with six other people. We went to do mudding work to finish the appearance of the home owner's drywall. This was very different for me, because on my previous trips, I had worked to tear the stuff down since it had been damaged by flooding. It felt good not to see all the studs in the house. It felt even better to see all the spaces between the drywall get filled in and all the screw holes covered up.

But drywall mudding takes up to three coats to finalize it. It has to dry off, and then be sanded before the next coat, so we had our work cut out for us. At the end of the day, we were still not finished, so we promised we would return.

After mucking, this did not feel like work, but I was glad we were doing it.

Day 2 - Dinner Surprise

At the end of the day, we returned to Hilltop Rescue and got to see how much busier the place had become: hundreds of teens from Youth in Action had arrived, so the cafeteria was packed with people.

While we were eating, we were jolted to attention by the most interesting of sounds: a woman at the front of the room had stood up and was apparently hollering at the top of her lungs. "But wait," I thought as my brain caught up with what my ears were hearing, "there is a musical pattern to what I am hearing." She had begun by singing: "MY FATHER IS IN HEAVEN ABOVE..." and then singing a chorus of trilling effects.

"...I CANNOT PRAISE HIM LOUD ENOUGH!" the woman sang. She trilled through her second chorus and then finished. I realized I'd just heard somebody jodeling, and it was nothing like the stereotypes I've heard. Before she sat down, she explained that she was from Switzerland, where the jodel had once been common. She explained that her friends knew she could jodel, so they had begged her to jodel for everybody at Hilltop Rescue. After she finished her story, everybody applauded.

Day 1 - Rolling Out

Mom dropped me off at the departure site this time, instead of Dad. Within minutes, other people began to arrive. As I got out of the car, I saw somebody who I had worked with on my second trip. We had some time to talk and catch up on things that had happened since last August.

Mom was waiting to make sure I would be okay. The volunteers arrived but two rented minivans did not, so a few people had to go to the rental place and pick them up. This delayed our departure, so I went back to Mom in her car and told her it was okay for her to leave. I hugged her goodbye through the driver's side window, and after I took a photo of her in the car, she left. There was a positive side to the delay for the rental vans--the 15 passenger Church Van was towing the luggage trailer, so we had time to pack everything inside properly.

As we hit the Interstate 71 South, I switched on my digital watch's chronometer and pressed "Start." The seconds began to tick away, counting up the length of the drive that lay ahead. Since the group leader brought his laptop and accessories, we had a fairly large screen to watch DVDs on in the 15 passenger van.

Our group consisted of three vans: the two rental minivans and the 15 passenger Church Van. We had most of our luggage in a trailer on the Church Van, along with tools, because this trip was not supposed to focus on damage cleanup: we were going to help rebuild!

The trip from Ohio was uneventful, and we only made necessary stops to get food, gas, and visit restrooms. We did not get delayed in Alabama like we did in August. We entered Louisiana late at night and arrived at Hilltop Rescue. It would be my third and final time spent at C.F. Rowley Elementary School as a volunteer. Hilltop Rescue was to close "Camp Rowley" down in January so that the building could be returned to St. Bernard Parish. As we pulled into the parking lot, I stopped my chronometer, so that it read: 15 hours, 31 minutes, 20 seconds.

Servants Unite had arrived in Louisiana for the 20th time since Hurricane Katrina had made landfall.

Prologue Plus One

On Sunday a lot of the people who are going to Louisiana for this trip gathered for a pre-trip meeting. So far, Servants Unite has organized about 20 teams of volunteers in the past 16 months. The team leader mentioned the Industrial Canal, where levee breaches flooded the Lower Ninth Ward. Another area, mentioned by the Saint Bernard Parish Government web site is the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet, or the MRGO.

I ran a search in Google on the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet, and found a (potentially opinionated) Wikipedia article about the MRGO. Take a look.

Prologue

Yesterday, I got permission to go on the third trip. I am taking down the question mark at the end of this blog's name, and changing the title to "My Third Trip to Louisiana."

And I am happy to do it!

(The above information is now out of date. I merged all the blogs into one called "Louisiana...")

This will be a trip of reconstruction: we will get to put drywall and insulation and other things back into houses. I am looking forward to learning how the stuff goes in (construction), rather than how the stuff comes out (gutting).

Fortnight

I have two weeks in which I must make all things ready, either to go, or to not go. There is still an element of uncertainty in some of the arrangements I'd have to make, except for one detail which I am not allowed to change.

In an earlier post in this blog, I said that if I go on a third trip, I might stay for longer. I cannot do that now, because I've already decided not to try to stay in the Gulf.

One day, God may lead me back, or He may lead me somewhere entirely different. The inverted life is about waiting for God and trusting His plans.

Come Again?

I mentioned the possibility of another trip to a woman from church. She is a mother of two teens in the youth group. Her children had volunteered in the first trip to Louisiana, which I joined when I found out about it back in June. I noticed that her face lit up when I explained that we might get a chance to rebuild or help work on remodeling houses there. She was interested, and wanted to know some details, so I gave her a piece of scrap paper with web addresses for the Servants Unite! Main Page, the Servants Unite! Blog Page. I also promised to forward her the email I'd received about the upcoming trip.

I sent that email this afternoon, so we'll see where that leads.

It's great to know that I'm not the only person interested in this, and that I was able to spread the news to at least one other person.