Day one New Orleans journal entry: Post Katrina volunteer
Periodically our blog will feature musings and journal entries from people whose life, work, or volunteer efforts illustrate love or forgiveness. In this, the first of five journal entries from Shirley Showalter, Fetzer Vice President of Programs, she shares her experience volunteering in New Orleans with the Mennonite Disaster Service which cooperates with Catholic Charities and the American Red Cross.
If you have not been able to see the city of New Orleans since the siren Katrina roared through the Gulf Coast, I invite you to join me for my five day stay here. I am here as a volunteer, working on restoring a house near the ninth ward and sleeping in a convent near the French Quarter. As I write these words on Frenchman Street at The Marigny Brasserie, I cannot tell by looking at the floor or walls that this place ever experienced a devastating flood. Well-dressed people are mingling over food and drinks; outside on the street a jazz musician bends over his saxophone and coaxes slow, pain-filled strains of “Precious Lord, Take My Hand” into the night air.
But by day and away from the glitter of the French Quarter, New Orleans is a totally different city. You can drive for miles in certain places and not see a full block of houses that are habitable. This morning my husband Stuart and I joined Karen and Roy Schlabach, two volunteers from Hartville, Ohio, who we had never met before, and drove a Mennonite Disaster Service truck to the house we were to work on. The route to the house was a sad one, filled with row after row of gutted, boarded up, decaying, wooden, and brick structures.
We spent the day spackling, painting, and installing cabinets and closet shelves. It’s been a good day, but right now I am very tired—a good tired.
Read more from Shirley Showalter in upcoming posts and in the USA Today Opinion section.
Submitted by: admin
March 25th, 2008 at 9:57 am
Shirley
Thank you for your hard work there and for your writings. In many ways New Orleans still looks like day 30 when I and several others did our first investigation before residents were allowed back into the city. That day is forever etched into my memory.
But thanks to the many hands and feet of volunteers such as yours, hope is being restored, one hammer & house at a time.
Kevin King
Executive Director
Mennonite Disaster Service