Plaquemines Parish : An Average Day
Matthew Sheard
Jack wanders over. Jack is twice as old as our second oldest volunteer. I don’t know how old that makes him exactly but he puts us all to shame. He has cancer and has decided to spend the end of his life here at le fin du monde helping the people of Plaquemines recover from Katrina. He’s a tragic inspiration. He works until his melanoma bleeds, has a few beers and then works some more.
“Get out of the way city-boy,” he says shoving Seth roughly and taking the maul out of his hands.
“Come on Jack, I don’t want you to hurt yourself,” Seth teases. “I don’t want Sheard here to have to drive you up to the hospital.”
“Don’t worry about me young’en.”
Jack unleashes hell with the maul. Bringing his arms high above his head and swings his whole body down toward the ground, recoiling with amazing speed and grunting softly at the top of the next swing. Chunks of shell and dry clay fly into the air, nicking our arms and cheeks. He loosens the earth to a depth of two feet in just over a quarter of the hole.
We take up digging with a vigor that wouldn’t have been there otherwise. The sun is at the zenith of its brutality but we are smiling and laughing, dirty and smelly, bleeding and smoking.
I leave the work party for town. New Orleans is just over an hour away and there is a new volunteer flying in. A new volunteer is as essential to a group like ours as dyalisis is to person with kidney failure. Picking up and orienting new volunteers is my favorite task.
I have a cell-phone number and the flight number; I’m wearing an Emergency Communities shirt; I’m stained and sweaty and generally stand out from the rest of the people milling about the arrivals section of Louis Armstrong International but for good measure I scrawl the new vols name on a piece of cardboard I find in the Jeep.
On the ride back to the Y Cafe I tell the story of Emergency Communities formation and the start of it’s first Relief Site, and the decision to open two new Sites after it closed. I talk about Plaquemines and the destruction and the erosion and the lack of response and before I’ve answered half of the questions that the new arrival has we pull into Site.
The orientation tour is short and sweet. There is the internet trailer in the front parking lot, the dining area, the kitchen, storage, first aid and tent city. It’s a work in progress, I explain.
Maria has saved two dinners for us and I answer the rest of the new volunteers questions as we eat. Behind us the sound of splashing water signifies the days last task. Dinner dishes. The sky is purple and gray as dusk settles into night. The tribe is sitting around us, rolling cigarettes and drinking. Talking. Talking about the days work and what’s left for tomorrow. Talking about the disaster. Talking about the real world. Talking about the NBA finals and Dwayne Wade’s hall of fame chances. Talking about the relentless heat and the swarms of mosquitos.
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