St. Bernard Parish : Arabi
Carrye Castleman-Ross
porta-potties and share a very primitive shower. But as everything here is a study in contrasts, there is also unlimited Internet access and long distance phone service in one tent for volunteers and locals, donated Aveda salon products in the shower, and a tent filled with North Face gear donated by Can-Do.Org. So although the air constantly smells like a paper mill (with a little burning rubber occasionally thrown in for variety), we all have really shiny hair and sporty clothes on. And because everyone is here to help, the positive energy is a constant, contagious force. Being a part of it is such a blessing, and worth every penny I spent to get here and every dollar I'm not making by taking a month off of work. Every day I spend here is making me a better, more compassionate person, constantly awed by the undiluted humanity.
Prep for breakfast starts at 5:30 with purveyors bringing in fruit, vegetables and meat. We cook grits, fresh fruit salad, eggs and bacon, french toast...a delicious and always varied spread. Lunch is grilled chicken, mesclun salad, chowders, pulled-pork barbecue sandwiches smoked in our on-site pit... Everything is made from scratch. At dinner, local chefs show up, grateful for our efforts and with so much unwanted idle time, bearing fresh seafood, shrimp and crabs; they grill sausages and steaks, make gumbo, steamed corn; we peel 100's of garlic cloves, grate 1000's of carrots, have ridiculous, “you have to be here to get it” debates like “What would you rather do: chop 500 onions or put on a Hazmat suit and muck-out a flooded house?” Choices that would never arise in a “normal” place, with people you would never have known except for the fact that there's nothing “normal” here.
Our tents are pitched along a narrow canal in the back-lot of the Betting Parlor, where a flood-line running 10 feet high around the entire blasted-out building stands as a constant reminder of the toxic water that only recently receded. Abandoned houses sit wrecked across the canal; at night I hear a porch door repeatedly slamming shut, loosened tin bangs on a rusting roof, stray dogs bark on empty streets, all composing an eerie soundtrack to an overnight ghost-town. Another volunteer put it perfectly as we drove through blocks of lifeless ruin last night: Holding his hand chest high he said,
“Here's NORMAL”.
Raising it eye-level he said,
“Here's SURREAL”.
Then a few feet higher,
“Here's WHERE WE ARE.”
We have a huge dome tent full of tables set up to serve 1000 meals a day, with a children's play area, a small library, and a stage for entertainment, where local musicians come to play during the dinner
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