St. Bernard Parish : Arabi
Carrye Castleman-Ross
hour, including one amazing Gypsy-Jazz ensemble and a fiddle-and-musical-saw bluegrass duo. It is so amazing to see locals, workers, volunteers, young, old, all colors, most of them exhausted and emotionally drained, socializing, laughing, running into friends not seen since the storm, and forging new friendships. There's a Distribution tent where new clothes, toiletries, baby food and cleaning supplies flow in daily for people who literally lost everything; a Wellness tent with basic medical services, massages, therapy and counseling. Then there's the centerpiece: A restaurant-grade commercial kitchen tent with Hobart-style stoves, food processors, refrigerators, and every conceivable knife, ladle and peeler known to man, all donated. The food prep sanitation is closely monitored, everyone wears latex gloves, checks food temps constantly and cleans surfaces obsessively. We have to be meticulous because it truly is a wasteland here:
A storm-tossed semi lies on its side in the parking lot,
someone's easy chair sits battered and abandoned in the field,
tattered stuffed animals are strewn about;
a Ski-Doo hangs about 20 feet up in a tree.
photo by Katherine Pangaro
I've been thanked countless times by many grateful people who are amazed, encouraged and literally kept afloat by the outpouring of love they see here. Everyone says how much they anticipate coming in for each meal, not just for the food but for the camaraderie and routine, some semblance of their past lives that were otherwise lost to the flood. They write letters telling us how our presence here gives them the hope and strength they need to go on. Most of these locals being let back in to the area have lost EVERYTHING; if their homes aren't completely destroyed they are a contaminated Bio-Hazard. They spend their days in Tyvek suits and respirator masks mucking out the mold, gutting the soaked drywall down to studs. Most of them are living in “Tent City”, a soulless compound down the road in what used to be the Exxon-Mobil refinery where they sleep in rows of Army issued tents and shower in semi's, surrounded by chain link fences, Homeland Security workers and Humvees. These are Americans just like us, wholeft one day before the storm and returned to find that NOTHING was remotely the same. Their gratitude is overwhelming, and it is incredibly emotionally wrenching. On Saturday night an old man with a cane came in for dinner, a man who had probably planned to live out the rest of his days at home, in peace, but who instead finds himself displaced in a sterile FEMA encampment. I asked him how he was doing; he just looked at me and said, “Ain't it
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