March 28, 2012-What does service mean?

March 28, 2012

                Today we did more of the same; working on mudding, priming, and drilling the houses to which we have grown so accustomed. They’re coming along great; we have made so much progress since we first started! After work we traveled back to the Saint Bernard Project’s headquarters and met with the young Americorps representatives. They talked to us about their journeys and about all that they had learned over the course of their experience in New Orleans and abroad. They each have their own story and we were surprised by the diversity that existed in just one organization. They reminded all of us that community service does not end when the trip does and that there are opportunities to do good all around us, and all around the world.

                Upon returning to the hostel, we all took much needed and well deserved showers before we gathered together for a special surprise in the courtyard. We were divided into pairs and were given instructions to come up with a creative “gift” that we felt would express our appreciation for the rest of our group and for the experience here. We will present our “gifts” to our NOLA 2012 family tomorrow after dinner in a closing ceremony.

                Tonight, after dinner, we came together to discuss our feelings about the experience that we have had thus far and to answer some difficult and thought provoking questions. Rachel, one of our three chaperones, asked us if it is more meaningful to send money to the Saint Bernard Project, or to send yourself to do hands on work. We did not all agree on the answer to this question; however, we did all agree that the conversation was an important one to have.

                It is conversations such as these that make us think about all that we have at home and about all of the people who are not as fortunate. We are looking forward to our last day on the job and to spending another wonderful and worthwhile afternoon in the French Quarter and to experiencing all that the city of New Orleans has to offer.

                Thank you for reading!

                                Love,

                                                Lauren Gluck, Sarah Levine, and Ben Aronovitz

Conspiracy Theories 12/27/2011

March 27, 2012

                We started early again today, waking up at 5:50 am so we could eat breakfast, brush our teeth, pack our lunches, and be out of the Marquette House by 6:30.  We returned to our two separate sites and continue to sand and skim the walls, which aimed to make the walls as flat and smooth as possible.  Both groups met the owners of the homes that we have been working on, and they were extremely appreciative of our hard and dedicated work. 

One of the owners spoke to the whole group after our day of work.  Her name was Theresa, and she is an African American woman who has lived in New Orleans for her entire life.  Her house had only one floor before the hurricane, and we could see just how high the water had been by looking at the marks on the neighboring church.  Theresa and her two kids left New Orleans before the hurricane with her two children (one is a high school senior), expecting to be back home after a couple days.  After Hurricane Katrina destroyed her home and all of her belongings, she stayed with friends who lived nearby.  She hired a contractor, who committed fraud and stole all of her money.  Following this catastrophe, the electric wiring was stolen from her home twice, forcing Theresa to actually move into a trailer on her property to protect her home from future theft.  Theresa explained that she was so blessed to receive the amazing help from us and the St. Bernard Project.

                Our group then had the opportunity to ask Theresa some questions about her experience.  We were very surprised to hear that Theresa believed that the levies did not just collapse due to the pressure from the Mississippi River, but that the levies were purposely “blown up” by the people who were in charge of them, as they are every 40 years.  Our group had a difficult time comprehending her theory, which she devoutly believed.  We also asked her about her faith.   She explained that her faith in “the good Lord” remains strong, but that her faith in mankind has deteriorated.  She preferred not to answer further questions about her relationship with God and religion.

                After this captivating interaction with Theresa, we all returned to the hostel and showered.  Then we made our way to the French Quarter, where we split up into groups and explored the famous Bourbon Street and the neighboring area.  After some shopping and exploring, we met up and made our way to Kosher Cajun, a New York style deli, where we had a festive dinner.  After the meal, we returned to the French Quarter to go to Café Du Monde, where we enjoyed its famous beignets.  Two of the three vans then returned to the hostel where we made our sandwiches for the next day and got ready for bed.

                We are looking forward to another 2 great days of working in New Orleans!  Meeting the women who are going to live in the homes we are building only gives us more motivation to push through the hot climate and work our hardest.

-Rachel Wolfman, Wyatt Mufson, & Jeremy Jick

march 26, 2012

March 26^th, 2012

                    Today was our first day getting out there and doing some manual labor. We got up bright and early (5:45 AM) and drove to a group orientation. We joined about 5 other groups and learned about how the St. Bernard project got started from curly-haired Simon. He told us a story about a man named Frank who, after the storm, sat on his roof for a long time, with a white flag, waiting to be saved. When he was finally saved, he was taken higher ground (a bank’s roof, the highest point in the area), where waited six days for rescue. He was finally saved by a Canadian Mounties, and he was disappointed that his country had not looked out for him. This story inspired the founding of the St. Bernard project. Simon told us that the St. Bernard project has seen great success, rebuilding 437 houses in the past 5 years, but that the work they do is never enough. Until recently, they had a 135-person waiting list that they had to shut down because they did not want to promise houses to people for whom they couldn’t build. Even 7 years later, there are still many people in New Orleans who need our help more than ever.

                We then split up and drove to our specific work-sites. Most of us did the tedious work of sanding drywall and skimming--applying a thin coat of drywall mud.. Although this was really tough and not so fun, we had to keep in mind that we were still helping people out, and even the toughest jobs need to get done somehow. On one site, we met the owner of the home, named Theresa, which was a very meaningful experience. The house on the other site was the only house on the street that was left to be rebuilt, as every other house had been completed, so we were motivated to get it done. After lots of satisfying work, we broke for lunch, and wiped seemingly tons of dirt and drywall off of our clothes and heads.

After working, we paid a visit to the Annunciation Church, which served as a recovery center during the storm, which is run by two individuals who not only lived through, but prospered through the storm. Jean and James were both able to view the positive side of the situation. Jean talked about how she needed to take a step down to take many steps up, and James said that the days he spent sheltered in the Convention Center (where racial, economic, and governmental distinctions were irrelevant) were “the best 5 days of [his] life.” Nevertheless, the two spoke emotionally about their experiences in the storm, and were extremely grateful to see us down in New Orleans.  Jean said that our service was an integral part of her mental recovery process. They emphasized that the damage was great, but that our reactions to the storm is what is more important. It’s hard to sum up how moving it is to hear such a “survivor” speak about his or her life-changing experience.

Tomorrow, we will return to our job sites ready to work, and continue our experience in NOLA.

-Haley Cashman, Carl Haber, Jacob Slater

Sunday, March 25, 2012

Today began around 7:30 AM when our lovely chaperones did wake-up rounds. After dressing, eating breakfast, and packing our brownbag lunches, we piled into our signature tourist vans and set off on the hour-long drive to Zam’s Swamp Tours, a wonderful place in rural Southern Louisiana-Thibodeax. We began the tour at Zam’s by witnessing a gigantic caravan of bikers making their way to the gift shop of the site. The woman who first showed us around, Diana, brought out three different snakes: a baby one, a middle-sized one, and a huge-beyond-huge yellow snake that wrapped its body around us all. While some in the group were a bit nervous to interact with the reptiles at first, by the end we were all handling them like pros.

  The next section of our tour consisted of getting onto a barge-like wooden and metal boat and taking a tour of the Bayou, led by a 15-year-old giant named Zee. Never in my entire life have I seen a boy so big. He had long blond hair tucked into his camouflage hat and rolled-up jean shorts with a super tight red t-shirt. He sported rubber boots that came up to his knees. Along with his two tour guide companions, Zee gave us a brief history of the Bayou, a history which we strained to understand, as Zee had a thick Cajun accent. If you have ever seen the show Swamp People, then you can imagine what Zee was like. It had been barely five minutes in the water when, all of a sudden, Barry (Laila’s husband) spotted something moving in the water. “A gator,” he exclaimed. Our boat drove slowly over to the alligator as we all ran to the back of the boat to see the reptile. Zee casually opened the rear of the boat and lay down on his stomach. “He’s stuck to the branch,” Zee explained to us. Zee reached into the water with his bare hands and wrestled the four-foot-long alligator onto the boat. He swiftly brought it up on the boat and it was clear that a trap line had wrapped around the belly of the gator.  Bob, the older gentleman leading the tour, used his large pocket knife to cut the line.  Zee then brought the gator to the front of the boat and began to wrap a washcloth and rope around the gator’s mouth so it would not bite anyone. He tied it up to the front of the boat and it sat there for the next hour and a half. Zee’s plan was to bring the alligator back to Zam’s to nurse it back to health; the  fishing line had cut into the flesh and it injured its nose on a branch.
      I must be honest for a second: seeing the alligator writhing at the front of the boat while we leisurely continued our Bayou tour was one of the saddest things I have ever seen. While we recognized that Zee and his crew were trying to help the alligator, it was blatantly obvious that the alligator would have preferred to be back in the water.
      After saving the alligator, we continued on through the swamps and saw a Confederate flag and more alligators, this time babies. Zee took another stroll into the water and picked up a baby, about eight inches long. He brought it onto the boat and we took turns holding it. Its bites were like little nibbles on our fingers. Zee was going to keep the alligator to measure its health, his organization has a permit for this otherwise illegal activity.
      When we finished our boat tour, we took a second tour, this time of  Zam’s farm. We passed by adorable baby goats and bunnies, which we all held and bottle-fed, as well as caged raccoons and chickens. We saw a 13-foot alligator that weighed about 800 pounds. It hissed and snapped at us, trying to defend its personal territory. It was true nature at its best. We then met an 110-120 year old gigantic snapping turtle. We learned that while snapping turtles don’t have teeth, the pressure their jaws exert when they snap closed is enough to cleanly slice off someone’s arm. Yikes.
       Next we ate lunch at the picnic tables and enjoyed listening to some fine Cajun accents. Finally, we bid farewell to our new friends at Zam’s and drove away with our next tour guide, Gary, to a sugarcane plantation that was in use in the mid-1800s. The houses belonging to the slaves were still intact. It was surreal to see buildings that had housed slaves only 150 years ago. Gary then took us to the campus of Nicholls College (at which he is a marine biology professor). He gave us a quick lesson about the geography of Louisiana, as well as the geography of Massachusetts (sadly, not one of us drew our home state correctly). During our lesson, we learned that the water at the edge of Southern Louisiana is moving inland at a rate of one acre per 45 minutes, if you can imagine that speed. We also learned that the Mississippi River changes courses every few thousand years.
       Our last stop of the day was to a swampy area of the plantation. We drove in the bed of Gary’s white pickup, literally sitting on barrels of hay. We arrived at the swamp and took a walk in which we found many meaty spiders and tiny little ants. We saw bald eagles flying overhead and heard frogs singing from the swamp. Gary took us to a small shack on the edge of the swamp in which an owl lived. Gary, Barry, and Josh collected the owl’s pellets (NOT POOP, DON’T WORRY) and the skulls of dead mice. We looked at both outside. Finally, we drove to our vans and continued back to the now-familiar Marquette House in what now seems like bustling New Orleans.
      I think that the two biggest takeaways from today were learned at Zam’s. For the first time, I really appreciated the education to which we have access in Boston. While the people with whom we talked weren’t uneducated, they certainly lived a life filled with a different type of education (namely, how to catch an alligator). They were very knowledgeable in their fields, and while I admired this knowledge, I felt very fortunate to be learning my eight subjects at Gann. The second thing I took away from today was that there really are people who live their lives doing the things that they love and that make them genuinely satisfied. So often we go through life trying to fulfill some impossible or trivial goal instead of fighting for the things that make us happy. Zee, our 15-year-old tour guide, moved out of his parents’ house at age 12 to live on his own boathouse (a house that floats in the middle of the water). While his parents weren’t thrilled with this decision, he left home to pursue his love of alligators and the Bayous. This type of courage and pursuit of happiness is a kind that we can only hope to achieve in our own lives.
       I cannot wait to see what the rest of NOLA 2012 has to offer us.

-Ellie Deresiewicz, Aaron Benjamin, and Alana Windmueller

Shabbat March 23, 24th

Welcome to Nola Blog 2012: 

Let's begin with visual evidence of how hard we are working: (at eating ice cream Motzi Shabbos)

Actually from the beginning:

Gann Academy’s Rebuilding New Orleans trip left at an ungodly hour on Friday morning from Logan Airport.  The trip began with great group spirit.  We all played Hacky Sack and bonded in the airport while we waited for Laila and Barry (Laila’s husband), who were the last two to arrive.  The plane rides were very enjoyable. We made a really convenient stop in Houston (don’t mess with Texas), but we eventually made it to the beautiful city of New Orleans.  We were all shvitzing in the 80 degree weather. 

First stop we made was at Walmart, where we both stocked up with food and necessities for a whole week and brought up Walmart’s quarter profits by 20%.  After collaboratively dividing the groceries among our three minivans, we headed toward the Marquette House, where we will be staying for the entire week.  After dropping our milk off in the fridge, we went on a long driving tour of New Orleans, paying special attention to the damaged homes and the newly high levies that surrounded the lower 9^th ward, the section of New Orleans that was hit worst by Hurricane Katrina.  I would say that Laila, Barry, and Rachel knew where we were going perfectly and that we never got lost, but I was told these blog posts were supposed to be honest.

                After our tour, we returned to the house, where we settled into our rooms and prepared for Shabbat. With the beautiful weather and surroundings, there was an enormous amount of Shabbat spirit.  We sang as we walked over to the neighboring synagogue, where we davened kabalat Shabbat.  The synagogue was not quite the most lively or well-attended, but the Rabbi (who might as well have had his bar mitzvah last weekend) was very welcoming and we brought a lot of spirit to the Sephardic sanctuary.  After services, we ate dinner at the synagogue, and then we had some free time before we said our laila tovs and went to sleep. 

The next morning, we woke up, had our delicious breakfasts, and went back to the synagogue for morning services.  Then after lunch, we went back to the house for some free time where we had the opportunity to enjoy the beautiful weather.  Many of us talked outside and played hacky sack, while others worked on their tans for Prom.  Toward the end of the free time, a few of us went on a run around downtown New Orleans, which was a great way to explore the city. Next, the whole group went on a walk through an interesting neighborhood which had beautiful homes and gardens, and also contained a unique cemetery. 

                We returned to the synagogue for Minchah services, and then we walked over to the Rabbi’s home where we enjoyed a delicious se’udat Shlishit with joyful zmirot.  After a spirited havdalah (Debbie Friedman style), we walked back to the house, changed into our post-shabbat clothing, and went out for ice cream and desserts.  Overall, we had a great, relaxing Shabbat in New Orleans and a great start to our trip.

-Jeremy Jick

Katrina Voices Retold

There exists no word that single-handedly describes the sights we have seen, the stories we have heard and most of all the people we have met. Hurricane Katrina was a devastation that claimed the lives and houses of many of the citizens in the Ninth Ward. The trip started off with cleaning up previously owned and presently destroyed property in the Ninth Ward. Although once the location of a house, this land presently looks like a deserted and trashed field. Our first discovery was a dog skeleton covered by dirt and weeds. Next, we found a picture of a young girl that was ripped and hidden under a tree. Even almost 6 years later, the land was still covered in shells from the flooding and looked as though it had not been touched. As we walked further, we uncovered scattered dolls, teddy bears, baby’s shoes, bandanas, cooking spray, food, and shattered plates. These discoveries triggered the reality of the magnitude of Hurricane Katrina

Throughout the week, we worked on a home for Elaine Butler, elderly woman with health problems. Elaine’s life before the storm was beautiful and pleasant, yet Hurricane Katrina ripped this apart when her beloved home was ravaged by more than twenty feet of water taking with it her brothers, her home, and all of her belongings. Elaine evacuated to Atlanta when Katrina hit but her two brothers decided to wait out the storm and were unable to survive. Her younger brother drowned and was found down a block from her house. Her older brother went to the Convention Center and supposedly drowned there, yet this seems conspicuous to Elaine because the Convention Center had no water. Elaine lived in her residence with her brothers which brought them closer. She could not bring herself to return to New Orleans for almost three years. Eventually, Elaine followed her family back to St. Bernard because it holds the roots, history and memories of her family. Unfortunately, Elaine’s journey back to New Orleans didn’t go smoothly. When she applied for the Road Home Program to receive money to rebuild, she was turned down after someone else claimed the address of the house that she legally owned. For years Elaine has been forced to wander around ever since her return to New Orleans. She has lived in a trailer in a parking lot and then was quickly forced out. She was then placed in an apartment that is difficult for her to get upstairs to bed or to shower due to her numerous health problems. She suffers from arthritis, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes, and two knees which have both been operated on causing her to not be able to walk upstairs. These health problems prevent Elaine from working and Social Security and Disability income don’t provide her with enough money to create a livable home. She credits us, the volunteers, for saving her life.

The most amazing part of the trip was hearing the personal stories, the people that make up this amazing city. We had the pleasure of hearing James’ story, a worker at the Annunciation Church. Listening first hand to someone who had lived through the horror of the hurricane and now still lives in New Orleans with a smile on his face everyday was truly incredible. He lost five of his seven best friends from thirteen feet of flooding in his house. He went out to rescue survivors and tried to save babies floating in the water. The stories that he told sounded more like horror movies than reality, but this was his living reality. He explained that we, the volunteers, keep him going and alive. Everyday, he comes to work with a smile on his face because of us. He waits up for volunteer groups to come home because he knows that we bring not only physical help to New Orleans, but we represent hope. His words brought tears to our eyes and he really brought us to understand the meaning of this trip. We are here to do more than just build houses, we are here to rebuild lives. This experience has been unforgettable and we hope to return here in the future to continue rebuilding lives.

--Sarah and Aliza

Today was the most memorable experience of my life. Although we only met a simple and down to earth woman, she changed my outlook on life drastically. While Elizabeth wasn’t directly affected by Hurricane Katrina she was in fact affected by the crime and poverty that came due to the harsh flooding. Elizabeth openly shared her tragic life story with us. Just a few years ago, her 18 year old daughter was shot and murdered and she was shot in the face. Worst of all, her husband was the murderer. She came to Saint Bernard Project for mental help. Even though she was in this horrible slump in her life, she described that “they held her hand until she was back on her feet and in a stable position.” Volunteers were sent to help her physically rebuild her home but they also had an effect on her mental well being. Not only was she so open about her experiences, but she was the most welcoming, cheery, and outgoing woman I have ever met. She brought southern hospitality to another level. She invited us into her home and showed us pictures and memories of her beloved daughter. She spoke of the volunteers she’d met so highly, as if they were truly her closest family. She told us a short story about how this one volunteer worked for two straight days repairing the bullet whole in the wall. This volunteer has and will stay in her heart for the rest of her life because every morning she walks by and touches the place where the bullet pierced the wall. This just showed me how amazing and important our actions are. We bring hope and life to these people. We brighten their souls and keep them living. The most amazing thing about Elizabeth was her personality. Despite this horrific experience, she was able to bounce back and be the most joyful person. She appreciates everything in life and couldn’t stop exclaiming her love for us. I will never forget her story and her inspiring words. She is my hero.

--Maddie

How a Katrina Victim Gives Back

Today while we were working on installing a window frame at Mary Lang’s house, we were called into the main entrance for a short meeting. We soon met a man named Thomas. Thomas was there to thank us for the volunteer work we have been doing. He is a resident of New Orleans and his house was the 60^th house to be rebuilt under the St. Bernard Project. This showed us what an impact the St. Bernard Project has on people’s lives considering they are now on over their 350^th house and this man was still going around thanking people for their work. He told us that even though New Orleans has changed, he is still able to call it his home and it is because of the work that volunteers like us do. This really made us think about how we are not simply just building a house and trying to make it look nice for the person that is going to move in. We are creating a home and a neighborhood where families can be reunited and feel comfortable under one roof even after having such destruction and disaster in their lives. These houses are also here to rebuild generations of families to come in the future.

-Hannah and Danielle