Saying goodbye

from the journal:

Well, tomorrow I’m leaving. I was only supposed to stay for two weeks, but I extended my stay by another week and, even still, it’s hard to leave. It’s true what they say down here—the place sucks you in. No one who has stayed for longer than two months has meant to.

The head of the camp is a woman named Laura; a character to be sure. She’s from Montreal and has been down here for nearly a year. She arrived a week after the hurricane and has lived in a tiny Winnebago while she runs EC. The funny thing is that she’s wealthy, very wealthy. As it was put to me by another vol, a $1600 dress and $500 pair of boots wouldn’t be out of line. She had an easy life at home, but left her life behind to work for free in squalor. She wasn’t supposed to stay this long, but she can’t tear herself away. The people and the place have etched themselves into her heart.

Everyone here left their lives behind, their families, familiarities, and loves. Simply because someone had to do it. I’m not sure that I respect any group of people more.

And now I have to go, a bittersweet parting.

My job now is to work from the other side to get the word out, work so people know what’s going on (and not going on), and to direct the praise to where it rightly goes—to the ones who are still here, never giving up, trying to rebuild communities and lives with virtually nothing.

I’ve only been here for three weeks, but the whole experience has been eye-opening. Not the “I was blind and now I see” eye-opening, but the feeling when your stomach sinks. I feel guilty that I’ve been so negative about things down here. I wish there was more to be positive about, but, really, I’m coming up empty-handed. I’ve tried to stay positive during the day for my fellow volunteers and the residents we serve, but the more I hear from them, and the more I see what life is like down here, the angrier and more hopeless I feel.

Nothing noticeable seems to be done at the national level anymore because it’s old news and it’s “already been dealt with.” Well, I’ve got news. It hasn’t been!

Anything done on the federal level has suffered so much bureaucracy that by the time it reaches the intended destination, the aid is barely there. And little is being done on the grass roots level simply because people just don’t know that there is still a need, that things are still bad.

Conditions are worse now than when the flooding first subsided. The flooded areas are still without power and water. The lucky ones who have come back stay in small FEMA trailers, trying to bring their destroyed homes back to life. Debris is everywhere. There is no trash pick-up and so the material gutted from houses and shops line the streets in hulking piles of wood, metal, and glass—along with the junk cleared from the streets after the flood waters drained.

Hurricane season is just starting. Should anything hit New Orleans greater than a Category 2, anybody caught in it will die. Those piles of debris will turn a hurricane into one enormous cloud of flak. The debris will tear through anything in its way. And the FEMA trailers? They’d be obliterated if anything larger than a softball hit them.

Those in the trailers are the lucky ones. Many still live in their cars or in tents, waiting for their trailers that were promised to them and paid for by our tax dollars over 8 months ago. More than half of the people who have been promised trailers are still waiting for them. They’ll probably will never see them. Most of these trailers, which the American people paid 6 billion dollars for, will never get further south than the docks on the New Jersey shore. On top of that, all trailers, whether families have had them for 6 months or 6 weeks, will be repossessed on August 30.

These people will be left with nothing. Again. And this time help won’t be coming. They will be left with nothing. No money, no jobs, no home, just the good old work ethic that’s sure to bring them out of their hard times.

This is my country. This is how it responds to its people in desperate need. These people are my countrymen. I wish I could be more positive, but they have been so screwed over in so many ways for so many years that I don’t see the way out. Nobody knows, nobody cares. The only positive here is their survival instinct and their endless supply of hope and determination. Where do they get it? They put the rest of us to shame. We should be deeply ashamed.

I wish I could stay.