Musicians’ Village, New Orleans

January 2008
We drove to New Orleans for two weeks to work with Habitat for Humanity in the Ninth Ward doing our third year of hurricane rebuilding.  New Orleans and the Gulf Coast are finally getting somewhere, but it will still take years to rebuild.  While there we found ourselves filmed for an episode of This Old House.  Interesting how many takes are needed for a spontaneous appearing show.  In a landscaping scene, Don shoveled dirt off a pick-up truck so many times that he had to shovel it back on in order to shovel it off again.
The Musicians’ Village was started by Branford Marsalis and Harry Connick Jr to help bring the music back to N’Awlins. Too many of those who played in establishments around the city left when Katrina blew in. Until now, many had no hope of a decent home to live in if they came back. 

Located in the upper ninth ward, Musicians’ Village will have about 70 houses, 90% of them owned by musicians, clustered around a central green-space and the Ellis Marsalis Center for Music, a building with practice space, opportunities for music lessons, a recording studio, and a performance area. The houses are typical Habitat for Humanity homes—modest three bedroom, one bath homes, with a full front porch, tool shed out back, and no garage. They are lined up for several blocks with varying front roof lines; some are L-shaped instead of the usual straight back rectangle. The striking differences come with the colors—striking contrasts or subdued and coordinating, but all different colors. The Hardi-plank siding and wood trim are paintable, and paint them they do.  Brick red with pink trim, shades of blue or green, salmon with white trim, bright purple with lavender or gray trim. Musicians are sometimes said to hear in colors; their artistic souls certainly show expression here.
        
It is heart-breaking to see how many homes are still a wreck with the owners having no money to restore them. In the blocks surrounding the new houses in Musicians Village, many houses are still boarded up. Some have campers or FEMA trailers parked in front while the owners try little by little to fix up their ruined homes. Businesses in the poor areas are not all reopened either. People have to drive to the wealthier parts of town to buy groceries, because the local supermarkets are still closed. But everywhere people are working—cleaning out, tearing down, rebuilding.  It will still take years. Habitat for Humanity NOLA plans to build hundreds of houses in the next few years —this from an affiliate that built only a few homes a year before Katrina. 

Habitat for Humanity in Mississippi

             The South is not recovering very much yet from Hurricane Katrina.  Don and I spent our two weeks this year with Habitat for Humanity in Gautier, Mississippi.  We drove along the coast just to see what kind of progress had been made since last year when we worked with Habitat in Slidell, Louisiana.  The answer is very little.  I could have taken the same pictures I took last year.  The most noticeable change is all the “For Sale” signs.  The Gulf coast is mile after mile after mile of houses blown apart or washed away, toppled trees, ands signs marking where restaurants or other businesses used to be.  This is one of the poorest parts of the country, and thousands of people lost what little they had.  It will take years to rebuild, partly because it truly was the worst natural disaster this country has ever known, partly because the South does not have the infra-structure and resources that many other parts of the country have.  People have been living for over a year in FEMA trailers.  Many people who had homes do not have money to repair them because their jobs have also been blown away.
          
This was in Biloxi at the volunteer center in an old stadium.  The red line on the sign way above our heads was the Katrina high water mark in the middle of the city of Biloxi. 
         Our campsite was behind a storefront church called the Refuge.  There was just wilderness behind us and concrete around us, but the church put in full hook-ups for volunteers.  We met Monty and Susan who quit their jobs in Indiana when they felt a call from God to work with Convoy of Hope doing hurricane relief work.  They muck out and repair homes of hurricane victims.  They have lived in a borrowed 24 foot travel trailer since February.  What dedication!  It was just them and us back there—kind of disappointing not to have more neighbors. 

            Monty arranged for us to go to a New Year’s party at noon at Billy Joe’s houseboat on the Pascagoula River.  There is a Teen Challenge group home in Pascagoula down the coast for girls and women in drug/alcohol rehab.  Billy Joe puts on parties for them and whoever else who wants to come every holiday except Christmas when the women go home.  The New Year’s dinner had fresh catfish, barbecued chicken, wild boar that he recently shot, hush puppies, black-eyed peas, fabulous cornbread, and about eight desserts that people brought.  The wild boar (which they announced as pork) was darker and a bit tougher than pork, but otherwise similar, not too strong-flavored.  It was served with barbecue sauce, so the flavor was not clear to me.  Billy Joe is a genuine old Mississippi bayou man.  He lives on the houseboat about half the time and spends his days hunting and fishing the bayous for catfish.  When he has a freezer full, he puts on a fish fry as a fund raiser for Teen Challenge.  The houseboat is about 70 feet long and homemade.  It has a big covered porch with beat-up furniture and loads of trophy horns and heads and mounted fish and alligators and goofy signs.  There are pictures and clippings on the walls and clutter everywhere, but it is the kind of people and place that welcome everyone.
   
            Don and I worked on one of seven houses Habitat is building in Gautier.  We did vinyl siding most of the time, as we did last year.  For two teachers with no professional construction training, we are getting pretty good at vinyl.  At least we didn’t have to take pieces down and redo them like we did last year.  Now instead of detailed instructions for each new application, the supervisor would say, “Don and Jean, go put J channel and soffit material under the porch ceiling,” and we actually knew what to do.  We also insulated the walls (nasty stuff—insulation) and roofed the tool shed.  Habitat does not build garages, just a basic house and small, wooden tool shed anchored into the ground in case of another hurricane.  Don’s New Year’s resolution was to not drop a two-by-four on my head like last year, and I am happy to report that he kept it.  No black eyes this time.
  
            We met some great people again.  Our site supervisor, a woman named Kim, and our construction boss, a young guy Bryce, both are in AmeriCorps—like the Peace Corps but in America.  Both gave up their former lives for at least a year to work on Katrina rebuilding for very little pay and rooms in the volunteer dormitories in Biloxi.  Retirees have parked their RV’s there for months to work.  It makes a person humble to volunteer only two weeks.
            We are back now in the frozen north and back to the stress of a new semester starting at Concordia.  After I retire in May, we hope to do more Habitat builds.  It just makes so much sense to us—help poor people one at a time to improve their lives with (as our construction supervisor last year said every day after the morning devotions) “a hand up, not a handout.”

Rebuilding in the Wake of Katrina

Slidell, Louisiana, January 1-13, 2006 
We drove our little fifth-wheel camper through Louisiana with a bit of apprehension. What were we getting ourselves into? Slidell is on the north-eastern shore of Lake Pontchartrain, and during Hurricane Katrina it suffered a 20 foot storm surge that crushed the lakefront and flooded half the town. Miles from Slidell, I thought people just didn’t care about litter around here; then we realized that much of it was still hurricane debris. Four months after Katrina, many houses still wear blue tarps on the roofs. Houses and other buildings gape open with walls missing. Piles of debris, furniture, mattresses, sheetrock, insulation, and tree trunks line the streets. Many businesses are still closed. Those that are open have help-wanted signs and shortened hours. RV’s and FEMA trailers are in many parking lots and front yards—people are living in them while they gut and repair their houses. PODS (Portable On Demand Storage) are everywhere, holding whatever people could salvage until they have real homes again.
Ever since Katrina and Rita and Wilma and the others, we have wanted to do something to help, so we signed on with Habitat for Humanity East St. Tammany. Habitat builds modest homes for people who would not otherwise be able to buy a home. They must put in hundreds of hours of work on their house or others and be able to make affordable, no-interest mortgage payments.
We found our campsite—a Lutheran church back lot recently cleared of woods and brush that had been made into a campground for volunteers who came here to help. The whole area was muddy, but we were pleased to learn they had put in camper hook-ups the week before. Many area churches are putting camping facilities in their parking lots or ball-fields to encourage volunteers to come.
    
Monday morning, January 2, we reported for our first day with Habitat. Devotions are at 8:00 AM daily; then everyone gets work assignments.  We were assigned to Harry from North Carolina, the vinyl siding expert of many Habitat builds. We buckled on our new tool belts and went to work. Dusty Dog, Don’s Leader Dog for the Blind, gets tied to a tree near where we are working. Since Don has limited vision, he and I work together—I measure and mark, Don cuts the siding, and we both nail it up. The first day wiped me out; I am used to wielding a pencil and a computer mouse, not a hammer.
During our two weeks here, Harry has taught us much about vinyl siding—how to measure and nail the siding to allow for expansion and contraction and how to fit around the windows and cut the angles for the gable ends. He wants other people to learn how to do the work correctly so they can do it again on another build. When we raised the platform on the scaffold to the upper level to finish the gable end, Don said, “Dusty says that is too high for me to go up.” Another guy said, “Hey, can Dusty give me a pass on climbing too?” So Harry, 68 years young, scrambled up and did the top rows. He is often quiet, but then will come out with jokes or gentle encouragement. Workers have to earn his praise though. If something is not quite perfect, we have to rip it out and do it over. People who work for and buy Habitat houses may be the working poor, but they deserve well-built homes. Generally across the South, Habitat houses suffered less damage than their neighbors.
Habitat for Humanity volunteers are amazing people. Many people here wear a different T-shirt every day from a different Habitat build somewhere, including Korea and other international builds with Jimmy Carter. Some travel around in their RV’s working a number of two-week builds each year—year after year. Harry, for example, has been doing Habitat for three years and has worked 33 builds and has been the coordinator of volunteers for about a dozen of them. He has logged 19,000 miles for Habitat. Now because of Katrina, many veteran volunteers are staying on a build for months.
We drove into New Orleans on Sunday just to have a look and to help stimulate the local economy by playing tourist in the French Quarter. The Quarter is doing fairly well; it was not flooded; it just had “normal” hurricane damage, and most businesses are open. We drove about the city a bit and saw lovely homes near Lake Pontchartrain with the water line about six to eight feet up and the fluorescent spray paint on the doors indicating they had been searched in the weeks after the deluge for survivors or bodies. We could see that most had been stripped down to the wall studs inside. East New Orleans has not progressed as far in restoration. The houses there are partially destroyed and still in the mucking out stage. Everywhere people are working—throwing more stuff on the piles, cleaning out and slowly rebuilding. We saw people in hard hats and a tent city for volunteers. Only one stop light was working for many blocks. We saw a small boat along the Interstate miles from the water and big wads of pink insulation in the wildlife refuge miles from any building.
     
Another day we drove into Mississippi along the Gulf Coast where nearly all the houses along the shore are gone, simply washed away. Foundations and pilings and lots of litter are there, but few buildings. A Walmart stood, but you could see right through it, the windows all gone and some walls broken out. A McDonald’s sign stood over a bare foundation. A block or two in, the houses are still there, but many are smashed. The power of that storm is impossible to comprehend, and so is the impact on people’s lives. Wherever we go people thank us for coming to help and tell us how they lost their home or their business. Yet, they can smile and say, “God is providing.” It made us feel humble and blessed at the same time.
     
In Slidell the house next door to the three houses we are building is deserted. The door is open, and the table is set for dinner. The water line is about two feet up the walls, and the drywall is crumbling. The house reeks of mold. No one has seen the owners since Katrina. A number of people we have met acquired a chronic cough after being here for a while. They call it the Katrina cough; it is from the mold and other impurities in the air from the destruction.
Some Habitat volunteers have construction experience, but many do not. They find jobs for everyone. In a short time work crews become friends. I had an encounter with a 2 by 4 and lost. A big bump on the forehead led to two black eyes—the most spectacular, deep purple, puffed up, huge black eyes I have ever seen. I am the raccoon lady. I am ready for Mardi Gras—just a few yellow streaks would complete the face paint. “Did you have an eye lift?” “I thought you were wearing sunglasses.” “You should see the other guy.” I am hearing all the jokes. But everyone cares; they ask every day how I am.

The Habitat crew has learned all about Guide Dog etiquette. They leave Dusty alone when he is in harness, but they pet and play with him when he is out of harness. The college girls want pictures with him. One woman comes for a face-washing from Dusty every day. (Even I won’t let him do that.) Dusty loves the attention from so many people, but he misses his daily long walks with Don. Don is surprising everyone with how well he can work with his limited vision.
We will be heading home to the snow and cold soon, and we will miss working in the sun in short sleeves in January and the wonderful people we have been working with. But it is more than that. Seeing the severe damage to people’s homes chills me. I want to stay; I want to come back and help more because there is so much to do. The devastation is so enormous that our weeks of work seem insignificant. But thousands of people volunteering for a week or a month and thousands of people donating a little of the money they would otherwise splurge for enjoyment can make a big difference. It will take years to rebuild homes for those who have lost theirs, years for the people who have lost everything to become comfortable again. God did not send the hurricanes and destruction, but He wants us to help each other. We are not alone in the world; we must reach out to help others.