Our Home and Native Land

Yesterday Cory wrote about the communities we saw in Little Rock, and the community we're building as a group. I couldn't help but think about that as we moved onto New Orleans and into St. Bernard Parish. I'll admit, I didn't know anything about St. Bernard Parish until I started planning the service project for the day, but we started to realize quickly exactly what it meant to be a member of that community as soon as we arrived.

We went to the local community center to offer our help for the morning, cleaning and processing new donations, organizing the clothing drive, helping people work their way through the food pantry, and doing whatever they needed help doing. I was one of the team sent out to the shed to help wash off a shipment of laundry detergents and dryer sheets that had been soaked by a few busted bottles. As we drug the soaked boxes out of the shed and dipped the bottles in water to rinse them clean (and waited thirty seconds for them to dry in the New Orleans sun) we started talking to Steve and Thomas, two volunteers at the center.

Steve has some of the most tragically beautiful stories I've ever heard. He told us of his losses, of his own personal story, of his frustrations with Katrina recovery. He told us he lost seven cats, one dog, his home, all of his possessions, and nine months later (largely because his insurance would not pay) he lost his wife of 42 years.

"But I had more than most people. I had 42 years with the woman I love. Most people can't say that."

Thomas jumped in with his thick Scottish brogue to tell us his story of coming to New Orleans for four days...fourteen years ago. When the storm hit nine years later, he said he couldn't just leave people behind.."and besides, I was just starting to sober up." So he stayed, and he worked, and he's still there.

"I couldn't leave my people." He said. His people being a motorcyclist who rode from Canada to help in the relief effort and decided to stay longer, a New Yorker who came down to help set up computers for the center and never left, and a few hundred survivors still waiting for their lives to get back to a sense of normalcy. I'll admit...I almost couldn't leave either.

To be a part of something, to feel that strong sense of community that comes with being united by tragedy and a common experience. No matter where they came from, that seems pretty American to me.