Brooker's emails from NOLA experience.

***These emails are from my friend Brooker (Eric) while he
was volunteering with Habitat @ Camp Hope back in Sept.
and early Oct. 2006. These emails and his photos are what
prompted me to volunteer. Simple as that.

Brooker's Photos - Sept/Oct 2006


I'll post my own experiences soon.
-brian
-------------------------------------------------

SEPTEMBER 26

Today was a very dramatic day here in NewOrleans (for
those who don't know I'm volunteering with Habitat for
Humanity in NewOrleans for about a week - not working
in the glass biz anymore). Went with the gutting crew
this morning to a house that hadn't been touched since
the flood. Junk piled so high in rooms that you
couldn't even get in, moldy carpet, big screen TVs,
personal affects, refrigerators (2) filled with the
sludge of left behind food, salt water, raw sewage,
toxic waste, then soaked for a month, and left to
maranade for another 13 months. So we started ripping
everything out. A while later a neighbor came over
and chatted with me and my buddy Tom (from Milwaukee).
He said that the people in the house we were working
on were going to sell it. We thought they were going
to live there, and houses that will be sold are lower
priority and shouldn't be worked on now. We were all
starting to get ready to leave to gut another house
when the home owners showed up - a super-sweet elderly
couple. We told them we couldn't gut the house if
they were going to sell it and they said they weren't
sure what they were going to do. They begged us to
stay because they couldn't afford to have it gutted
and were too old to do it themselves. The old lady
started crying. We went into an abandoned house
across the street and had a meeting. After some
discussing, we decided to stay and gut it. The old
folks stayed around all day and Tom and I took it upon
ourselves to help them salvage some of their
valuables. I found a little box in a wheel barrow
that was about the be thrown in the junk pile and gave
it to the woman. They were sapphire ear rings. She
started crying and told me I have a special place
waiting for me in heaven. Tom found and gave her a
huge diamond ring. The old man said there was a wad
of money in the house, but we never found it and it's
probably in the junk pile. I found a football that
had been signed by all the NewOrleans Saints the year
they went to the Superbowl. The old man said I could
keep it, but I gave it to Tom since he seemed to want
it more. This house was in the worst shape I've seen
in the few days I've been here. The debris pile
outside is already almost as tall as the house and we
haven't even started tearing out the walls yet. We'll
be back tomorrow to finish the job. The old couple
says it already is looking so much better that they're
thinking they might stay. I've never helped people in
such a direct way and I'm loving it.

Wish me luck.
Eric

SEPTEMBER 29

Today we were gutting the sturdiest house ever built,
which made our job difficult. Nothing came out
easily. We ordered some pizzas for lunch. After
lunch we were all dragging because we were full and
tired from a week's work. Then a crew from CNN showed
up. Suddenly everyone was working fiercely. As I was
beating through a wall with a crow bar, the camera
crew was taking shots around the house, but I didn't
know where they were. As I poked through the wall, I
realized that they were filming me from the other
side. Then they conducted an interview of me through
the hole in the wall I'd just made. Dramatic
stuff/good television. Look for me in about a week.
I'm wearing an orange shirt and a respirator (so I'll
be a little hard to recognize).

I've re-upped for another week and will be here until
Oct 7th. My team really needs help and begged me to
stay. For dubious political reasons, an important
Americorps crew was sent home early, so volunteers are
needed to fill the gap. I could do without the
politics and tension around here, but I love gutting
houses. When else can you break into someone's home,
dig through all their stuff and drag it into the
street, beat down their walls, then do a little
sweeping and end up a big hero?

No work tomorrow, so a bunch of us are going down to
the French Quarter tonight to soak in some local
culture (jazz, vodoo, bourbon, etc).

- E


OCTOBER 6

Here's the moment that for me kind of sums up this
whole NewOrleans experience...

Last night I went to a local diner with my gutting
team. We were cracking jokes and yucking it up the
whole time. We tried to joke a little bit with our
waitress, but she just seemed confused by our
behavior. By the end of dinner, she managed to smile
and play along a little bit. As our hilarity rose, an
old man sitting nearby interjected to tell us that it
was good to hear laughter again. Another man sitting
nearby said that he was just thinking the same thing.
NewOrleans is an entire city suffering from
post-traumatic stress disorder, where most of the
residents haven't had cause to crack a smile in over a
year.

The situation down here is incredibly hopeless:
elderly people who just want to spend their retirement
relaxing, rather than rebuilding their homes and
living in a FEMA trailer, people so attached to their
birth-city that they can't imagine living anywhere
else no matter how bad it gets, poor people who feel
as if there are no options but to stay. Entire
neighborhoods are destroyed, not a single house
untouched. In St. Bernard's Parish, they were hit
with a 35 foot high wave, then burried in anywhere
from 5 to 20 feet of water. Houses full of toxic
waste, reftigerators on roofs, boats in the road, and
a small airplane in the back yard. Fourteen months
after the storm! Everyone lost someone. Whether or
not rebuilding NewOrleans is prudent, these people
need help, and have mostly been forgotten because no
one knows what to do with them. In most areas, we
were the only people cleaning up - roughly 40 people
working to fix a city that once had half a million. I
don't know what should be done for the future of this
city, but these people shouldn't just be forgotten.

This is what runs throgh my mind as I prepare to
leave. I'll be home soon.

Eric