Monday, January 9, 2006
 Elizabeth Dykes, School of Engineering and Applied Science
Today was, needless to say, a very eye-opening first day. After countless hours in Charlottesville learning about New Orleans, nothing could have prepared me for what we saw today. You see it in the pictures and it looks horrible, but to stand next to a water line that is above your head is a feeling that I will never forget.
After eating breakfast at the school [Xavier Prep], we hopped in the vans and started our drive through the city. Driving past houses where the water line varied from about the middle of the first floor to the top of the first floor, it really starts to hit home. I think through the entire drive I only saw the water lines and became fixated on the giant Xs spray painted on the houses from where the inspectors had checked them. Often times you’d see in giant letters “1 DEAD DOG” or something similar. Luckily, we didn’t pass by any houses where the bottom number, which represents the number of bodies found, was anything other than zero. Seeing houses that ranged from fixable to ones literally removed from their foundations and smashed into the house next door gave me a feeling that no number of pictures could ever do. It was really shocking.
We then ended up in the Ninth Ward around 2 p.m. to start helping. I was helping an elderly couple, which, I believe, had returned that morning and just started cleaning out their house. I was mainly in the kitchen helping the woman clean out her cabinets after the refrigerator and stove were removed. Let me tell you, if you have never smelled five-month old food that has been soaked in the flooding and then stored in New Orleans heat, there are no words that I can use to describe this. And, to make matters a little worse, even after the refrigerator was removed, the juices that leaked out still covered the floor and many of the things that had to be taken out. We were told to trash everything, and, as we put her china into one of the wheelbarrows, it was said by someone that if it wasn’t broken we should save it. It was then that I realized that we were literally taking this couple’s whole life and dumping it on the street for FEMA to come and pick up. Of course, you’d want to salvage anything if possible — it was all they had left! The glasses that were in the cabinets above her sink had water in them from the flooding and as we were dumping the water out and putting them in what was left of her pans, she started telling me stories, little by little. After a few hours, I learned that she and her husband were married in 1950 and moved into this house. They were in New Orleans for Betsy and got water only up to about the middle of the cabinets on the ground. She said she didn’t understand how the water got into the cups on the top shelves. I wasn’t quite sure how to respond to all of this, so I basically just attempted to retain a sense of normalcy about the whole thing. She was telling me of parties that they would have (I assume taking down the cups reminded her) and how “oh boy did they ate!” I couldn’t help but chuckle at this, because if I know one thing about New Orleans, I know that they take their food pretty seriously. She sort of laughed and said she had way too many glasses and that she probably didn’t have much use for them. However, I assured her that I saw a few parties in her future. Again she laughed.
In the midst of all the destruction, two things about today stick out in my mind and, not surprisingly, both of them come from maybe two hours with this elderly woman. At one point, as we were working to keep the glasses from falling out of the cabinets as we opened them, she turned to me and said, “You know, it really is a blessing. It really is.” The second thing was, as we were leaving she said how she wished she had some cold soft drinks to give us and how she felt bad. She said she’d buy some for tomorrow. I, of course, assured her that we are well taken care of and that we really appreciate the offering. I was so touched to hear her say both of things. This woman attempted to offer us something when literally, almost every single one of her belongings was destroyed. She was, to me, in no place to give and yet there she was. It truly makes you take a good look at yourself and where your values lie. I know that I will be forever changed as a result of not only today but also what lies ahead in the next days. After such a moving first day, I am looking forward to the opportunity to provide more assistance to people who desperately need the help.
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