Touched

You can’t understand unless you’ve seen it with your own eyes. You can’t believe it unless you lived through. Understanding the scope is impossible. The only thing you can do in grit your teeth, dig in your heels, and refuse to be forgotten; swept away by the shifting tide of public consciousness. I recently spent two weeks down along the Gulf Coast, and even during the last day I had trouble having the whole event sink in. It’s because I didn’t see the terrible events unfold. New Orleans flooded over a period of several days. Biloxi, MS, our home base during the trip, flooded in mere three hours. Minus the storm surge, the effects of the category 4 hurricane would have been devastating: trees down, roofs ripped off, damage to any thing exposed. The storm surge was the keystone of the disaster. It hit during high tide. There’s a normal 8 to 12 foot variability in the tides, yet it hit at its peak. Coupled with the storm surge, water rose nearly 30 feet along the hardest-hit, low lying (if you’ve ever been to the South, then you know that everything is low-lying) areas. The architecture and low-income tier of the residents ill-suits flood damage prevention. Their houses are one-story and small. Damage to residences was extensive. Not just to the places that we’ve heard about in the news, or to the places that we saw, but to every house in every town along the Gulf Coast that was hit. I was part of the crew that worked on the interiors, or as it is more properly known as: demolition. Basically, we took the house down to its studs so that its foundations could be demolded before the rebuilding could took place. To do this we used crowbars of all sizes and weights, hammers, shovels, chisels, and sledgehammers. It still feels weird to open doors without my trusted behemoth of a crowbar. Our first day we were exposed right away to our task: two houses to demo. It’s amazing to think how tepid we were when we first started – small sings of the sledgehammer, paying careful attention to minute details, wrinkling our nose at the smell, using masks other than the effective and form-fitting 3M masks. The smell was the worst. Every house has a smell – a microcosm of this is dorm rooms. No two student rooms smell the same – even frat basements have distinct odors. In the aftermath of Katrina, all the houses we worked on smelled the same. It had the same mud caked to the floor, the same mess created in the homes, the same flood water found in the refrigerators, cupboards, and lamps. The same 3-month old rotting food strewn about as these people’s lives were so rudely interrupted. The same cockroaches half-dead after we removed their perches, the same sickly geckos half-heartedly trying to make an escape. Only one house was different. There was shit in that one. Everyday we worked, we looked at these trashed houses – insurmountable mountains that needed to be climbed. 7 hours later, whatever paralyzed frozen personality that remained in the house was gone – there was only shades of wood and mold, and a giant pile of trash on the side of the streets. A layer of ruined scrapbooks under layers of their ruined furniture under their ruined walls. People’s lives strewn on the sidewalks in town, courtesy of us, damned by the storm surge. The last structure we did, our eleventh, the elderly owner and her daughter stopped by to see if anything could be saved. This house had been particularly trashed – flood water was found in all sorts of interesting places. By the time the family arrived, we done a good job cleaning out the front room (the kitchen and dining room). Before the owner entered, I had grabbed one of the two items she wanted to keep – a metal snowman that the water came a few inches short of grabbing. The second item was a trunk in under her bed that contained Christmas ornaments that she a had bought the previous year. She wanted to celebrate a normal Christmas. The owner walked in. She was disturbed at the sight, but fine. Her grown daughter followed; she had not been home since the storm. She let out a scream, quickly swallowed by her hands. No one else heard it – only I did. I was close to her. I will never forget that cry. The trunk was found, but its contents were ruined. The owner began to cry too. Personality had just come back to the house, and it was horrified at what that bastard storm did to it. After the family left, we finished our work in silence, preparing the house so that it would be renewed. The owner wasn’t going to come back – she couldn’t afford to.
Biloxi is fortunate to have a coordinated relief effort – hundreds of volunteers have helped out at all levels, abiding by the Hands On’s mantra of asking people ‘how can we help you?’. Many aspects of the town has been helped, although there is still much to go. The casinos, which bring countless millions of dollars into the state of Mississippi, will move on land now, and people will lose their homes.
Not every town is so lucky. My crew spent two days in Waveland, a town nearby. It took a day or two for the initial aid workers to ever reach the city- the roads going in were covered by miles of downed trees. It was there that we saw the best and worst of Southern culture. A meal at Christian church affiliated center (which shall remain nameless in the article) exhibited the selective relief that some organizations are giving to communities. Waveland was mostly black, yet very nearly all the people being helped were white. They preached and sang of the virtues of Jesus and Armageddon, which would save all of these people of this affiliation and kill the rest. God bless us when the trumpets of Gabriel blow. When they made us tell them what religious organization we were part of, they nearly kicked us out at the spot. When we were done eating, we were kicked out. One of our group was subjected to the opinions of one elderly, faithful churchgoer. God bless the hurricane, he said, it killed all those n*****rs in New Orleans. It got even better when the heathens began shooting each other. Now, all those schoolteachers are upset about all those n*****rs being shipped into their schools because they’re uneducated and they’ll have to change the curriculum for them! It was nearly too much for me, especially that night when I talked to two elderly white women who lost their home, were living in a tent because FEMA hadn’t given them a trailer yet, and their daughter that’s living with them was expecting a child in two weeks. God bless that hurricane. However, that next day I met one of the nicest men that I have ever met. By some miracle, his street escaped the surge. Soon after the storm, he was helping cook and feed many in his neighborhood, happy to be a help. Previous volunteers had helped out sister, so he said he would feed us. With only a few hours of ahead notice, he cooked one of the most amazing meals I had ever tried. Believe me – I’ve had some excellent meals (thanks Mom, my girlfriend and her sister!). He was kind, devoutly Christian, and totally welcoming of us. He even invited us to his small church, which was also blessed with a very talented gospel choir, of which this man was a part of. Southern culture was dichotomized on this trip. Admittedly, I’ve had a sheltered life growing up in secular Maine suburbia, but still, I believe I saw the absolute depth and greatest heights of the religious South.
Overall, by the time we left, a member of our team totaled the work we had done: 11 houses, $6000 of work done. It wasn’t a few of us changing the world, but we were making a world of change to a few people. It was community service at its best and most-needed form.
Lastly, I’d like to mention that community service is always needed, whether it gets the press or not. This disaster does not warrant acute relief. Towns will need help rebuilding for many years. However, there are other parts of society that need our help. The work required may not be as sexy as disaster relief, but it is just as needed in some parts. Worldwide and at home. Chronic problems need perpetual work done on them, and unfortunately these problems do not inspire the same and appropriate impetus of the relief work that has gone on since the hurricane. Martin Luther King once said, “The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in the moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands in times of challenge and controversy.” I believe this to be true, but not encompassing of human character. The mettle is tested when in these situations, but it leaves out service. It is in times of comfort and convenience that we should most focus on bringing others to us. However many are already helping in some way, there are countless more who are not. An addict needing help overcoming an addiction, a family is does on their luck and have lost their home. These small disasters can be relieved by the more comfortable. Margaret Edelman once said, “Service is the rent for living.” In a perfect world, this should be true.

I am now trying to come to grip to being back in my comfortable home in Maine, living with my stable family and close friends. After coming back, it has been hard to forget what I have seen, done, and experienced. There are terribly strong emotions that have bubbled up: guilt, sadness, resentment. I felt my inner self come close to breaking while I was on the trip – after the house with the family, every time I closed my eyes, everytime I was asked how my day was, I always thought of that one cry. To me, that is what Gulf Coast is. It is shocked, pained, turned about, temporarily lost but still altogether assured of its course. But others cannot know this. It is strange feeling emotions emerge without the control that we are all so used to having, and it will take time until I finally come to grips to my time as a Hurricane Katrina relief worker. ~ZS

Elmer Street

"Nobody ever comes down Elmer Street," Andria Harris says, standing next to her husband. "The Red Cross, FEMA... Nobody. Except for Hands On, who comes down it every day." Elmer is a narrow street running through a poorer neighborhood in East Biloxi. I watch as dogs run up and down the street, Andria's children laugh and play next to her 3 foot tall, plastic Christmas tree- a beautifully decorated tree. A Christmas toy, given to her kids by Hands On volunteers, is playing Christmas songs, one after the other. The people on Elmer street embody what it means to be a good neighbor; they watch out for each others kids and, "tell their parents when their kids get out of line." Their FEMA trailers are lined up 5 feet apart, lined up in the neighborly way their homes were before the storm, in a lot where a home once was, not seperate and hidden like most FEMA trailers in the city. Each and every home on Elmer street is nearly collapsed.

Mr. and Ms. Davis stand next to their FEMA trailer, their home stands in the background. It is damaged to the point that it looks like it has to be demolished. "We still have some people living in tents, we have some people who don't even have tents, they're living in their cars. But at the same token, yesterday our president said things were going back to normal. What's normal? This is not a lifestyle we are used to. We are not from South Africa we are not from the Middle East, this is not a lifestyle we are used to, but if this is normal, I want to know what I had before that. Because in my eyes, this is not normal, and in the eyes of other people in Mississippi and Biloxi, this is not normal. Where's the normalcy? We have 11 days till Christmas, but what is a Christmas if you have nothing to give? Granted we have a life, we have each other, we have our friends we have our neighbors, but where's our real Christmas, where's our life, who's gonna give us our lives back? We can only do so much."

Andria takes me into her trailer. I ask her how it is working out for her. "It's not. There is a leak in the roof the trailer guys can't fix, the fridge is so small that I have to go shopping every day." She shows me the bathroom. The bath tub is about 4 feet long and two feet deep, "infant-sized," she says. The toiled has no leg room. She laughs and says it is funny when her husband, who is at least 6'4", uses the bathroom. I had this image of his feet in the bathtub while using the toilet. These are "travel trailers," and there is one bed for Mr. and Mrs. Harris, and their two little children. They recieved a trailer in mid-October, and before that they were living in tents.

Much of the attention in post-Katrina Biloxi has gone toward bringing back the Casino's. Lots of time and energy was spent passing legislation to allow the Casino's to open up on land. The Casino's aren't having problems with their insurance companies, like nearly every Biloxi resident. The only construction workers I have seen so far have been at the Casinos. "The Casinos are going up rapidly. They want to open up Sin City, for the tourists, granted you have tourists, thats revenue, but what about the people? The tourists are in for a week, but then they're gone, what about the people who are living here, who grew up here. All of the houses on this street are inheritances, our home was here since 1932, passed on through generations. The Casinos are not here for generations, they've been here for a few years and we've been here for a lifetime, so what can they give us, because we have nothing." Their belongings are all in their 5 foot by 25 foot trailer.

Because the Harris home is part of eminent domain, they are worried that the city will come seize their property for a public project. Because of this, Andria stays home to protect her property and is not working. She says that if the city tries to take her property, she will put up a giant wall and plant giant oak trees where her house was.

Mr. Harris, says,"I was 4 when my mom purchased this home. I remember when this street was oyster shells. You have so many deep memories of this place, it is just too hard to leave it."

Ted Mathias '09

$ Biloxi, Casinos, and Cold Cash $

Wednesday, December 14th, 2005:
My idea that she wanted another casino card dealing job evaporated as the middle aged woman sighed and glanced at the floor.
"I took too much money from too many people. You just have to keep making them think they can win even after they go back to the car and get the baby food money. It's all about false hope."
We worked on a new résumé, which she planned to use to apply for an airport security job.
"I want something more useful, where I won't feel that I'm always trying to steal peoples’ money. You look at them, and they know they're losing, but they just can't stop."
The Katrina victims seeking résumé and employment assistance opened the unscreened windows into their minds today. I hope they felt listened to, and that we boosted their confidence.
"I was working two jobs, at the Daycare, and at the Magic Casino. The Storm destroyed both buildings and flooded my home...I guess you just have to build back up. That's all you can do; start again."
Personal accounts of splintered homes and broken lives reverberate off the twisted metal in Biloxi, and through our minds.

Nick Ware ‘08

Halfway There

Well it’s been about a week since our trip started, and what an experience this has been for me thus far. I hadn’t watched much of the footage on the hurricane before arriving, so my trip though different communities showed me the very real destruction all around. Seeing blocks upon blocks of barren land, wrecked vehicles, and smashed buildings totally awed me – and then I remembered I was just viewing a tiny piece of the total picture.

Today I worked at the East Biloxi Community Center, which I have been doing for the past few days. It basically acts as a distribution center for any resident who needs food, clothing, baby supplies, drinks, blankets, home goods, shampoo, mattresses…anything Shipments arrive almost daily and it is a very full, busy day to constantly stock and organize all the essentials that people are given to improve their lives. Unfortunately for the hundreds (roughly 600-800) of people who come through on a given day, the mayor of Biloxi has decided to shut the center down by December 31st, in order to allow other activities to move back in. News crews have been in recently covering the story, as almost all of the people who rely on the center could not imagine living without it. The guy who runs the place, Dave Romero, is a total volunteer who has found a way to pay rent, allocate shipments, work here for 27 hours a day, and run the most successful operation around. He’s an amazing guy. He even taught me how to operate a forklift, and I drove that thing around for the afternoon, unloading shipments – wicked sweet.

Working here also gave me the bitter taste of politics in the area, and I found out about the very recent (Feb 2005) Supreme Court decision on eminent domain which has expanded the previous usage, now allowing the government to force private property owners to sell their land/homes if the purchaser’s new usage of the land will improve the community through economic development. Applying here in Biloxi, to those people living along the valuable shoreline who were too poor to afford insurance and had their homes destroyed, if they don’t make visible signs that they are fixing their house/land by the new year, their land will be taken from them (probably against their will) and they will be given whatever compensation deemed fit in return so that a money-making casino can sit on their lot. These people don’t have money to buy food, their jobs are destroyed, many haven’t yet even returned home, and they now face the near-impossible challenge of improving their home or having it taken away from them!? I thought about these problems today, and I got had a quite emotional afternoon, empathizing with these unfair and upsetting situations. Local people feel betrayed and hopeless. Many feel that leaving might be in their best interests, because the community they once knew is being rebuilt with an entirely different agenda – their new town will end up looking more like a casino resort and less like a home.

Aside from the depressing realities the people are forced to deal with, it has meant a lot to me to have been able to help so many people. I talk with people every day, and some of the stories I hear are just unbelievable. People are strong down here in the south, and their infinite optimism should be an example for us all. I made a friend with another volunteer down here – Virgil, but we call him Big V – and working alongside him has made every day a fun day filled with laughing and teasing. Some can’t take his loud, southern-drawl-filled hollerin’, but I enjoy it as part of the total southern experience, alongside morning breakfast grits. Anyways, I hope this next week gives me the same satisfaction as the first one has. Goodnight ya’ll.

Ibrahim Elshamy 09

Pink

12-14-05

A number of people not here on our trip have emailed or phoned me asking "Who are you helping there in Biloxi? Why can't they do the work themselves? Are they just lazy?" That one requires a bit of a response and explanation.

This morning, 46 of us drove an hour west toward New Orleans down Interstate 10, the eerily shattered trees and twisted billboards serving as our mangled sentinels along the way. Forty miles from Biloxi, we pulled off the highway and drove five miles toward the coast to Bay St. Louis, a city of 5,000 located directly to the right of the eye of Katrina, placing it within the most destructive path of the storm. As we drive down route 603, we turn down Three Dog Night to gape at the trailers and pick-ups, dumped upside down, or, in one instance, twenty feet above the ground in the nook of a tree. Stagnant water, algae layered like some grim sci-fi back drop, skirts both sides of the roads, absorbing the centuries-old live oaks and spanish mosses, those weeping monsters that flank the way.
As we pull in to Disaster Central - a small satellite operation of Hands On that has been established in the heart of Bay St. Louis - we are welcomed by a black woman in cargo pants and a white polo shirt. Lori has us sign wavers and then divides us into trees, mold and interior teams. We've brought all of our own tools and gear - sledge hammers, bad mommas, crow bars, skill saws, generators, helmets, MREs (meals ready to eat, the same food that the frontline soliders in Iraq consume), and boxes of face masks - so Lori hands out job orders and sends us off with skeletal instructions scribbled on the back of photocopied insurance claims and meal tickets.
My crew is on interiors. For those of you who have never ripped out the guts of a house before, pounding and slamming away until the building is naked, it is an experience in and of itself. You arrive at a home in the morning, reeking of decaying wood, mold, and rot, piles of soggy and moldy clothing, china, dressers, books and nick-knacks - so many nick-knacks - waiting silently inside darkened and damp rooms. By the time the crew leaves at the end of the day, the house has been reduced to a skeleton of 2x4's and shingles, a veritable mountian of memories and crumbled dry-wall piled on the front lawn.
We pull into the driveway of 799 Washington Street, home of Gerri Bryant, aka Gerri Kay, the pin-up girl, comedian and performer of 1950s acclaim. Gerri is inside her FEMA trailer - she's one of the few who's been lucky enough to find a new place to live. Because she had access to a phone, which many people don't have, she was able to obtain information and place an order for a trailer, which she received four weeks ago. Many people's trailer orders were filed improperly or lost by FEMA. Those unlucky people are still living in tents or crashing on friends and family's couches, nearly four months after the storm. Gerri spent the ten weeks in between living with distant relatives in Houston, who literally kicked her out by the end of her stay. After we knock and open the door, Gerri appears with tears in her eyes. She invites a girl named Suzanne and me inside, shuffling about in a pink velour nightgown, cradling a mini-poodle in her arms as she sniffs and coos to us. "Oh, Nick, I just can't go on. I just can't do it, sweetheart." As she launches into a tear-filled abreviated version of her show-biz career and life history, the rest of our work crew carries soggy couches and moldy carpets out of her house, visible through the windows on the side of her trailer.
She sits with us and shows us the few scraps from newspapers and magazines that she has left, the only mementos of an illustrious career. When Katrina hit, Gerri wanted to stay in her house. Many of her neighbors did. The woman next door died. Gerri had fifteen minutes to pack-up before a concerned stranger forced her into his vehicle in a hasty exodus. She managed to save her Bible, a veritable tomb that would put the Gideons to shame. Inisde, she had stored a dozen clippings and articles. Those and one framed fading photo of her, a buxom beauty sprawled across a plush velvet couch - Gerri the Platinum Blonde, the caption proclaims - are all that she has to remember.
She collected East Asian art and porcelain, and managed to save some items - a Buddha head and some Tibetan prayer wheels - which she cleaned and placed around her crowded trailer. Our crew was given specific instructions to use their own discretion when demoing the house, to save anything that might be of value - jewlery, porcelain, fancy nick-knacks. Usually we just go to town on the rig, sledge-hammering vases, toilets and mirrors with detached empathy. Here we had a special request.
"My only son, he's not a good... I mean, when I was in the hospital with cervical cancer three years ago, he only came once, for ten minutes, and he didn't even bring flowers. It's probably my fault, but he's self-centered and doesn't care about me. Nick," she sobs and wraps her frail pink arms around my shoulders, "he's just waiting for me to die so he can get my house."

So, to answer the question in a roundabout way, we are here because we're needed. Because without our help, people like Gerri have to pay upwards of $10,000 to have their houses gutted and demolded. We spent the afternoon at a black woman named Paula's house. She's a single, uninsured mother, parent of three, one of whom suffers from alopicia and requires biweekly trips to Jackson for treatment. As we danced with her to the Rolling Stones while tearing our her bathroom - I broke a water valve on the toilet, and ended up getting an unexpected and unsanitary shower - she kept on clapping her hands and hugging me, thundering "Nick, y'all are such a blessing. God is GOOD, Nick, God is good." Paula got word last night that she had been selected to have her house redrywalled pro bono thanks to the benificence of a Washington state based group of Mennonites. The only catch was that she had to have her housed demoed down to the studs by tomorrow morning. She called Disaster Central - again, she had access to a phone - and we were able to help. She has absolutely zero financial wiggle room, and our free demolition service allowed her to rebuild her house wihout going into crippling, depressing, life-ending debt.

It feels good to be here. The satisfaction I get from one full day of dusty, moldy, back breaking work is greater than what I've gotten from writing any paper or taking any test in four years of college. Seeing people's faces, hearing their stories, hugging them, crying with them throughout a day - that's why we're needed here. Only when that element of human compassion breaks down will these people truly have nothing. So, as you sit on your computers reading this, thinking about lunch meetings, getting the kids to school, what's for dinner - take a minute and remember that just because Biloxi, Bay St. Louis, Waveland, and Pass Christien are no longer in the news, doesn't mean that things have gotten better. The need here is still great. You can do your part by continuing to seek out the issues and keep them vocal within your community. Your compassion and thoughts are what these people need more than anything else.

Gratification

12-13-05

There are no desolate fields to speak of, no crying widows in the street, but this is but the outside of the city. As we venture further in, we see the razed remains of homes, the devestation that words cna only begin to describe. The waters have receded now, but they leave behind far more than mold and ruined buildings. The lives here are shattered. Beloved family and dear neighbors lie dead, remembered only by orange numebrs sprayed onto walls by emergency services. Devestation can only begin to describe the material damage here, and there are no words for the people.The people... that's what everything is about. Why there are two hundred men and women down here in Biloxi volunteering with Hands On USA. Volunteers who have taken time off school, work, or away from family in order to help the people of Biloxi, as best they can.And the residents of this town know this. Though deprived of what many of us consider basic living necessities, they smile and tell us their stories, of how water rose and rose and rose, never ending, of how they prayed and wept and prayed - not only for themselves, but for the people of Biloxi.One woman eagerly told me of how her and sixteen other family members huddled together in the attic, as the water rose more than ten feet. She told me of how the attic window was locked, and had the water risen any further, they would have all drowned. And yet this woman, whose home and most material possessions are destroyed, can wait in line for some clothes, while telling me her story without shedding a tear. She even tells me one thing in her rich southern accent I don't think I'll ever forget. "God gives us challenges, but only those we can meet." She sees this as a challenge, and is willing to pick up the threads of her life. And that is why being here is so gratifying, because I can help mend one small thread of her life. By just being there, by just listening and doing the small tasks I can here. For anyone who reads this, I encourage you to come down, if only for a day, to do what you can here. No matter how small, your contribution will make a difference to these people. The fact that you are here and that you care is enough.

Nikhil Jain '09

What next?

12-10-05

"I dunno, I've been workin' all day, every day for the past three months now, and there's still boucoup stuff down in that ravine there. It makes a body tired." A.J., in his early-70s and speckeled with liver spots, dribbles a bit of spittle onto his tripple layered flannel shirts as he sits perched on his Gator lawn maintenance vehicle, surveying what is left of his domain, Camp Wickles, across the Back Bay from East Biloxi. "That damn hurricane wrecked this whole place, man. I'm telling you, Morehead Cabin, Dominick Dining Hall, Eagles Perch, the canoe rack. God only knows where they're at now, probably sittin' at the bottom of the Gulf." His camp property ruined, no insurance in place, A.J. has hopes of getting the camp running by next summer in time for Scouts season, but at this point, is taking things a day at a time. Today, he has thirty volunteer Air Force men and women from the local Kesseler Air Force Base raking leaves, gathering trash, and hauling corroded lumber towards a massive football field sized pile of debris. Our group of Dartmouth students and staff joined several other volunteers from Hands On USA at the site.
The work here in Biloxi at times seems almost pointless - we are carving such a small dent into such an overwhelmingly huge problem. But, then again, as Dave Hunt, our Safety and Security officer on the trip, pointed out last night, our work here is reminiscent of the boy and starfish story - every hour we work, every rotting kitchen we clean, every house we de-mold, is making a huge difference in someone's life. And, for more self-centered reasons, it also makes us feel good.
Take Kim for instance. Today at 8:30AM, we entered her house - a reeking, muddy, moldy calamity with water logged carpets, smashed dishes on the ground, and a roof which let the sun shine through. She had two refriderators, neither of which had been touched since Katrina, both filled with four month old rotting food - even with the doors on the fridge duct-taped shut, the stench was nearly enough to make me vomit. But we threw her kids stuffed animals out the windows, tore the carpeting up off the floor, and ripped the siding and insulation from the walls. We smashed cabinets, dodged falling chunks of ceiling, and filled her streetside curb with literal mountains of debris. By the end of the afternoon, we'd emptied her house of everything that she had once owned - as you can imagine, one accumulates quite a lot of crap over two decades of living in the same house. Kim is one of the luckier ones. She still lives on her property in a FEMA trailer - for all intents and purposes, an RV - donated by the illustrious branch of Homeland and Security, attached to gas, water, and power through a series of tubes that runs up her driveway from the street. She is in her forties, but doesn't have the money to pay for renovations - in fact, she's only received $15,000 of the total $95,000 insurance plan she had purchased for her house. Everybody on the worksite felt like they had accomplished something by the end of the day.
At tonight's reflection session with our Dartmouth group, several people expressed concerns over working on people's homes and other sites within the community while the capable homeowners and local residents only watched, and in some cases actually partied. I'm not sure how to respond to this issue - on the one hand, Hands On's work in this community is a testament to the power of idealism. But on the other, the idealism falls short when in the long run we end up providing the manpower for people who should be providing their own. I'm not trying to imply that the people we help don't need us - in most situations, the individuals we meet are in dire straits, having lost numerous family members and everything they own. It is impossible to imagine. But, we face the important issue of long-term sustainability, and what happens once we leave in two weeks and Hands On leaves in January. Will the relief effort grind to a halt? Will the government (local, state and federal) finally step in?
Steps will be taken to provide for a "clean exit" (to use the parlance of a far more expensive current government initiative), but we certainly can't predict what will be here several weeks (or months or years) down the road...

Documenting Curry and the Indescribable

Curry wafts from the kitchen here, or at least it did tonight. And everyone at Hands On seems to own at least one musical instrument, an excellent pairing with the repetoire of early 90s pop song lyrics everyone seems to know. The facilities and people at Hands On smack of a nuevo Hippie commune to me. And sitting through the nightly 'All Hands' debriefing that follows dinner makes even the days work completed and the following days work to be done seem not only do-able, but incredibly rewarding.
I find that as I try to think about my first full day in Biloxi, I can only capture logisitics or describe the festival of sorts that is Hands On USA. The underlying significance of it all is so hard to delve into. Just trying to assess how I was affected by the crumpled McDonald's sign, or (to get to the crux of it all...) the woman who described putting her "babies" (6 children under the age of 10) on top of dressers as the water level rose in their two story apartment, leaves me so emotionally drained and overwhelmed that I become almost desensitized. The buckled over trees, devastated houses and wiped away bridges leave me in awe of the power of nature. But did I really come all the way here to realize "Geeze, winds and storm surge sure can cause a lot of damage"? Signs point to No. What really affects me is the true optomism that the people here have in the face of such unimaginable circumstances. A man and his dog passed us as we got into our van to head to lunch. The two had ridden out the storm together, swimming out of a flooding one story house and climbing into its attic for the terrifying duration. Today the man chuckles, after mentioning his unemployment, his dilapidated home and his essentially condemed community in passing, he tells us that Midnight is a Hurricane hound. "A beast who just loves taking rubble pile walks in this post Katrina ghost land".
It is this dogged optomism that affirms the trip, makes the curry, runs the nightly meetings and just inspires everyone to keep plugging away. So heres to Dartmouth's hand in the plugging...
-Annie Rittgers '09

We All Made It!

12-8-2005

Hi all,

Here we all are, safe and sound - albeit smelly, tired and hungry - at Hands On USA (www.HandsOnUSA.org) in Biloxi, Mississippi. Calvin Richardson and I spent the past three days driving from Dartmouth via New York and Knoxville with a van full of computers, clothes, tents, food and machetes. We met the rest of the crew this afternoon at the Hands On headquarters, where we'll be staying for at least the next few days. Calvin and I arrived an hour before the rest of the group, and had just enough time to put-up the first tent before thunder clapped and water inundated our camping field. Never fear! The lovely people at Hands On have let us all stay inside their heated wearhouse tonight, where we're all currently talking, playing cards, meeting other volunteers, and waiting for dinner - spaghetti with sauce and broccoli to feed 150. The other 43 members of the Dartmouth team successfully reconvened in New Orleans and rented six minivans and one 12-seater for the 90 mile trip east. People spoke of finally being able to see this disaster from outside the confines of 'the media straw,' an analogy I liked. The immensity of the damage here is still harrowing nearly four months later, and may be even more so considering how little has been done in some parts of the city. Piles of trash - not traditional trash, but insulation, moldy 2x4's, shoes, baby carriages, pots and pans, wheels, trees, windows, cabinets, doors, mirrors, beds, mattresses, and literal tons and tons of viscous, reeking mud - still line the streets of downtown Biloxi. There is a lot of work to be done.
We have all five of our projects planned out for tomorrow, and - amazingly - it looks like everything so far has gone off without a hitch - knock on wood. We'll be heading out to the East Biloxi Coordination and Relief Center, Nichols Elementary School, and several condemned and moldy houses, amongst other luxurious destinations, for our first day of work. All students here are excited to be done with finals, and everyone from the Dartmouth contingent is psyched to get their hands dirty. We're keeping our fingers crossed for clear skies tomorrow, which should make everyone's initial impressions here a bit more pleasant. Dinner's served - more to follow after our first day of work tomorrow!

Nick Taranto '06