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