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...
"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...
posted by Dartmouth in Biloxi at 9:07 PM
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