In honor of the five-year Katrina anniversary, I wanted to share my first experience with New Orleans.
I worked for an AmeriCorps*State program in my hometown in Michigan right after college because (shockingly) I couldn’t find a job in my field and didn’t know what else to do. I worked in a literacy center at a Head Start preschool. Right before I started, Hurricane Katrina had ripped through the coast, and I was stuck staring at the television helplessly. I felt guilty sitting in my living room and starting my new position, but I was broke, so my rouge mission to New Orleans was, alas, only a dream.
When I started my position, my boss discussed the possibility of a week-long service trip. Of course, New Orleans was the place that we all wanted to be. A week was better than nothing, right?
When we went, we stayed at Hands On New Orleans and joined them in the house gutting. For those of you who have not gutted a house in the New Orleans heat, image doing manual labor while sweating from parts of your body that you didn’t know could sweat.
The second house I gutted was unforgettable to me. You can learn a lot about a person from taking everything out of their house. We were told by our house leader, an AmeriCorps*NCCC member, that this house belonged to a just-married couple and that there was a blue paperweight somewhere in the house that was sentimental to them. All I could think was “that’s it? All of your possessions are in this house, and all you want is a paperweight?” As we shoveled their possessions out of the house, I found things like brand new silverware still in the box, an empty wedding album waiting for pictures, and a college mug.
The people I helped in AmeriCorps up to this point, I never felt a true connection with. I really enjoy helping those in need, but I never identified with them. But the people who had lived in this house were like me, fresh out of college and just starting their careers. As we cleaned out the house, I continued to think about them and how their lives had been changed by the storm. We never found the paperweight, but I did find a new love of volunteering and a love of New Orleans and the people there. This trip inspired me to continue to volunteer in the gulf, and I became a team leader with AmeriCorps*NCCC soon after.
