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 Some kids go to tourist attractions for their spring breaks. Others spend their breaks in tropical coastal cities, enjoying the waters with their friends and seeing where the night life might take them. I guess most just take it as an opportunity to unwind at home after a couple weeks of midterms and papers. This year was the first time I spent my break away from Ohio. I never really went wild during my undergrad years, I suppose. Uncool me. But as I was sitting there among my friends on the flight back from New Orleans, I wished every student out there could have been in my shoes. To be a part of the biggest compassion effort ever within the United States. To see firsthand the broken homes and redeemed lives. And for once, to finally work for the common good instead of our own ambition.
Altogether, 28 students made up the team that College Hill for Christ sent down to help in the Hurricane Katrina relief. Brown had several groups travel down to New Orleans, but ours was the biggest. This included non-Christians, international students, a local high school student, and a sister of one of our interns. The bonds that formed from merely working side-by-side in serious manual labor, in spending exhausting days and cold nights on cots—I imagine this was how communities used to be formed in the days when people had to be dependent on each other. I’m amazed by the work we accomplished, but not as much as by how easily we got along.
Before the mass of student volunteers came to New Orleans during their spring breaks, the devastated houses still stood as they were, only a paltry few being cleaned out and gutted for free. To get their lives back in order as soon as possible, residents had to pay professional demolition crews around $1600 to renovate their homes. The calculated average of such demolition work is about $18 an hour. Since the students arrived, the rate of free gutting has increased tenfold.
We arrived at the Campus Crusade headquarters in Light City last Saturday night. The cots were set up inside a shopping complex that had its walls gutted, and kids from maybe a dozen different schools were milling about outside as cold dinner was being served from big red tubs. The food reminded me of my grade schools days in the cafeteria … canned vegetables with dulled colors, warm pudding, cold gravy served over fake meat. Breakfast was just generic cereal brands served in the tiniest paper bowls they could find. Hand sanitizers were everywhere and in every car, while the port-a-potties quickly ran out of toilet paper. We lived by hand sanitizers. I devised this routine where before I went to use the port-a-potties, I would always lay down a bundle of toilet paper to cover any visible piles I might be positioning myself over. Hot water would frequently run out inside the shower tents. It was raw, alright, and many of us were seriously discomforted by the lack of common luxuries, but we shrugged it off whenever it was time to work.
On Sunday, we helped clean up and maintain the Good News Camp in City Park, which is the major free food distributing center to the residents and workers still trying to get back on their feet. A lot of people actually take advantage of the free stuff and use it as an excuse to not look for work, but I  guess you gotta expect that. The motto of the camp is “Jesus cares … and so do we.” Our main job was to reorganize the clothing/grocery center where all the donations go to, clean out the volunteer tents, and serve food during lunch. These meal times were the best opportunities we had to sit down and talk to the people who lived through it all and hear about their stories and opinions. One staff member was in the middle of the flood and described that the experience was like waking up in your house only to find yourself inside a fish bowl. Pastor Jerry Davis, a disaster relief missionary and the person in charge of it all, held a worship service during the meal. During our week there he would be between calls to the White House and trying to book Christian bands to a big relief concert he scheduled for this coming June. His signature song was a swing version of “When the Saints Come Marching In,” and that was the theme he would always hit upon--that we’re modern-day saints, a glimpse into the new heaven, trying to transform this city in spite of all the legal obstacles and political red tape that is making reconstruction SUCH a slow process.
The next three days we divided into two groups, each to gut a house based on a wait list of residents. It was sobering work. Most of the doors we couldn’t even open, because refrigerators and beds would be jammed in the way. Though it was fun to kick in those doors, just like in the movies. Most of the roof caved in, so there was insulation and drywall everywhere. The walls were moldy, and the tiled floors were warped. Removing every piece of furniture and appliance was frustrating work: bed frames had to be disassembled, every dresser was still stuffed with wet clothes, the refrigerators had to be duct-taped shut for fear of toxic odors, exercise machines were in the way, and worst of all there were a bunch of plastic containers that were still filled with seven-month old flood water. Never in my life did I smell sulfur so noxiously vile. If I didn’t have the respirator mask on, I might have vomited. One way we circumvented the odors was by finding old cologne bottles and dripping them across the floors. By the time everything had been carried outside, the volume of trash on the front lawn looked like it was greater than the volume of actual space inside the house.
After the floors were finally cleared of every kind of debris, we had to scrape off tiles using crowbars, which wasn’t easy at all because the flood water had caused the glue to adhere almost like concrete in many areas. I went into the attic to remove the last of the insulation and personal belongings (which consisted of a walker and a prosthetic leg). I got rashes and cuts crawling around in the insulation, my arms and legs already filthy with sweat and dirt from the heat up there. I found the family albums. It was terrible flipping through those pages … about 99% of the photos were devastated, and where once stood memories and loved ones, now were replaced by ripples of blue and purple dyes, swirls of color that seemed to wash over the past like some time-erasing tide.
 Finally, ripping down the sheet rock was fun. In many places it was soft enough to punch through. The girls had a blast utilizing those crowbars. Afterward, removing every nail from every wooden frame … not so fun. By the end, all that was left inside the house was the framework, sinks, and toilet. We accomplished so much work … and yet it was only one house. We would drive through entire neighborhoods that had yet to be gutted, that remained abandoned and, for the moment, forgotten by the rebuilding effort. It will take years for this clean-up … taking into consideration that the next hurricane season is already around the corner without a new levee built. The new levee was originally estimated to cost $3 billion, and this month they realized it would actually be closer to $9 billion.
We spent Wednesday afternoon in the projects near downtown. By the zoom on my camera I could see a bunch of construction workers walking on top of the Superdome. Our four vans drove into the city proper and stopped next to two giant building complexes milling with curious black children and their inert adults, watching us from shadowy staircases. Although I was walking through this symbol of American poverty, of the stark division of wealth in this country--it was a beautiful day. Flowers decorated the field in beautiful swaths and the playground between the two buildings was almost idyllic. We handed out melty ice cream and free school supplies. The children were more than excited to spend the afternoon with us. All of a sudden there were basketball games, soccer, frisbee, piggyback races, and Duck-Duck-Goose going on all at the same time. Some of the kids wanted me to videotape them performing slam dunks on a makeshift hoop from the jungle gym. Other children sat down to draw with their new markers and crayons. This one girl kept trying to splash everyone who walked by her with a hose. Another kid thought he was a frog and kept hopping around making ribbit sounds. It all seemed so beautiful. At the same time though, the kids would sometimes get into these dumb quarrels and one of the girls was talking about how her apartment neighbor deals drugs and how her mom is never around to take care of her. What chance do these children have? What are their parents like? How soon will it be before the hope of their youth gets crushed by financial demands? Please, God, give us the selflessness to make this world a better place for kids like these.
We had plenty of opportunities to just enjoy each other’s company as we toured the French Quarter, ordered crawfish for dinner, listened to incredible testimonies, and put on an improvised fashion show for our fellow volunteers based on what clothing we could scavenge in the Good News clothing store. I could go on about the anecdotes and the new friendships we formed in these days, the disturbances we caused on our flights and the injuries we sustained, but I want to close off with this one incredible thing that happened on the flight into  Detroit on our way back to Providence. Our plane had to keep circling for an extra hour because of lightning showers. So basically we drifted alongside the mass of lighting clouds and got front row seats to the most spectacular weather phenomenon I’ve yet to witness. Because of the precipitation the clouds were thicker, more substantial than I’ve ever seen. I felt like I could walk across them, scale the cascading mounds and slide down its hills. Strings of light would shoot out of one crevice and dart into hidden corners. The insides of the clouds would illuminate in sporadic patterns, revealing its many layers and complicated dimensions within, like an orchestra of orbs, as if a spaceship or an army of angels would burst forth from the thin shell of cloud matter at any moment. It was so close I could see every detail.
Sitting before this colossal force of nature, I felt like just the frail human being I truly am. And yet … I felt like this show of power was for me, that I was meant to be right where I was. Perhaps God was extending His acknowledgement to us—not His gratitude, because we can never do anything to make God owe us—but maybe He was making His presence known in a different way from all the times we saw Him that past week ... like a wink. Inside that plane, we were perfectly safe—technically one of the safest places we could be in fact. God is like that. He takes us out of our comfort and He sends us into the storm, away from our selfish ambitions. Only out there, when we ignore ourselves and give ourselves totally to His call, when we find ourselves in the midst of God-offered tribulations, do we see the full glory of God at work. Lives rebuilt, friendships in abundance and children dancing—I’ll never forget New Orleans.
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