strike that

proud to call it home

Saturday is not a day off around here, but we didn’t have to gut. Instead our whole volunteer group was put to work for the Metropolitan Crime Commission of New Orleans to distribute surveys in neighborhoods hard-hit by Katrina.

I set out at nine a.m. with Mike from Minneapolis. The majority of the volunteers here are either Americorps or young college kids on summer break, and I don’t want to say anything bad about them because, hell, they’re volunteering their time just the same, and I’m sure they’re all very nice, and blah blah blah. But I don’t feel particularly invested in getting to know them. Because I am old and bitter and my humor doesn’t go over well with them at all. So I have been gravitating towards anyone over 24, towards new lost people and anyone who doesn’t get along well with others.

Mike is an introverted insurance agent. Hahahahahahaha. Really. Isn’t that great? But in this crowd, that basically makes him a rebel outcast. It’s beautiful. I asked him to be my survey partner.

And he is so cool.

Turns out he is starting grad school next week for public health, because he wants to work for an NGO abroad. And he just got back from Siberia. And he’s training for his first marathon. And we talked about these things for four hours as we walked around the battered blocks of half-fallen neighborhoods, taping blue packets to door frames of houses that were as likely abandoned as not. On the front the packets said, How safe do you feel in your neighborhood?

The neighborhoods look like this: The streets are fine, and the mess starts at the sidewalk. Broken concrete, piles of rubble from gutted or demolished buildings. Concrete or mattresses or wood in front of at least one and sometimes half the houses. Usually messy patches of yard, overgrown and scattered with debris. Occasional white trailers where residents live while fixing their homes. And the houses themselves, sometimes falling over, empty, missing doors. Sometimes half-repaired, re-painted but broken. And sometimes new. On a good block the breakdown was maybe 30%/40%/30%; on a bad block 60%/30%/10%. In all cases the clean new houses were sitting on the same desolate streetscape.

At first I was very unhappy about this task. I don’t like intruding. I don’t like being turned away. I don’t like tromping around people’s homes when I’m so clearly an outsider. But after about ten minutes I loved the work. It’s New Orleans, and neighbors sit out on their porches, and people are friendly. Crazy friendly. And a handful of people would scowl at us, and I would look at them and smile and say good morning, and every time they would smile and greet us back. And you could tell that we were just one in a long line of volunteers who’d walked down these streets, because occasionally people would call from their stoops, Are you here with WIC information? or What are you giving out?

And though all we were giving out was surveys, and an occasional New Orleans: Proud To Call It Home bumper sticker, no one turned us away.

And is there a way for me to say this without sounding like an ignorant ass? No. So here goes. If I had landed in a neighborhood that looked like this in New York or Philadelphia, I would have been scared out of my mind. I would have turned around and gripped my cell and walked the other way as fast as possible, imagining all sorts of ridiculous victim scenarios. I guess the neighborhood where I taught in Brooklyn was quite similar, and I was warned about walking there by my vice principal, so I rarely did. But of course as soon as I was on the street it turns out it’s just another neighborhood, a place where people live and work and make their lives. And most of them aren’t thrilled about the crime either. And insult to injury, they constantly get treated like criminals themselves.

This hurricane? It happened a year ago this week. A year ago. So if you don’t mind a third-grade type exercise, will you do something for me? It’s what I was doing yesterday.

Picture the street where you grew up, and all the houses on it, and the people who lived there. And then imagine that your street, and your whole neighborhood, filled with water so high that it filled up whole rooms. And all of your things, photos and letters and pieces of jewelry, washed away.

And then the water went away, but you couldn’t move back in. The mold would make you sick, and the ceiling could come crashing down. And most of your neighbors don’t live there anymore, so your street is full of empty houses. And you still might rebuild, except the business or the school or the office where your mom or dad used to work is closed. So it’s hardly a good time to start writing checks to roofers. And the wait for a roofer is six months long. And basically? No one gives a shit.

And that’s New Orleans.

And I was going to walk down the street thinking I should be scared.

posted by tortaluga @ 12:44 PM