My first few days in New Orleans have been eventful to say the least. I’ve already warmed to the Big Easy, with its endless seafood restaurants and friendly people, who never cease to say hello at every opportunity. On our first day, Erin and I drove our rental car to Camp Hope, where the high school students we will be working were staying. A tiny looking camp from the outside, I was amazed the vastness of the camp on the inside with its dorm rooms, bathrooms and surrounding basketball courts. We spent a few hours meeting the students, some of whom were holed up in the laundry room. After dinner, we spent the next four hours taping and listening in to meetings before driving nearly an hour to our hotel room in downtown New Orleans.
Day two was interesting and depressing all the same. After arrival, we went with the high school students on a 30 minute bus drive to meet Kim, a young adult who gave us a riveting tour of the Lower Ninth Ward, a desolate area that bear the most brunt of Katrina’s wrath a few years ago. In between taking pictures and filming, I had the opportunity of walking around the few remaining houses that had yet to be cleaned three years later. As tears flowed down the faces of a few students, the depth of the tragedy finally hit me when I entered an empty house where the only remaining thing was a picture of a teenage girl enshrined next to a stairwell. It became clear to all of us that she had died in that house and someone had left her picture there to remind any visitor of the breadth of the hurricane and the devastation it caused and still continues to cause. A visit to the French Quarter later in the day gave me a greater perspective about levees and its role in the hurricane before a two-hour discourse about the days’ events brought the day to an end. Since filming is not allowed while the students canvass from door to door, I will most likely accompany a few students with my still camera tomorrow while they canvass. From what I’ve been told about canvassing and the amount of anxiety and unexpectedness involved, it is something I am anxiously anticipating.
