Monday, March 15, 2010

Our first day of work out in the field and we were productive. The Olive Tree (Presbyterian Disaster Assistance) Volunteer Village is cooperating with the Southern Louisiana Presbytery (Project Homecoming) to accomplish great things. They have an Operations Director, Construction Managers, Construction Assistants, and AmeriCorps*NCCC. Volunteers. With this much organization they can get us going with tools and materials quickly.

Our Construction Assistant (one for each site), Dan (from Virginia), is an on-the-ball type. He had the site organized and us (6 adults from NY state and 4 Kansas State Students that are here on spring break (very inspiring) on task within minutes of arriving (by an alternate route since we missed two turns. (Can you say “recalculating”). We hung the front door, prepared the existing studs to receive sheetrock (tomorrows task), and painted the exterior (one half done (but this is a secondary task)).

The camp is vibrant with 87 people. The volunteer village managers, a married couple, are well organized (and also inspiring), volunteering 3 months to help us help others recover from Katrina. Chores are organized and meals are delicious. Sleep was a precious commodity last night. There are bunk beds and snoring in stereo that send the top bunker into turbulence when the lower bunker rolls over. The mattresses come from the Indiana prison system. They don’t call it hard time for nothing.

We ate breakfast, packed our lunch and headed into the city. Our house is double wide but long. Instead of referring to it as a “shotgun house” we call it a double barrel. An extended family will live in it. It is completely gutted, but coming back. It still is amazing that after this much time there is still so much to do. We keep hearing how much it means to the people here that they are still cared for by those of us from around the country. We have groups from Kansas State, University of Maryland, Pennsylvania, California, and Oklahoma to share the volunteer village with. Part of the return for this mission trip is hearing the stories of those others who come to help (also very inspiring). This is an inspiring trip for me. I trust it is for those we serve.

Peter Wright-Auburn, NY

Our crew is working on a home owned by Toni and Jack. Jack, ill with mesothelioma, is hospitalized now. Each person scattered to work on various tasks – redoing ancient plumbing so toilets can be installed, building stairs, cleaning caulk from the new shower, removing adhesive from floor tiles so grout can be added, and taking paint spatters from a laminate floor, followed by mopping (repeated efforts!) to clean the drywall dust. Kneepads were helpful for the tile and floor work – we expect to discover muscles we didn’t know we had when we return to that work today.

The weather was perfect – mid sixties and sunny. We enjoyed lunch sitting on the sidewalk, and some in our group met the neighbor, Henry, who told his hurricane and recovery stories as he moved some dirt to fill in a low spot along his sidewalk. He refused to shake hands as we introduced ourselves, saying he didn’t know what was in the dirt – we said we didn’t know what our hands had been in either. We expect to hear more from him as the week goes on.

Kim Dungey, Auburn United Methodist Church