[StBernard] In Katrina's wake

[Westley Annis]

In Katrina's wake

University of Western Ontario journalism student Ryan Cureatz travelled to
New Orleans last week to report on the aid efforts of two London women.
By RYAN CUREATZ, FREE PRESS REPORTER
 

NEW ORLEANS -- At a soup kitchen called The Made With Love Cafe and Grill,
work begins for two Londoners with the breakfast lineup. 

Barb Dorrington and Barb Desjardins travelled over March break to
Louisiana's St. Bernard Parish, a short drive from New Orleans, to volunteer
their trauma-relief and arts-therapy skills in a place affectionately known
in the area as "the hippie tent." 

It's a temporary complex, made up of the tent cafe and other relief stations
for emergency clothing and first aid. 

A non-profit group, Emergency Communities, set up the complex months after
hurricane Katrina clobbered the U.S. Gulf Coast in August. 

Dorrington and Desjardins are among a human tide of helping hands that has
come to the Gulf Coast from across the U.S. and Canada over the spring
break. 

The meal is served by a line of volunteers, who dish out portions to relief
workers and Katrina victims. 

With no restaurants or grocery stores nearby, the cafe is unusual in the
small city of Arabi, outside New Orleans' famed French Quarter. 

Dozens of stores along West Judge Perez Drive, where the volunteer-run
organization operates, are badly damaged. 

Desjardins is sitting across from a man named Brian, who's come in for
breakfast. 

Brian's former apartment is destroyed, too, he tells Desjardins over
breakfast as the servers dish out eggs, grits, potatoes, fruit salad and
juice. 

But Brian has joined the rebuilding effort, as his dirty khaki pants
suggest, stripping damaged homes of the dark mould that blights so many
abandoned places in the area. 

Desjardins is intent on hearing his story and wants as much detail as she
can get. 

Like Dorrington, she slept the night before on a toxic field in a tent,
pitched on a wooden pallet at the back of the site, to be close to the
victims they're helping. 

"They're still trying to make meaning out of all this," Desjardins says,
after Brian leaves the table to go to work. 

Desjardins and Dorrington work separately this morning, but their work --
and lives -- sometimes run parallel. 

The women first met as colleagues years ago at Madame Vanier Children's
Services, a social agency in London. 

They later did arts-therapy and trauma-relief training separately about the
same time. 

The two got reacquainted while teaming up in September for a volunteer
mission in San Antonio, Tex., helping people displaced by hurricanes Katrina
and Rita. 

In Arabi, they presented a $1,000 donation to a community centre and gave
art supplies to a school in Chalmette, La., where all grades now attend
after Katrina destroyed other schools. 

* * * 

Michael Campbell stands in the living room of his Katrina-hit home, a steel
resonator guitar in his hands. 

The street musician has agreed to perform a song for Dorrington, whom he met
over breakfast, in a spot flood waters once covered. 

"The levee broke / Things sure went wrong / Now all I can do is sing this
song / Katrina, what you done to me / Oh, what you done to me," he sings in
a delta-blues style. 

Steps away, in the master bedroom, the two-tone walls tell the story of the
flooding: The original green paint remains on the upper walls, but they're
all white along the bottom where Campbell is working at restoring them. 

Only a portion of the vinyl tile that covered the concrete floor remains.
The dampness betrays the water that filled the house 1.5 metres deep. 

"Took my TV, took my bed / Took nearly everything I had / My refrigerator,
my washing machine / The biggest damn flood that I ever seen," Campbell
sings. 

Dorrington believes people must share their stories to recover from
traumatic experiences. 

Near where she's standing, behind a blue tarp, is the kitchen. An array of
tools and cleaning supplies rests on a new countertop. A window by a row of
new kitchen cupboards overlooks the street. A replacement fridge, its price
tag still on, sits under plastic. Campbell recalls seeing the old one
floating in the same area. 

In the backyard, an above-ground pool is partly shaded from the beaming sun
under what looks like a greenhouse. It was on top of that pool that
Campbell, his partner Ellen and a homeless man sat with four dogs on plywood
boards, centimetres above the flood waters, for six days. 

As helicopters buzzed overhead, Campbell waded through flood waters to get
food. Drinking the pool water kept the marooned people alive, he believes,
until they were evacuated to Austin, Tex., where they stayed six weeks in a
motel. 

When he returned, he found about $45,000 damage to his home and vehicles. 

* * * 

Unlike Campbell, Bob Buras isn't living in a Federal Emergency Management
Agency trailer. There's one on his lawn, but Buras sleeps on the second
floor of his house. 

"I feel very secure, as long as I have a gun," says Buras, a retired police
officer. 

Neighbours have returned to the area, but it was desolate when he came back
from Hattiesburg, Miss., where he stayed in a friend's home after the area
was evacuated in the aftermath of the hurricane. 

Buras gives the Londoners a car tour of the lower ninth ward of New Orleans,
where reconstruction efforts are barely visible, then takes them to see his
home in Arabi. 

He says the home was worth $120,000 before Katrina. But it was badly damaged
after flood waters rose more than three metres above street level. Then the
house was repeatedly looted. There's no drywall on the main level to conceal
the wood framing. 

A toilet in the centre of the home offers little privacy, but still flushes.


Plywood flooring lies in place of carpet. The smell of damp wood lingers
faintly. 

"I'm down but not out," Buras says.