By Donovon Ceaser
Friday, January 6, 2006
I just recently returned from my college town of New Orleans. I lived in New Orleans from august 2000 to July of 2005, a month before the hurricane struck. The people I meet in Toronto tell me how lucky I am, that I left "just in the nick of time." But when you live somewhere, when you know the people, the culture, when a city becomes a part of who you are, luck doesn't come into mind.
I moved to Toronto for graduate school. after Katrina, I couldn't really afford to go back home, and I couldn't' bring myself to face what had happened even if I had the money. But I knew that I would go back for 2 weeks during the Christmas vacation, so I put it out of my mind as best I could, and focused on my master's thesis.
I spent the first few days in town in my old neighborhood, Uptown. I biked around, visited my old apartment. For the most part, everything was seemingly fine. Sure, there were roofs that were being repaired, and fallen branches everywhere, and the St. Charles streetcar, a hallmark of New Orleans life, was still not running. Oh, and nothing was open, and even when something was open it was only open for a few hours and only had half the supplies it once had. Still, it didn't' seem that bad. I was surprised that after almost 6 months, the city was still in this state, but I had little to complain about. I ate that night at my favorite Indian Restaurant, remarked that there wasn't' a Popeye's open (another hallmark of New Orleans), and proceeded to share stories with my friends about what had befallen us in the last 6 months.
It was somewhere during my rant about how much I love Toronto over New Orleans, and how I am adjusting to snow and "the north" and the cultural diversity that I noticed a look on my friend's face. I asked him if something was wrong, and his response was, "I just feel tired all the time. They are calling it post-Katrina depression."
He explained to me what his last 6 months were like. "When I got home, the front door had been blown away, one of the railings on the front steps was gone, and the whole house was filled with flies. It was 100 (35C) degrees, and the whole place stank. Everything in my fridge had turned into liquid, it was just awful. While trying to clean up, I was bitten by one of the bugs in my house and got West-Nile virus and had to spend a couple of days in the hospital."
His story wasn't unique. The next day I met my old boss and friend Jim, who's 57 and is the minister of a Unitarian Church that I was the music director of. He said, "The church is gone, my house is gone. I had to get to my house by boat to grab what I could. What I remember most about when I first arrived was the smell of death in the air, it's different than the smell of rotting food, similar, but different. "Jim seemed in a daze, he was telling me these things. He said, " I've buried a lot of people." His good-bye hug lasted so long it made me uncomfortable.
I remember telling myself that these stories sound like what I would expect to hear from someone who lives in Iraq, or Sudan or some other war-torn region. Not the "western" world, not the U.S. , and certainly not a place that I went to college and of which I have so many memories. I listened to these stories, but I just couldn't get myself, in my heart, to believe them.
The next day, my friends drove me from Uptown to the rest of New Orleans. Let me see if I can explain it in a way that Torontonians would understand. Imagine if Scarborough, Brampton, Mississauga , and everything east of Yonge St. were nothing but ruined abandoned houses, but the western side of downtown, Yorkville, Kensington, Little Italy and Portugal, the Harbourfront were fine. That is literally what New Orleans looks like right now. The lower ninth ward, Chalmette , and Lakeview are gone. It is nothing but miles and miles of houses off of their foundations, split in half and without roofs, caked in mud; magnolia trees with trunks ten feet wide uprooted and laying on the streets. and the smell of mold is so strong, just driving through made us all start to cough vehemently. Bear in mind, this after four months of "reconstruction". I went to the Unitarian Church. It was built only a few years ago, a large white-roofed building with a gardened walkway, planted by the congregation. It was all gone. No flowers. The church looked like it had been bombed. My old piano was a pile of rust that a rotted-out chair had toppled over. Its shiny white interior was covered in mud and mold. The kitchen, where the congregation gathered after church to have coffee and discuss the sermon of the week, was a blackened mess. Jim was right. The only thought that came to me was, "This must be what Iraq looks like." all my friends agreed.
The entire time we drove around I took pictures, but at the church something hit me. I had agreed to take pictures to have a record of the devastation to show when I returned to Canada, to spread the message about what was actually happening here. But I found myself ooh-ing and ah-ing so many times, then I would see people walk out of these fallen-apart houses, grimaces on their faces. I felt horrible, I was taking pictures like a tourist, enjoying people's misery. I put my camera down.
That night, the moment we got home, we drank. We drank, we drank. The moment there was a lull in conversation, we drank. When they rehashed their memories about what it was like the first days after the storm, we drank. When we noticed the glass was going to be empty soon, we drank and refilled. New Orleans is known as the city where it is impossible to be labeled an alcoholic because drinking is so much a part of the culture. But ten vodka-tonics, two shots of Crown Royal, and a beer later, even I realized a problem. I didn't want to be alone, because then I would have to process everything I saw that day, and I didn't have a clue where to begin.
My friends all agreed that what I should do is let the people of New Orleans speak to the world about how they feel about the situation.
"It's just sad that nothing has been done here in these entire 4 months, yet all these promises are being made, and local politics are holding it all up. Politics suck. It's hard to get anything done, they say they are working on things and they are really not. Plus the media is giving everyone the wrong impression. I have friends who are from here and moved to Texas 4 years ago, and they came to visit, thinking that everything was all right, and their reaction was, 'Oh my God, I had no idea.'" Beverly Barrios, Terrytown, Westbank, now in Silby Texas.
"The hurricane didn't discriminate on the basis of race, the relief effort did. Chalmette was largely poor white people, Lakeview was largely rich white people. These areas are just as badly hit as the lower Ninth Ward, which is mostly lower and middle class Black people." Dr. Elliot Hammer, Uptown.
"I was really upset at how quickly this event turned from a serious crisis into a issue of politics. Everyone talks about people being labeled as looters for robbing stores, but no one mentions how no one came to save us for days. No one talks about how many people died on their roofs because they waited for days in the (100) degree heat and no one came to save them." Dr. Elizabeth Hammer, Uptown.
" People are even saying now that these people, the black people, are better off now since there was so little opportunities for them here. as if they could not make the decision to move on their own, like they are little children or stupid. I also can't stand how all the crime is being blamed on them. It's so offensive. No one talks about why they had so little opportunities in the first place." anne Burgess, Lakeview.
Tension is at an all time high as people are ready to return to life as normal, but everything is blocking that process. Racial tension is one part of this. It is openly spoken by some how better New Orleans is now that there is no "crime" (which in New Orleans is a racist codeword for "black people"). I was actually called a nigger while standing outside of a bar and when I tried to flag a cab, for 2 hours every single one passed me by and picked up white people who were standing a block away from me. Racism has always been a problem in New Orleans, and in the five years I lived there I have definitely dealt with my share of it, from strange stares and people walking in fear at the sight of me, to not so subtle comments and harassment by the police. But even I can say it was never this bad.
The other tension is the rich-poor divide. as many people lost everything they have, but others were completely spared, there is open hostility against those who managed to survive this disaster unscathed. However, instead of helping those in need, the rich have decided to lobby against the poor. FEMa, in an attempt to buy time to decide what else to do, has sent thousands of trailers as temporary housing for the displaced people of New Orleans. The problem is, where do we put them? Given the conditions of the worst affected areas, the only solution is to place them in the neighborhoods that were less affected. This has sent the Uptown (rich) community into an uproar, who have argued against helping the displaced people because placing trailers in their yards will lower the property value of their houses. I am not joking, there are hourly-long discussion of this nature on the local channels.
Somehow, despite the racism and the class divides, I really did believe that when troubled times came, and people really needed to depend on each other, I always thought they would put their differences aside and band together. and there are many stories of such a thing happening, but there are also many stories where that is most definitely not the case. This heartlessness hurts me more than anything else, that not only can you lose all that you have, but after losing everything you have you can not even depend on the support of your government or your own community.
This is how New Orleans is welcoming the New Year. I would like to have hopes for the future, but to be honest (and I didn't have the heart to say this to anyone I spoke to), if it is true that it is impossible to fix the levee system in time for the next hurricane season to prevent this disaster from happening again, and after 4 months of work, so little has been done, I see a good reason to drink, but not much to celebrate.
"Its' going to be hard, but people will come back. New Orleans can handle this hurricane. But no one can handle this if it happens twice." Dr. Elizabeth Hammer, Uptown.
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