Journey into the heart of darkness, Lower 9th Ward, New Orleans

8^th March 2008. Saturday. 11.30pm.

As we finally reached the city of New Orleans and pulled into the Lower 9^th Ward, it was a very welcome break from our almost 14-hour long drive from Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Most of us could not wait to disembark and take in the fresh air of the Mississippi, to stretch our limbs and internalize our first subjective experiences of our home for the next 7 days.

The time was almost 10.30pm, about an hour later than the estimated timing. However, our slight and unexpected lateness did not seem to change things in this rather timeless space of the Lower 9^th Ward, where we were told 2 years may not mean much change. The Common Ground Relief (CGR) personnel were ready as ever to meet us though. He kindly welcomed us into a half-renovated abode that was to be introduced to us as the general quarters for all CGR-affiliated volunteers, and our future home.

This azure blue building was easily recognizable as it was one of the only few left standing in the area. Intuitively we seemed to assume it was a CGR building and had pulled up our vehicles next to it. Despite the general darkness, I could make out signal and hazard lights high up in the sky and in the distance. With their guidance, my untrained and naked eye could make out the skeletons of port cranes, communications towers and such. These mechanicals made less sense to me as the days went by. They were lifeless and ugly metallic monsters that aided America in forgetting about places like the Lower 9^th Ward. They jutted out in the landscape and were a jarring reminder of why the scenes of the Lower 9^th Ward were truly horrible.

My imagination had already started to torture me even before I had been able to ravage the area with the help of sunlight and perhaps the silent agreement of my contemporaries. Perhaps it was just a combination of an imagination too rich, lack of sleep and certain nervousness about the whole endeavor. I decided against sharing such thoughts with the others at this point of time, for perhaps we will all reach similar conclusions by daybreak, or God willing, I could be proven wrong.

9^th March 2008. Sunday. Sabbath.

Waking up in the morning, it was a queer feeling to realize that one was in the Lower 9^th Ward, New Orleans instead of anywhere else. The comfortable beds still gave an illusion that you were somewhere else, perhaps in the Bahamas or Caribbean enjoying one’s Spring Break and soaking up some well-needed sunshine.

As I got up, I witnessed one of the most painful bedside window sights I would ever see. With an artful touch, the white window frame allowed me to peer straight into the barren landscape, where one could easily see concrete squares of foundations where 150-year-old houses once stood precariously. On the left-hand side was the Mississippi river, now slightly shielded by an unwieldy cement wall, which I was later to learn was the levee after all. Standing out in the background were the tall port cranes and the hulking bridge that was capable of raising itself to allow huge ships to pass through. I was not wrong after all, those mechanicals were indeed there and very much alive like robotic sentinels watching over this eerily calm landscape.

I guess I reacted very strongly to these symbols of industry for two main reasons, both dealing with the issue of indifference. Hurricane Katrina had devastated both the coast and the Lower 9^th Ward, both the industries and the residential area. However, almost 2 years on, almost none of the residences in the area have been rebuilt while the shipping and affiliated industries almost seemed to have experienced a full recovery. It was almost as if Katrina never really went through the ports and cranes and oil platforms, skipping them and dumping destruction straight onto the levees and the neighborhoods.

The reality was that the local government seemed almost indifferent to the massive loss of lives and families and communities and homes, in comparison to the attention paid to industry. Some have argued that industry needs to be revived first to help the ailing local economy and people to rebuild. It has been 2 years now, with the shipping industry and casinos booming, but where has it taken the almost 7000 Americans that used to call the Lower 9^th Ward home?

If you were to look closely at the above photo, it will reveal not just one home but actually three distinct homes (if you trace the outline of the rooftops). None of the houses actually belonged to where it were currently standing. They belonged all over the place within a 10 metre radius, with the force of Katrina smashing them like a cruel pa pier mac hie.

The second reason why those ugly mechanicals aided in fostering indifference is due to the fact that almost 25% of America’s imports and exports are handled by these Gulf coast ports and barge shipping. These are the tools which facilitate an endless stream of consumables to consumerist America. As long as consumers in America are kept content with the ability to buy almost anything they desire, few would be bothered enough to ask even simple questions like where did these goods come from, how they came into America and how these goods are purchased at such low prices based on supporting multi-layered systems of oppressing peoples. As long as middle-class America is kept content in its somewhat parochial and comfortable world, there seems to be little space and tolerance to negotiate tough introspections on parts of America that did not succeed in the ‘American way’. Ironically, the purported anchor of the local economy of the Gulf coast also has a hand in keeping it mired in its social-economic troubles.

10^th March 2008. Monday. First day.

By today, the message has already hit home that there are definitely many Americas in the whole of the USA, all purportedly united by one banner and common desire for freedom. Upper middle class Chapel Hill, where even the landscape seems manicured and ideal was 900 miles away and felt further in my fragile grasp on reality.

There was quite a great disparity between my initial expectations of the area and the current horrors that my eyes failed to ignore. This was like the journey into the heart of darkness, where conditions in the Lower 9^th Ward were much worse than I could ever imagine. Just the faint imagination of once lively neighborhoods that once thrived here and were now washed away into the annals of history (a poor people’s history, though) seemed to unsettle one.

Plots of land where there once was a lively community.

The long concrete wall was introduced to us as the infamous levee system of New Orleans. It seemed to me to be barely two floors tall, and we were told this levee had already been extended by 12 feet vertically after Katrina. This revelation really seemed to shock most of us as we tried to imagine the previous low wall that some of us probably could scale with a little shove. I found this revelation difficult to register within my system as I wrestled with any other comparisons in the world I could make.

I remembered watching the elaborate damming, flood control and barrier island systems of Holland on the Discovery Channel and expected American engineering to trounce European elegance at any count; clearly either I was wrong or this was not America as I knew it. I then recalled from watching CNN how the security walls Israel had built in Jerusalem and elsewhere in the Occupied Territories were probably much higher and tougher than this levee and shuddered at the thought.

Forgive me for my lack of knowledge about hydro engineering or construction, but visually the levee definitely did not seem to provide any sense of security; neither did the levee actually hold up the storm surge when Katrina struck. I tried to imagine myself as an original resident of the Lower 9^th Ward who lived 30 feet from the levee and found it hard to internalize how anyone could have been able to go to sleep with that levee holding back the waves in the backyard.

Our main activity for the day was to help in the physical remediation of the wetlands of New Orleans. These wetlands were initially filled with sturdy Cypress trees and acted collectively as barrier islands that helped to substantially weaken storm surges as they charged inland. However, Hurricane Katrina had destroyed most of the remaining Cypress forests that were untouched by logging and deforestation. In their place, an invasive species of trees called the Chinese tallow had burgeoned due to their seeds’ ability to stay afloat and not rotting Katrina flooded the area.

We were educated about the issue and advised that we would never be able to fully eradicate this invasive species. However, our laborious and menial efforts in slashing and uprooting those that lay upon the path would slowly pave the way for the wetland park to be re-opened as an educational resource. We were told that it would not be until at least 10 years later when the cypress forests returned and replaced the canopy before the invasive Chinese tallow would start to die.

We witnessed how hurricanes could change the dynamics of a whole ecosystem and not just the humans and animals living inside it. It also made us conscious of how usually ignored and undervalued ecosystems like barrier islands could indeed be quite a lifesaver in times of disaster. I was also starting to see now how rampant and irresponsible industry and exploitation of the Earth’s resources did not just contribute to oft-debated global warming but also in a very direct way to worsening the effects of natural disasters.

At the end of the day, we witnessed for ourselves how little we did in actuality towards ameliorating the nexus of problems here. It was indeed powerful in modifying our perception of what we can do here for a week; that whatever we were to do here, no matter how minuscule they may seem to be, goes to help in its own way towards encouraging and enabling former residents to return. It reminded me of a quote from the book To Kill a Mockingbird; “It’s a baby step, but it’s a step”.

11^th March 2008. Tuesday. Second day of work.

It was queer indeed, how quickly humans can adapt to their environs. The eeriness of the Lower 9^th Ward stopped hitting me as strongly as the first day. It seemed possible for me to call it home, at least home for this whole week. This allowed me an interesting look into the lives of war-torn peoples who live from day to day on destroyed landscapes, everyday reminders of the horror inflicted on their attempts at living.

I was sent out to work on restoring the flooring of a lady’s house. Fortunately, CGR had been able to contact the owner of this house in the Lower 9^th Ward and a contract had been negotiated whereby she would provide materials for CGR personnel to help her restore her 150-year-old property at almost 1/7^th of the price offered by the average general contractor. I saw the benign logic behind insisting on the property owner to provide materials so that a proactive approach is encouraged among former residents. In this way, ‘foreign’ help like CGR would not be so alienating and progress could be made towards sincerely reaching out to the community to help them rebuild, not to rebuild for them.

I also witnessed the great need of skilled workers like carpenters, painters and sub-contractors of all kinds to contribute to specific tasks needed to restore these historic houses. I was given on-the-job training on how to build wooden sub-flooring and also to lay down vinyl flooring tiles. It surprised me that I picked up two skills within a matter of an hour and I was glad I could actually help in the restoration of one of these great historic houses. It is also counter-point to the notion that unskilled college students like us are not very useful to the restoration of the houses. Although it cannot be denied that college students were much more useful for menial chores like degutting of rotten and flooded houses in the initial stages of disaster recovery (where there were up to 5000 college students working at one time), there are still ways for unskilled volunteers to learn how to help.

There was a popular question amongst stranger volunteers, asking “Why are you here?” I had been thinking about this question for a long time, and when I was actually asked, I replied that it was a mixed sense of shame and the desire to be able to explain to posterity that I was concerned enough to come here and help. More importantly, it was certain solidarity with humanity that prompted me to come down here to help. This nexus of problems was not restricted to the Gulf coast, or the South or even America. Indeed, it seemed to me to be a general human problem.

One of the major causes of the problem was indifference and one of the major reason it continues it also because of indifference. Indifference is a universally human problem, when people act or react in less than human terms, or treats other peoples as sub-human. This is why Hurricane Katrina was not exactly a natural disaster. It was a human disaster and still seems to be, for every minute the Lower 9^th ward is not restored and the humanity of its residents not returned to them with apologies.

12^th March 2008. Wednesday. 3^rd Day of work.

It was a rainy day. The light rain the early morning had drenched the land. Strikingly, small puddles had formed at the sides of the roads despite the light rain. It was indeed easy to see how the Lower 9^th ward was so prone to flooding. It was not just because it was shaped like a bowl and was surrounded on two sides by two massive bodies of water. There seemed to be a great lack of general drainage in the area to carry off excess water. Even the light rain found it hard to be drained off and was collecting in small pools all around the Lower 9^th ward. Since it was below sea level, I could imagine the water table being so high that the soil did not provide much drainage either. The lack of drainage seemed to me to be yet another reflection of governmental neglect.

The military-industrial complex of America really struck me when we realized that there were hardly any uniformed New Orleans police around. In its place, we had a lot of military police zooming around in military police patrol cars. It was quite an unnerving experience to see soldiers and the army stomping around the site of carnage instead of policemen to help maintain the peace. We were told that the city had failed to attract and recruit enough police officers, thus military police were only a temporary fill-in for police duties. However, 2 years seemed to be a long enough time for such an excuse to be abolished. What I truly saw was the military-industrial complex at work.

The industrial component has already been witnessed in the rapid restoration of the shipping, port and gambling industries soon after Hurricane Katrina, as compared to the dearth of residential rebuilding. Instead of rebuilding community centers, libraries, schools, clinics, hospitals, bus stops and parks, the government chose to rebuild Jackson barracks. Instead of deploying ordinary New Orleans police like the sizeable numbers we saw in the city on Bourbon and Frenchman street, we saw military police deployed in numbers in the Lower 9^th ward. It really does not take much for any average onlooker to be able to make the comparison and the disturbing conclusions.

It was a fact that there were not that many residents left or who had returned to live at the Lower 9^th ward. Thus so, one depended mainly on other opportunities for working outside the Lower 9^th ward in order to have substantial contact with locals. We yearned to have contact with the locals and to simply hear their stories. I guess it was not exactly the fault of the residents not being there for us to interact with, but rather it was not always easy to find opportunity to go out and be able to meet some residents.

We met a tipsy man on Frenchman street, who was very thankful for us coming down as volunteers to help people like him rebuild their homes and lives. In the short space of 10 minutes, I felt honored to have met such an angel in him. He shared with us how he escaped Katrina by escaping to Georgia, and only returned recently with the help of a close friend and volunteers like us. I was most impressed by his faith, when he advised us not to place so much trust in the things of the world, including the government, but instead to trust in the only constant one, God. He reminded me of the character Job in the bible, challenging me to trust in God even if I lose all that I have and being proud enough of God to share the good news so publicly. Indeed, most residents seem to have looked towards all other non-governmental sources and institutions for trust and hope; the government had failed in all its duties to the people before, during and after the disaster.

I remember painting some random furniture right outside our azure blue abode. I was tasked to coat these fresh timbers with multiple coats of whitish paint. As I slapped on general servings of paint to cover the timber grains, there was this particular tabletop that refused to hide its timber grain. As much as I brushed hard and slapped on paint, it just kept revealing its grain. This seemed to symbolize for me, the impact that Katrina will have on humanity. No matter the attempts at white-washing or ignoring the issue, Katrina will forever be a scar on all humanity. Even as this generation grows old, out grandchildren and posterity shall point back to this jagged piece of history and confront us with this inconvenient scar.

As I was painting under the scrutinizing sun, there was an elderly lady, who pulled up in a taxicab right next to me. She asked me the usual ‘touristy’ questions like where I was from and why I was here. I simply told her that this was a problem shared by all humanity and that I was here just to do my little part. We engaged in simple conversation for about 5 minutes, in fact she was mainly asking and I was mainly answering her conscience. What amazes me is that for the full 5 minutes, this elegant old lady just chose to stay in the taxicab and did not even exit the taxicab to get a feel of the ground. It looked like she just popped in from the city part of New Orleans for a pre-afternoon tea tour of the Lower 9^th ward.

It was as if the doors of the taxicab were a kind of psychological barrier between the elegant old lady and the horrifying reality of the Lower 9^th Ward. Inside the taxicab and behind those doors, she clutched her elegant handbag and was shielded from the actual reality she presumably wanted to witness. She seemed to symbolize a large part of the reason why this nexus of problem continues to exist in America; Middle-class America just stays in the comfort zone of the taxicab and refuses to step out into the lower class reality. It is almost as if the middle-class is afraid of associating with the lower class reality, perhaps for fear of compromising or losing their current class status. As much as we buy into the illusion of a classless society, as much as we deride the overt natures of Marxist classism, we need to be aware of how class works in ever subtler forms in today’s complex society. Of course, it seems pointless to advocate class warfare and I am nowhere near supporting that, but the recognition of subtle rules and social signifiers that guide our everyday behavior can help us to rectify the exclusive implications of the current system.

13^th March 2008. Thursday. 4^th day of work.

Today I was sent out to work on a project further away from the Lower 9^th ward. This was in Algiers, Mississippi, where we were put to work on restoring a riverfront community park. This park was special because it also doubled up as a kind of walk-in heritage site where monuments and murals educated about the initial slaves brought to America and about their heritage. The park was not just affected by the flooding but had also been vandalized recently. The whole group of about 15 was put to hard work ripping most of the destroyed stuff down and replacing them with new ones.

After mowing the lawns, I assisted the local shop-owner in revamping her voodoo shop. She had a voodoo shop right beside the park and needed help in shifting furniture and articles around, which occupied most of my work day. We were informed about how voodoo culture was very distinct in New Orleans since it was a port of entry for African slaves brought into America. Voodoo became a syncretism of Catholic and African tribal religions for African slaves and was strongly identified with the early African-American community in the US. Although such a culture was alienating for me, I could see how the practice of voodoo and asking idols and gods for direct help was relevant to the harsh realities for slaves of that time.

The park was located on the riverfront, with commercial and passenger ferries passing right by the park. We were told that this place was called Algiers because it resembled the actual Algiers at the African-European continental border, where one could look at the glamour and riches of Europe from a rather shabby Africa. The resemblance was due to the fact that in the early days of slavery, the land the park now stands on was coded as a black and inferior area of town that European colonists would not set foot on, while on the other side of the river would be the bustling and developed town. Presently, the park area still seemed to be undeveloped and associated with the lower classes whereas on the other side glittering hotels and skyscrapers soared into the sky. After so many years, this place has retained the symbolism of Algiers, whether intentionally or not.

14^th March 2008. Friday. Last day.

Today I was part of a team that worked on degutting the underneath of a historic house, in cooperation with a nearby non-profit named Historic Green. This was really tough work as we had to be suited up in protective gear and had to use generator-powered lamps and simple tools like pliers to crank our all wires we saw underneath the house. It felt almost like working in a mine shaft and added a touch of claustrophobia at time. After about 4 hours of rotated hard work, we had made good progress on de-wiring most parts of the house’s underbelly and reclaimed some scrap metal for recycling. This made us realize how immense the endeavor was to preserve these historic houses and to make them livable once again.

There was good cheer to ending the week on a high, in celebration of our hard work and also in anticipation of the weekend ceremony where Brad Pitt and Bill Clinton were expected to arrive for groundbreaking ceremonies. More importantly, we were glad to know that the mass media would shine its spotlight once again at the Lower 9^th ward and enable more Americans to take a good look at it. The Lower 9^th ward was difficult to look at for it was a gross physical manifestation of almost everything wrong about American society, whether it was inner-city poverty, classism, racism, corruption, governmental neglect, violent crime or a military-industrial complex.

Our presence here, along with non-profits like CGR, was a celebration of life and desire to work the changes that demonstrate the livability of the place, perhaps indirectly helping to encourage residents to retake their homes. Organizations like CGR were not just another non-profit but were also a priceless educational resource tool and should be evaluated as such. This has been a most unforgettable learning experience for me and I hope all humanity does not forget the scar and shame of Hurricane Katrina.