Thursday, June 08, 2006

New Orleans - Day Two

My intent was to chronicle the events of the day each evening before going to bed. But after our first day of working, we are all too tired to move, let alone think clear enough to be lucid, so things will be brief tonight.

We worked on a single house, digging out the inches of mud and sludge in the floor, tearing down sheet rock and insulation. Freezers, fridges have not been touched in 9 months, and washing machines, bathtubs and sinks were filled with a gellatanous sludge, the smell of which I cannot even come close to describing. We are working great as a group, and everyone is giving it their all. We were matched with some students from the Unversity of Redlands, and we missed the entire Redlands football team by a month. Small small world.

The home was owned by Emile and Kathy LeMarque. Emile was close to retiring when Katrina hit, and Kathy is battling cancer. As hard as the labor was, we all agreed that having to sit and watch your worldly belongings be covered in sludge, and dumped into a giant pile in the front yard is probably a lot harder

By the time the 15 of us were done, the house was gutted down to the studs and the floor was clean. There was a definite feeling of accomplishment.

Tomorrow's a new house, and hopefully I will have enough time and energy to fill in the details about the group we're with, and the conditions they are living under. As exhausted as we are, there are some who have been here since January, doing this job 6 days per week. Their stamina is dumbfounding.

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