Its been awhile! Spring Break revisited

So yea, its been awhile. Things were just so crazy after Spring break with teaching and everything there was little time for food and sleep, much less blog.

So Spring break was pretty amazing. I don't even know how to describe it. We got to work with different families to help them gut and rebuild their houses. Its ridiculous how much distruction there is. We drove down in four vans, it took us 13 hours. The whole ride we were either sleeping or being silly, but when we finally got to Bay St. Louis, Mississippi everyone was silent and just stared out the window. Where there used to be a house there would now be cement steps leading to nothing, or a chimney standing alone. There used to be a Church behind this sign. Now services are held in a big tent near by. Sometimes there would be a trailer on the property with a family sitting on patio furniture outside, a little kid playing on a tri-cycle while his mom drags Debris to the curb. The thing that surprised me the most was how much hope those people had. I mean they stuck out this storm, some of them had to climb onto their roofs the water got so high, but they still had hope. They were all so thankful for our help. It would have taken ALOT longer for them to get things going by themselves. We helped gut houses, pulled nails out of wood for hours, put up drywall, mudded walls, sanded walls like our life depended on it. hehe the day we did a lot of sanding we all turned grey from all the dust in the air.

It was definitely close quarters in Mississippi. We stayed in the "icare village". Its basically volunteer headquarters. Volunteers from all over stay there. There are two huge circus tents, one is the community tent where food is served and groups can meet, and the other is where the beds are. Inside of the bed tent were small plywood rooms, so we had a little privacy but since the walls weren't insulated you could hear absolutely everything going on in the tent. I shared a small room (I'd give you numbers but I suck at estimating) with 7 other girls. They put as many bunk beds as they can in each room and in my room they could fit 4 bunks. The beds were about half the size of a regular twin mattress. It definitely took some getting used to, I almost rolled right off a few times, but it wasn't like I was expecting to stay in the luxury suite or anything.


Everyday we were down there we were split up into groups and each group worked at a different job site. On one of the days I worked with a few other girls to clean out this woman's house. She was a pack rat! She had so much stuff, it was really hard throwing some of it away but it was just so damaged it couldn't be repaired. Before we started working on the house John (one of the guys in charge of volunteers) warned us that after the storm the house was infested with bugs, rats, and cats, so we needed to watch out for rat poison and dead animals. :-P Don't worry we had gloves and masks. We found three dead rats while we were pulling the insulation out of the ceiling! It was quite the adventure. One of them had decayed so much you could see his skeletal structure! Heres a picture of me with two of the girls I worked with in the rat house. Theres always time to pose for a picture!


Its crazy how much money these people are getting for their houses from the insurance companies. Next to nothing! Because of some loop holes in their policies and the fact that they are not "technically" in a flood zone most people are in Bay St. Louis are getting about $7000 to cover all of the damage in their entire house!! $7000! That won't buy any means cover the cost of the damage to these houses. Their damaged so badly you can't live in them! The $7000 is supposed to buy a new roof, the only thing is what good is a roof when you don't have a stable house to put it on?


What I got most out of this experience is that this is everyday for these people. For us on the trip it was one week, a trip, a "good experience." But for them its life. To people not in that area it may seem like Katrina isn't an issue anymore, but that definitely isn't the case. Not only is rebuilding an issue, but finding the funds to rebuild and the funds to just survive is a major issue. So spread the word. They still need help.

All in all Spring Break was awesome. I wouldn't trade my experiences for anything. The people were so inspiring and I loved that I got to work with a few families.

______________________________________________

p.s. I am doing the Race for the Cure on May 6th. If you're feeling generous donate through my fund raising page! http://www.active.com/donate/komennctriad/xSQueen