My trip to New Orleans. And what a trip!
Such a beautiful city, such a tragedy. Don't get me wrong the French Quarter looks great, you wouldn't know that there had been flooding there just 2 years ago. But then you venture into what was the "poorer" , less touristy areas, like the Lower 9th Ward and you can see the lasting damage caused by Katrina. On our first day we went on a bus tour of the effected areas- we were about a 500 metres from where the levee broke and flooded New Orleans, the total devestation and lack of rebuilding was astonshing. Our bus driver- Leroy was very open with his story. We looked around at one spot in the Lower 9th Ward neigbourhood that he lived in and he said before Katrina the neighbourhood actually looked like a neighbourhood. Now it looks like this:
This is a street that used to be lined with houses. It is hard not to get so angry at the American government for not doing a thing to help the people who lost everything. Literally. Thankfully Leroy had another house he could move into, so he sold his land in the Lower 9th Ward and is living near the airport. Which is good that he has a place to live, but he told us he needs to buy everything from new now. The second picture I put up of the bathroom just got to me- I saw my image in the cracked mirror and thought, someone used to stand there and shave or brush their teeth, something so regular and so private and now it looks like this.
The people in New Orleans were so wonderful and welcoming and thankful. I wish we could have stayed longer to make a real impact, but hopefully painting the inside of a house, cleaning up the squatter remains and burned out porch of another helped a little.
If anyone reading this wants to know what you can do to help this is what every single person told us when we asked what we could do: Visit New Orleans. It is a city each of us should embrace and realize, especially living in North America, that it could happen anywhere. Natural disasters do not discriminate, governments do though (that's an entirely different rant- watch Spike Lee's Documentary When the Levees Broke). Visit the beautiful city with family or friends or a loved one. It will not be a trip you will soon forget. Mardi Gras was amazing, the architecture was beautiful, the food was exquisite and the people are so wonderful. We cannot forget them even when most of North America seems to have.
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