Wednesday May 21st
Today we completed our longest trek from Little Rock,
Arkansas down to New Orleans, Louisiana, our final stop and besides being an
eight-hour journey the drive was fairly uneventful. But as a passenger in Tadeu’s car, the trip went by quickly
as we jammed to everything from summer hits of the 2000’s to summer hits of the
90s to nice chillin’ music to nostalgic *NSYNC and Backstreet Boys to which we
sang just about every song for the entirety of the eight hours. Arriving in NOLA, we checked into Camp
Hope Volunteer Center and enjoyed dinner together before dousing ourselves in
bug spray and heading off to bed.
-Alexa Bryant-Capellas
Thursday May 22nd
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| Abby, Nicole, and Bella moving tree trunks |
Today was our first day working with Habitat for Humanity in the Uptown
neighborhood. We arrived just
before 8 in the morning at a quaint turquoise house with white trim and met
some of the other volunteers who were from UC Berkeley, Lafayette, Louisiana,
native New Orleanders , and even Canada!
Then when the boss man, Tyler, (who, from there on out was called “Other
Tyler” in order to distinguish him from our staff accompanier Tyler) arrived
just about everyone got to work painting a second coat of crisp eggshell on the
inside of the house. I, myself, worked with Katie in a small room, which was
probably a mud room or closet of some sort, and as I would apply paint with the
roller and work my way around the room, she would follow me and fill in the
cracks and small spaces. At this
point we met the woman from Canada and learned that she had come down here to
work with Habitat as a distraction from missing her husband who is on an 8-week
long hiking expedition without any form of communication. She told us that she works as an
architect and was enjoying her experience in the South so far.
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| Ryan, Tyler, and Andriana building stairs |
Shortly after, we ran out of paint and had to abandon that
project and move on to others.
People began to break off and begin building a petit side porch complete
with two sets of stairs, while others were installing doors within the house,
or caulking up in the attic, and adding balusters to the front steps. I began helping Jack and Hannah fit
large, thin planks of plastic just under the roof’s edge as part of the gutter
or the beginning of the gutter, I was not entirely sure, but I was in charge of
the nails and spotting them on the ladders, so I basically had the most
important job of ensuring they did not ever at any point plummet to their
untimely and tragic, not to mention gruesome deaths. Lane joined us to spot one of the ladders and together
became a dream team in the plastic plank application world, cruising our way
around the house from the front left side of the porch to the far right corner
of the back of the house by the end of the day.
Although our job was menial and tedious, it was an important
pre step to some very crucial other steps, and that is what I personally took
away from the day: that everything is about steps and about slowly checking
things off your list and moving on to the next step until the task is
done. But most, all of the jobs we
had to do on the home could not be done alone and so we needed to commit to
working step-by-step together on a project that we will most definitely never
see come into fruition and that seems like pretty honest trust and hope and the
essential premise of Habitat.
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| Our group with the owner of the house, Emma |
That night, our reflection was on positionality, which is a
term that refers to the privileges we are each granted or not granted because
of race, gender, sexual orientation, etc. but also the lens through which we
see the world because of those privileges, experiences and discourses. The
discussion addressed our own positionalities as well as the perception of our
respective positionalities and how they compliment or relate to one
another. This crucial conversation
connects to many of the previous conversations we have had on this trip whether
they were intrapersonal or interpersonal and helps to make sense of some of the
unanswered questions or seemingly feckless insights as well. It helps us understand our privilege
and role and, most importantly, our responsibility as we begin the end of this
time and experience.
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| Lane painting |
-Alexa Bryant-Capellas
Friday May 23rd
Today was our second day working with Habitat for Humanity.
It has been both physically and mentally hard work, but some of the most
rewarding work we have done thus far. Our group had the wonderful opportunity
to meet a member of the New Orleans community who was directly affected by both
Hurricane Katrina and more recently, Hurricane Isaac. We started at 7:30 a.m.
and worked until 3:30 p.m. Our goal for the day was to finish the outside paint
job of Juanita’s house. Finishing the paint job not only built up Juanita’s
spirit after dealing with the aftermath of the Hurricanes, but also helped to
build up the community. The other job given to the group was to take out a
massive tree that had fallen over after Hurricane Isaac. It was already cut up
but had to be taken out to a dumpster on the street. I personally worked on
moving the tree and other debris from Juanita’s yard along with Tyler! It was
hard work but also very fulfilling.
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| Our group with the owner of the house, Juanita |
At one point during the day, the leader from Habitat for
Humanity came up to me while I was working and pointed out something that I had
not noticed. A huge pole from what was a part of a fence was sticking out and
James, the Habitat leader, was able to bring the situation to reality for me.
After seeing that, I took a minute to reflect on just exactly why we were here
and the impact this community faced. Unlike Hurricane Katrina, Hurricane Isaac
stayed around for 4 days; leaving people trapped on their roofs. The
realizations of these facts were hard to wrap my head around. As a group we
were able to hear Juanita’s story and her struggles. She embraced us as if we
were her family and I think that by the end of the day, she considered us
family!
-Evita Corona
Saturday May 24th
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| Being introduced to Green Light New Orleans |
Continuing to build up
has definitely been a theme we’ve explored since Wanda put it in our hearts two
weeks ago at Dexter Church. The Habitat builds were full of tasks that had us
thinking about what it means to be in service with others. After bonding over intense
discussions about the more “orangey” color to the Pumpkin paint compared to a
traditional yellow and the darker tone to Stagecoach compared to red; we were
all more than open to the idea of a new service task – leaving Juanita to enjoy
the fairytale home she so graciously deserved.
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| Carissa installing a light bulb |
A slight switch in the schedule had the 18 of us on the
front porch of Green
Light New Orleans. After some quick instruction from Rebecca, a Green Light
employee, Andreas Hoffmann, the founder of the organization, chatted with us
for a bit. He told us about himself and his vision surrounding the Green Light
organization. Coming from Switzerland, Andreas recalled growing up in an
environmentally conscious community. He talked about the Swiss culture and how
it differed from New Orleans, his new home. In the spirit of giving back, Andreas wanted to offset his
pollution output with a direct environmentally friendly action: his method –
energy efficient light bulbs. Today Green Light New Orleans goes into homes
across the city and replaces incandescent light bulbs
with compact fluorescent light (CFL) bulbs. CFL’s are energy efficient
bulbs that last about 10x longer than incandescent lights and use about 75
percent less energy. Hold on
though, Green Light changes more than bulbs. Sustained entirely by volunteers, the
Green Light organization works to educate the New Orleans community about the
difference CFLs make financially, and on the environment.
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| The Greek Festival |
We split into to three groups and spent most of our day
going to into homes and changing out incandescent lights for CFLs, and
collecting their incandescent bulbs to take back with us to recycle. Between
the paperwork and the bulb switching we spent time getting to know the
individuals whose homes we were invited into, hearing their stories and telling
them many of our own. Though hesitant at first, I was pleasantly surprised at
the hospitality of each home we entered. Just as well, I was surprised by how
eager people were to learn about Green Light and their mission. It was
inspiring to find out how many people already knew about Green Light and were
receiving the service because of a recommendation from a friend or loved one.
Green Light has reached over 22,000 homes in 8 years, primarily through word of
mouth recommendations. The change in pace for the day allowed the group to
reflect further about the role of nonprofits in communities.
After another long day of service, the leadership team
decided it would be beneficial to give the group a chance to be out in the
community they had spent the last 3 days serving in. The group ventured on down
to the Greek Festival along the Bayou for some food, music, and fun.
-Andriana Alexis
Sunday May 25th
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| At the Contemporary Arts Center |
Today
the group spent the early afternoon at the Contemporary
Arts Center of New Orleans to see the 30 Americans exhibit. This exhibit
focuses on artwork from African Americans over the last several decades that
centers on historical, sexual, and racial identities in modern communities and
culture. Each member of our group took away a different meaning from the 30
Americans exhibit as artwork ranged from a video of a man crawling 22 miles, to
a blinking sign reading “America”, to a rock with hair, to a piece titled
“Duck, Duck, Noose” with Ku Klux Klan hats placed on stools in a circle. While
some pieces were clearer in message than others, each art piece pushed us to
find connections and meaning to modern civil rights movements and the power of
community.
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| Inside the Mary Plantation |
After that, the group rushed to meet our tour guide, Jerry,
a member of the St. Bernard Parish. Through a conference call, he showed us
around New Orleans by first taking us to a disturbingly beautiful plantation
home. Along the way, Jerry shared stories of Hurricane Isaac and Katrina and
how it affected those who lived in the poorer farmlands of the city because all
of the water was directed towards those areas. We were given insight on the
levies and different plantation farm histories. At our first stop, the Mary plantation home, we were given a
tour of the home and the grounds. The house was equipped with many historical
and 18th/ 19th century items to keep the charm and
history of the home. We learned slaves built this house through making the
bricks to building the walls almost two feet thick. We also discovered that
many of the slaves were buried somewhere far back in the yard with no
gravestone or block to remember their lives. The house was also available for
weddings, which many of our group members found unsettling.
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| Outside the Mary Plantation |
Next, we stopped at a cemetery that housed generations of this
city’s past. The tombstones were enormous and held up to three to four members
of a family. A side note: crawfish would dig burrows into the ground in the
cemetery to almost be living with the dead.
Our tour guide, Jerry, was an amazing man that truly
understood the beauty of living simply. He definitely could have lived a very
wealthy life, being born into money, but chose to become a farmer and
understand the pleasures of community and the small things. He was an
inspiration not through his honorable actions, but his knowledgeable background
on the history of his hometown.
After the tour, the group headed back to Camp Hope to
prepare to leave for dinner in the French Quarter. Before that, we all
participated in a circle of affirmations where one member of our group sat in
the middle while we affirmed them for 2 minutes and 30 seconds (although most
of the time it went over). Once they were affirmed, their secret buddy would
reveal themselves. This beautiful activity allowed us to show our appreciation
and admiration for one another. Each person on this trip is blessed with a
unique and individualized body and mind and have contributed greatly to the
learning process of this trip. This ended up going for about two hours. So we
were late to leave for dinner at about 8:00.
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| In the Cemetery |
Arriving in the French Quarter at 8:40 at night was a crazy show.
We ended up eating at 10:00 P.M. at a very fancy restaurant, which the majority
of us felt very underdressed in. Needless to say, we were all just thankful to
finally put food into our bellies. The appetizers we ordered were finished in
about a minute’s time and our group was possibly getting looks from others
dining, but our stomachs allowed us to only focus on the food.
While one group of six was nicely seated on the fancier side
of the restaurant, the rest of us 1) sat at the wrong table and 2) were
eventually seated in the cafe (No complaints! Just simply stating the facts), I
think everyone had a large and enjoyable meal. The streets of the French
Quarter were filled with rowdy and drunk tourists most likely partying for
Memorial Day. It was a lively and joyful site to see people out and having fun.
Overall, today was a great learning experience to connect
modern art to the past and what it means for the future. Also, learning about
the destruction from the hurricanes and seeing a plantation face to face really
puts things into perspective. It was a very fulfilling day – from new stories,
old history, modern art, and fancy food.
-Katie Ha
Monday May 26th
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| In the French Quarter |
Today was the group’s day to enjoy the beauty and culture of
the French Quarter. From getting tarot card readings to eating beignets to
finding the filming locations of the last season of American Horror Story, the group got to spend some quality time
getting to know the city we have come to love. It was great to see this part of the city, but a lot of
people in the group were struggling with the tension of the French Quarter
being the only part of NOLA that people know, while simultaneously ignoring the
lives and communities we have engaged with during the last week.
After eating dinner and doing our final chores at Camp Hope,
the leadership team decided to lead a reflection that forced the group to
remember where we have been, focus on the themes we are taking away from the
trip, and to look ahead to action steps we will implement once we are back in
the “real world.” It was a good culminating reflection that challenged people
to consider how they are going to take what they’ve learned in order to make
meaningful social change in their communities.
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| Beignets from the French Quarter |
As one of the co-coordinators of the trip I just want to
emphasize how amazing it has been to work with this group. This group has been
dedicated to the task of learning about social oppression and the Civil Rights
Movement since September, taking time out of their Friday afternoons to have
intentional conversation about these pressing issues. As a leadership team, we
are so proud of the work that everyone has put in to the trip and we hope that
this experience will inform and motivate the group as they pursue future
endeavors and determine what their career paths will become. We now have an
unbreakable bond with one another, one in which we are forced to challenge each
other to continue thinking critically and to use our peers as resources for
future change. Never forget that there are two things we can do in this world:
tear it down or build it up. Whatever you decide to do there are 17 people
willing to stand in solidarity beside you. The Civil Rights Immersion class of 2014: the march
continues.
- Tadeu Velloso
Tuesday May 27th
Today a majority of the group is leaving to drive back to
Birmingham to then fly home on the 28th. The drive is about five hours, but our
group is professional road trippers at this point. There are a few people
staying in New Orleans for a couple days after the program to explore and site
see. It will be a sad goodbye as we have experienced a trip no other group has
experienced before. We will continue to keep each other and those we have met on
this journey in our hearts and our minds and will vow to be agents of change
for the future. This has truly been a trip of a lifetime that I personally will
carry with me for the rest of my life.
-Elisha Codding
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