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Thursday, March 23. Posted
by Mark DeLong.
After three days of working on team A or team B, today team
Oglethorpe took to work on a house. All of our students converged
onto one location to gut a house near the 17th Street Canal. The
furniture and appliances had already been removed. Our task was to
tear down the walls, bring down the ceiling and pull up the
flooring. We divided into smaller groups, with each group tackling
one room of the house. The house was buzzing with activity, and
echoes of that activity went throughout the neighborhood. A few lots
had FEMA trailers, a house down the road was being gutted by another
college group, neighbors were going through their homes and
collecting what they could, catching up with old friends along the
way.
We met one couple, Lester and Charmaine, who lived two doors down
from the home we were working on and took a moment to share their
story with us. They made it to the Superdome before the storm hit.
They witnessed the utter chaos inside the Superdome after the storm
hit, but they stuck together with their 10-year-old daughter and
Charmaine's father, making new friends and "family" inside the
arena. Once they were evacuated, they landed in Houston, where they
are planning to relocate permanently. Lester and Charmaine feel
blessed to have survived the storm with life's most important
element - family. They reminded our group that it's not about
material goods, but about the people you surround yourself with.
After showing students around her home, Charmaine stepped onto her
porch, saw a group of 10 standing around talking and remarked, "It
feels like we have family now."
As we were clearing the house, we discovered the ghost of family
as well. While emptying the attic, we discovered a box of photos.
Family members here and there, and, most haunting to us, photos of
every room of the house. It reinforces the fact that we're working
in a space that someone called home. They once cooked for their
family in this kitchen. They read bedtime stories to their children
in this room. They had birthday parties in the living room. This
house was a home. Today we brought it one step closer to being a
home again, while growing wiser from our experience.
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