A soggy start to the week

FEMA trailers do not make for comfortable living.

This was my conclusion after a night in our home away from home. Mom and I each had our own bed. If one of us turned, the other one felt it because the whole trailer shook. Then again, the people sleeping in bunks had similar issues. If one person moved, so did the whole bunk. But we all managed to get some rest and made it to breakfast by 6:30 this morning.

It has rained here for most of the day. By evening there was serious flooding and we worried about being able to return to the worksites tomorrow. We eat our meals in a large warehouse-style building with metal celings. When the downpours hit the roof, it's deafeningly loud. We were yelling at each other all through dinner. I see now why people fix the rooftops of their homes first. You need it if you are to do any other reconstruction in bad weather.

Nine of us attended a morning orientation. Mom volunteered to stay back to clean and cook. The volunteer coordinators ask that two people stay each day to help with various chores. There are a few delegations, so we've worked out a schedule for this. The rest of us went to another site about 20 minutes away for an orientation to our work for the week. First up was a safety talk. Safety first, check. Be careful when moving debris, check. If you see an alligator, don't pose with it for a picture - what?!? Apparently one such inquisitive reptile came upon a worksite last week, where said creature was promptly shot. I'm not especially worried, though I'm now wondering if there's any chance that alligators would be repelled by the DEET I brought ...

At orientation we received work orders for two sites. We broke into groups. I was with Randy, Norm, Regina, and Maryann. We went to a house in downtown New Orleans about 10 minutes from the Superdome. The surrounding neighborhood looked like little had changed since August 2005. The majority of the houses still had spray-painted marks from the National Guard. Next to the doors were large "X"s with different marks in each quadrant of the letter: a date, the name of the National Guard unit, and the number of bodies found in the house. Fortunately, I only recall seeing zeroes for that last number. I noticed at least one house with "ASPCA" in large red letters, a sign that there was at least one animal that had been left behind.

Our worksite was a one-story house owned by Joseph and Pauletta, a couple who had been living in their house for the last two years but haven't yet been able to rebuild. Home is now one bedroom and a kitchen, with most belongings still packed in large plastic bins. We went to work on the back room that had been out of use since the storm. We sanded drywall and both sides of a closet door, and then applied primer. Regina, the tallest woman in our group, had the task of painting and sanding the places the other women couldn't reach. She joked that it was nice to have ladders in her legs! Randy and Norm helped with sanding and painting, and also developed a plan for the next day. If we can return (which is in question right now because of the floods), they'll bring back some people who have expertise with structural damage.

After we'd done all we could do, we paid a visit to the rest of our delegation: Harlan, Bob, David, and Marcia. They were part of a team restoring the second floor of a house. The plan is to make the second floor habitable so the owner can move in, and then fix the first level. Harlan et al had spent the morning taping, mudding, and sanding drywall from floor to ceiling. It's a multi-phase process: glop on the mud, spread it as thinly as possible, let it dry, sand, and repeat. We finished one round of mudding and sanding and will do it again tomorrow.

We're in good spirits in spite of the rain. It's nice to see tangible signs of progress. As for me, my new boots have gotten quite a workout, and I'm still speckled with a bit of primer. I consider it a sign of a job well done. We'll see what tomorrow holds ... more sanding, more mudding, perhaps some alligator wrestling. Anything's possible!