Random Photos from the Buras YMCA

Photos from Boothville Elementary

Bootheville-Venice Elementary School is oepn. It was an elementary-middle school-high school before Katrina. The building and most of its contents survived intact. then FEMA and other officials would not let anyone enter the building to get the school supplies out. So, the books and desks and stuff just set there and mildewed. The classrooms are pretty bare inside..a chalkboard, a few desks....and little else.

The teachers and children are very positive and upbeat despite everything that has happened. They are truly inspirations to the rest of us.

Photos of Pete's Place

These photos are of the building that Pete is planning on converting to a community re-building assistance center and a new volunteer housing area. This was one of the areas we focused our work on this past week.

Safe Return

We got in very late last night (sometime around midnight). We stopped at New Orleans on the way bakc through and did some sovenoir shopping. I met some guys from Georgia Tech (my alma mater) who were in New Orleans to work with recovery and clean up in the 9th Ward. This is truly a national effort to assist with recovery. And it will be going on for a while. (This photo shows how untouched some homes are.)

I want to continue to maintain contact with Pete and his continuing efforts to re-build his community and culture.

I am making tentative plans to return in July.

What I took in

I learned so many things on the trip and was exposed to so many diffrent types of people, but there were a few main things that have impacted me the most. One of the things that impacted me was seeing how the organization ran. There are so many diffrent ideas like have longterm people and short term people and having point people for all of the diffrent projects. I also was really excited with the ways they managed to encorporate the community into the organization . This involvment brought a whole new aspect of learning and experience to the event. It was so good to be exposed to many diffrent types of people from all over the country and learning from their wisdom. I also learned alot more about things that are out there in the world in this same catagory. The last thing that I will talk about is getting out of my comfort zone. I got frustrated many times doing many tasks that I do not know how to do (ie cooking), and it was good for me to just stop for a moment be like "this is not something that is a long term inability, it is just something thing that I am not yet good at." After continually telling myself this, it really brightened my mood and I continued on learning. It was a great experience and I see it as the beginning of much more volunteering to come.

Here is a website produced by one of the local residents that describes what happened here and what is happening now.

http://www.angelfire.com/la/dwalker/katrina.html

Last Night in Buras

This is our last night in Buras. We are going to load up early in the morning and head for New Orleans. After an hour or so there, we'll head north to Knoxville.

Today was a very satisfying day to me. We finished the clean out of Pete's Place. Now he can start re-wiring and re-plumbing. His dream is to create a communigy based rebuilding assistance center run by locals. His heart is to see his community and his culture re-built. He is assisted by the woman who owns the two properties he is renovating. And she is on the local school board and will work to gather and maintain the community support needed.

On a more somber note, I had the chance to visit Camp Diamond. Diamond is a FEMA-built project that has 450 trailers (campers, not mobile homes) with families in each. The average trailer houses around 8 people. The location is an old baseball complex. the baseball fields are still there, but everything else is gravel, concrete and those 450 matching white trailers. They are fenced in and there are armed guards at the gate. At first glance it was very depressing to me. Our work (with the EC) has been to run afternoon programs for the kids. Our students have been quite successful in establishing rapport with those children and everyone was sad to have to leave so soon. (way to Go Ninjas!)
I have decided to take the hopeful position that we have planted a seed of hope and joy in these children. Our short time with them may be the ray of hope they need to get past their past (and current) tough times.