Hello! My name is Laura Damon and I was one of the students that went on the Lower Nine trip. Ten of us went down. We helped build houses and work on the urban farm for the Organization lowernine.org.
Today is January 7, 2012. I arrived back in Lawrence from Chicago on 5th. As one of the driver’s picking up the vans from Enterprise I woke up at 7am and began to get ready. Our site leaders, Vanessa and Ashley were nice enough to pick me up from my apartment so I didn’t have to leave my car at Enterprise. We got there about 9:30. Picking up the vans were actually really easily. I’ve rented a car before and was surprised how organized they were. There was only one piece of paper I needed to sign. Which for it being very early in the morning…well 9:30 is early for me, I was happy. Since we had ten people in our group we got two vans. One silver and the other was white. I had the white Van. While I was loading my stuff in the trunk, I couldn’t help but notice how nice the van was. Anyway, We split up picking up different people. I picked up Karen and Chelsea then went to the Lied center where some of the people would be meeting with us. Once we got there, we shuffled the luggage around then set off. In my car were Chelsea, Karen, Tyler and Genivive. We decided to meet in Memphis for dinner since it was a 14-hour drive to New Orleans. I drove 4 hours before Chelsea took over till we got to Memphis. We got into Memphis at about 8pm where we went to a really fun street called Beale Street. It had bars, restaurants, street performers, stores and especially live music. We settled on this BBQ restaurant for the life of me I can’t remember the name. They had live music, which was really nice, and the décor really was like you were back in time. While I can’t remember the name I did get pictures and videos. Here’s a picture of it!
Everyone had something different but most was all meat. I got the BBQ platter that had pulled pork and ribs with voodoo mashed potatoes. The food was so good; I can’t even really explain it. After dinner we wandered around a bit watching street performers and going into this really cool store that had a bit of everything and I do mean everything. There was chain mail that you could buy and a very cool museum on the second floor with old things that they used to sell. There was even a very old film camera from the 1920s or earlier. We headed back out on the road at 9pm. This time we switched up the cars a bit since apparently while I had three drivers in my van, the other only had one. So Chelsea switched to the other car and Josh came into mine since they had a full van while mine had plenty of room. Tyler drove the rest of the way while I slept as best I could in the passenger sheet. Which is very hard when you can’t put your seat back because it would hit someone’s knees. Anyway, I woke up on and off due the weirdest weather ever in Mississippi. I would wake up and there would be fog then go back to sleep and wake up to a storm of rain. Then there was a deer…then a possum. Needless to say I was very glad I wasn’t driving. We got into New Orleans at about 5am where we parked outside a grocery store to wait for 6am since that’s when our site would open. Josh and Myself got out of the van and talked to Mindy who was the only one awake in the other van and talked outside. We talked about what we were looking forward to and about the area around us. We also talked about the rooster that kept crowing. It was interesting looking across the street where we could see two very different houses. One that had obviously been renovated and another one that had windows broken and the window. When it was 6am we woke up Vanessa and Ashley who called the site and we made our way there. It was only 2 minutes away from where we parked. When we got there we saw that it was a house. I was expecting a church, but it was a very pretty purple house. The man who let us into the house was Darren. Darren is a New Orleans native. You can tell immediately from his thick accent. He is a true character, as we would come to know throughout the week, but right then, we were all very tired. We were given a tour of the house. When you walk in the front door you walk into the office. It’s a small office with two chairs a desk and a computer with a door behind it. There we signed some volunteer agreement papers before getting the rest of the tour. When you walk through door behind the desk you enter the house. There’s a small foyer that houses shelves of cooking dishes to the left. To the right are two doors. One lead to a bedroom, which has six beds in total. They were in bunk bed form. If you walk straight out of the foyer you enter the kitchen. It’s a simple kitchen. To the right of the kitchen is the living room that has a table in the back and two couches to the left and right of it. There is coffee table in the middle. If you continue to walk straight you walk past the pantry and are met by a door in front of you. That door leads to another room to the right is another bedroom, if you look left there’s another hallway. In that hallway is the bathroom/laundry room and another bedroom that housed the rest of our group. Then straight ahead is another door that leads outside to a deck. After the tour most of us took a nap in our beds. We all woke up about noon from our “nap”. We split up, with some of our group going to Wal-Mart…for some reason. While, Josh, Karen, Ida and I went on a walk around town. We wandered down the main street past a local market and the National Guard center, which looks extremely out of place. We walked around passing houses where some looked renovated and others were in really bad shape. Along some of the houses was “X”. If anyone remembers from the Katrina coverage, that’s what the rescuers put on the door when they checked it, so no house would be checked more than once. Later I found out that the number/letters at the top of the “x” was who checked the house. Walking around it was nice getting a sense of how different the architecture is in New Orleans than any other place in the country. After walking around we got back then went on a tour with Darren of Lower Nine. I did not take any pictures of this as I was driving. He took us to the levy that broke and has been rebuilt. Where it stood 6 feet before it now stands 20 feet but what it is really is a 20-foot wall and they built it exactly the same…so hopefully there won’t be another bad hurricane for a long time. We then went to a bayou near by. Basically we walked onto a pier where you could see how many trees were missing and how bad Katrina did not only to the urban environment but nature as well. As we drove through this part of Lower Nine, all of couldn’t help but notice how much space there were between houses and all the tall grass. The reason for this was simple. All the open space used to be houses. We made our way to look at the two houses we’d be working on. The first was Conrad’s. It was a grocery store with a second floor that they were making into apartments. So far there was a bit of floor down and framework but a lot to do. We then made our way to the second house known to me as the peach house…since I could never remember the name and it was peach. There they were renovating the entire house and putting dry wall on the walls. We also went to the Mississippi river levy, which were more natural with a slope. This area of Lower Nine wasn’t as bad as the other side. After the tour we went into downtown New Orleans where I made the mistake of deciding to drive there. I’ve driven in Chicago on a regular basis and made the mistake of thinking it would be similar. Let me tell you…it’s not. Not to mention LSU vs. Alabama game was in town…the next day at the super dome. So traffic and people were insane. We finally found a place to park before walking over to Bourbon Street and walking down it. It was….interesting to say the least. I would say that if we skipped Bourbon Street since none of us could drink on this trip anyway, I wouldn’t have minded. But some wanted to walk down it since it’s well…famous. After this we searched for a place to each cheaply until we steeled on Popeye’s. After eating we headed back home where most of us, including me, went to bed at 8pm. Tomorrow was our first work day and we had to be up and ready at 7:30 for orientation.
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