Lower Nine Day 3!

Today is Monday January 9^th!  All of use woke up pretty early and were ready to get to work. Before we got to work we met Laura the head coordinator who gave the description of Lower Nine. Lower Nine is a section of New Orleans, which was one of the hardest hit areas from hurricane Katrina. It also happens to be the highest area where is the highest percent of African Americans own houses. The demographic of the area is mostly African American. Before Katrina hit, it was 98%, now it is 93%.  The organization was set up by a carpenter in Maine who had come down with a different organization at the time. He then discovered that it’s possible to get a lot done by having a few skilled workers and lots on unskilled workers you can get a lot done by having the skilled workers teach them. That’s the basis of the organization. They do long term and short term volunteering. What I mean by that is that some volunteers have stay a year while others like us only stay a week.  After learning about the organization, we learned about house rules. One person would cook breakfast for the entire house, another would have house duty, which included, and someone would do the dishes at dinner. I signed up for dinner tomorrow but wasn’t sure what I was going to make. I don’t remember too well who all signed up for dinner. Josh cooked Friday night, Tim, one of the long term volunteers, did Thursday, Wednesday was Darren and I don’t remember who couldn’t Monday’s meal. Anyway, after the meeting we split up into our two teams for the two different sites. Karen, Ashley, Vanessa, Genivive or as we knew her, Gen, and I went to the peach house which was being run by Tim and Hugh. Everyone else went to Conrad, which was being run by Darren.  Before we drove off, we loaded Darren’s truck with all the supplies they needed, which…was a lot.  After half an hour of loading we loaded up the vans and set on our way. When we got to Peach house,  Tim and Hugh were already working. They split us up into two teams. Karen, Gen, and I went to one of the bedrooms that already have dry wall up. We screwed screws into the wall while Vanessa and Ashley helped Tim and Hugh put up more drywall in the bathroom. We almost finished with the bedroom by end of the morning where we went home for lunch. At lunch we had simple sandwiches and had a small discussion about what each site was doing. The other group seemed to be having as much fun as we were but were tearing down lot things and running all over the site. After the hour break for lunch we went back to work where Gen joined Ashley and Vanessa in putting up drywall in the rest of the bathroom before heading while Karen and I finished screwing in the ceiling and moved to the hallway. Halfway through that Karen started on the ceiling in the hallway where I squeezed into the bathroom and finished putting in screws there. At the end of the day, I had just begun to help them put up some drywall, where I learned I’m not that helpful due to my lack of strength. At 5:00 we all went home we showered then. At dinner we had our reflection. We talked about what each of the sites was like.  The other site had more strength required, and the boys came back dirty as could be from all the dust. At Conrad’s Darren taught them how to do it then let them and it seemed like a more learning experience at that site since they had a variety of tasks while we only had two tasks.  Afterwards most people read books and then we all went to bed around 9 or 10. In all it was a nice day to get used to how things would be and I had fun doing the work and seeing the peach house being put together.