Monday was our first day actually doing relief work. I got to the church around 7am to meet with Candace, Anna, and Mike in order to plan for our day and run through some general information we needed to announce the to group before heading out to the site. A few things we stressed was the importance of not only working hard on what we were doing, but also taking the time to engage with the victims we are helping. To listen to their story, sympathize with them, and pray with them if appropriate. We talked through general safety with equipment, what to do in emergencies, and probably most important the necessity of drinking loads of water. I guess last summer some people got heat stroke and a girl fainted on a ladder (she was okay). We didn't want any repeats and we reminded people to work at their own pace and to take breaks when necessary.

After our little spiel we had some volunteers help us load up all of the tools (shovels, rakes, weedwackers, a lawnmower etc) and we headed out. Our task for the day was clearing out 3-4 foot high tall grass and shrubbery for full street blocks at a time that once were houses before they were almost completely underwater 3 years ago when a barge slammed through the canal wall only a few hundred yards away causing water to gush into the entire city district. This area, called the lower 9th Ward, was where many of the Hurricane's 1700+ fatalities occurred as people were unable to escape the enormous tidal wave. In order to do the work, we teamed with a local organization called NEMA that is trying to restore this area. The primary reason for clearing all the grass and shrubs is because if the homeowners (now lot owners) don't keep up their property the government has the right to fine them and eventually seize the land.

Some obstacles and distractions we ran into in the process were fire ant hills, wasp nests, and lizards. In the middle of the thick tall grass we came across 5-6 ant hills which housed thousands of these tiny red ants. If one of these little buggers happen to find their way onto an arm or leg, they will sick their teeth into you which is surprisingly painful and leads to hours of itching and a relatively big lump that looks like a pimple. I bravely (or foolishly) was in charge of eradicating these hills with ant killer spray and ended up with 5-6 lumps on my arms and legs. It really wasn't pleasant. Another problem was wasps. Someone would be peacefully pulling weeds and suddenly out of the ground a handful of hornets would erupt and fly among our group. I wisely delegated the eradication of their nests to Mike who did wonderfully and no one was stung all day (though today, Wednesday, three of us got stung out in that field including myself!) Lizards, on the other hand, were really harmless but distracting to a bunch of testosterone-filled high school boys.

Monday was also the first feeling of being "cold" or getting the shivers since I've been here. It was one of those freak 3pm rainy thunderstorms common in Louisiana that was there for 10 minutes and then gone, but it was enough to remind me of home. By the end of the work day we had successfully cleared almost 7 house lots with our 40 workers and saved those homeowners from fines or loss of property. With the high grass and shrubs gone they can now maintain their property by simply mowing it a couple of times a month. The other interns and I will be taking work teams to the lower 9th Ward all summer.

On Tuesday we split the group up into 4 groups. One group went and installed insulation into a large house, another group did some work at one of the church members houses (yardwork, moving furniture, etc) as well as work at our church. A third group painted and scraped some hardwood floors that will be refinished, and my group painted the outside of a house and helped a church member named Dennis (the homeowner) do demo work on his kitchen. This included moving out old furniture from his living room and a variety of things from his storage room and rotting timber from his back yard into a large dumpster he had rented

I think all of the groups enjoyed this work better than yard work A. because yard work can just suck sometimes especially when you're under the hot sun, and B. because they had personal contact and discussions with the tenants who were being helped. In fact, I was over with the people who were scraping floors at the beginning of the day when our church's relief ministry contractor named Jerry Dickson (an awesome African American man who is a pastor of a small church in Mississippi on the weekends and a contractor in New Orleans during the week) was showing them what they were doing that day. While I was there, 3 of the homeowners who happened to be family members were home (living in the unaffected upstairs). They were very grateful and probably said how much they "appreciate y'all comin' down here to work" probably 10 times in ten minutes! They wanted to take some pictures with us and so we did and later on I heard that they stayed to help do some of the work as well.

Today, Wednesday, we were back in the lower 9th Ward picking weeds. It was a pretty successful day though many of the kids were much more tired then they were on Monday so it went slower. We also ran into a thunderstorm on our way back to church and it rained harder than I've ever seen it rain probably anywhere. Thankfully it was a warm rain and once we got back, the high schoolers were out sliding around in giant grassy mud puddles having a blast. I opted to go home and take a shower instead.

Alright, I'm off to have spaghetti at the church. I'll update more later in the week!