Relief

My experience with the Hurricane Katrina clean up was pretty amazing. I stayed in a tent colony with my work group for a good part of last week in Biloxi, Mississippi. We had special handwashing stations and porta-potties. The showers were along the baseball diamond's third baseline, and there were no roofs. There also weren't mirrors. It's really quite liberating to not see yourself in the mirror for four days; I thought very little about what I must have looked like.

We did what is called "mucking out" houses, meaning that we cleared out everything inside the damaged homes. There was so much mold that the flooring and drywall had to come out of each one, not to mention all of the families' possessions. Some of them truly have nothing left. In the first house we worked in, the gentleman said he'd been through three hurricanes and could barely summon up the will to rebuild. The stories were powerful. So was the drive along the coastline.

It's strange to take photos of the devastation. I felt like a tourist, and I guess I was, to a certain extent. Really, I want to be able to share with others the sites that I was able to take in firsthand.

Major lessons learned? Well, I spent a lot of time thinking about what little "stuff" I actually need in my life, compared to how much I have. I also spent a lot of time thinking about what actually matters to me in the grand scheme of things. Then, I thought about the difference between being person-focused versus task-focused. I suppose I'll never be quite the same.

On a more humorous note, the last night of the trip our group leaders took us out for a surprise steak dinner. Later that night, I went with a couple of friends to talk to the camp security guard, who also turned out to be a limo driver. He let us sit in his limo, then took us on a free ride through the city. Who would have thought that a hurricane relief trip would end with a free steak and limo ride? And who would have thought that my clothes wouldn't even match for my first limo experience?