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Expeditions and Explorations
Alternative Spring Break 2006
Service Trips
Contact Information
315-859-4680 |
ReflectionBy Sharon Hakim '06, co-organizer of ASB 2006Bogalusa, La., is the kind of place that goes unnoticed. It was a poor community even before the storm, a post-industrial city that has lost most of its jobs and population over the last few decades. Hurricane Katrina further devastated the city -- knocking trees into houses, ripping off roofs, cutting the power, flooding basements. Although Bogalusa did not experience the extent of damage that places like New Orleans did, the people are still very much suffering the effects of the storm, especially since their city is not in the public eye as much as New Orleans is, and therefore gets fewer volunteers. Showing up seven months after the hurricane to see people still living in trailers, roofs still leaking, and trees still down shows how hard it is for an area like this to pick itself up, with such a lack of resources. Hearing about the storm on the news, and deciding to come down to volunteer for spring break, was completely different than actually being there, and experiencing the damage, and the state of disarray. The whole experience of being in an area affected by Hurricane Katrina was overwhelming, especially seeing the poorer areas of New Orleans where it was just block after block of leveled houses. The destruction -- the numbers on the houses indicating the number of dead bodies-- the stories people told us about being without power of food, the piles of debris -- it was just so real that it was unreal. Although we were there to volunteer, and to help, I couldn't help but recognize the uneasy relationship that formed between us as outsiders, or onlookers, and those who experienced the storm and the destruction personally. So many others were just there to view the destruction, on a certain kind of emotional tourism trip, and that made me very frustrated. For our group, although it was sometimes hard to see the importance of what we were doing (especially if you fix one roof, but see hundreds of more damaged houses), we realized it was definitely both necessary and helpful work. The trip raised so many questions -- why is there not enough help to go around? Whose responsibility is it to help the victims, and how far should they do? How much impact was our volunteering really making? But it especially helped me to understand that the cleanup effort is not something that is going to be finished anytime soon. These areas will need our constant support for years to come. |
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