MCLA Blog

Each spring, MCLA’s Center for Service Learning organizes an Alternative Spring Break , an opportunity for students to leave campus and volunteer for the week. This year, the group is returning to New Orleans. Teddy Bourgeois (’07) joined the group this year and will be sending dispatches back. This is his first report.

Wow. Such a smooth trip down to the Big Easy. We met our contacts from the National Wildlife Federation at the airport and they handed us the keys to our shiny 15 passenger vans.

We first headed to the south shore of Lake Ponchatrain to stretch our legs and soak in the sun. We gazed out over the lake’s 24 mile expanse, trying to squint out a glimpse of the state park across the water where we will be living and working the next week.

We then hopped in the vans and started our tour of some of the still most devastated areas of the city. We started in Lakeview, an really nice neighborhood before the hurricane. It was hard to believe that two years have passed since Katrina hit the gulf.

What struck me the most was how the recovery patterned out around the city. I have expected rebuilt, recovered houses in one corner, with conditions deteriorating as you drive in a certain direction. But the recovery goes house to house and most Lakeview is pockmarked by dilapidation.

You can drive down one street, pass a house with fresh paint, lawn beautifully landscaped, and the next house will be gutted with a FEMA trailer in the front lawn, and the next lot is a concrete slab. It reminds you that there is no large-scale systematic recovery effort. Most of the folks here are picking up there own pieces.

We stopped briefly in the 9th Ward. I sat on the front stoop of house, which was all that was left of it and I wanted to cry. It looked like an air strike had leveled the neighborhood.

We saw a CNN truck and I asked the crew what the story was. Bill Clinton had brought in 600 college students that morning.

“are they still here?” I asked.
“No.”
“they were just here for the day?”
“for the morning.”

Apparently they worked for two hours, had some photos taken, ate a catered lunch and left.