NEW ORLEANS, LA. from a bird’s view, some areas of new orleans probably look like a checkerboard of street lights, some neighborhoods with electricity, some without. at pauline and clairborne, the common ground community center, there is electricity and hot water. but walk just eight blocks to st. mary’s elementary school, another location where volunteers are housed and working, and the streets are pitch black at night. generators roar in the background when there’s a need for electricity, and the cold water is on and off depending on the work being done in the building. i don’t even want to begin telling the story of st. mary’s elementary school… the only three story building in the surrounding area in the upper ninth ward… the only place to get away from flood waters that rose up to roof tops and forced neglected residents into a schoolhouse island. it’s too depressing. i feel my gut twisting when i remember the classrooms on the second floor i walked through this morning. small children’s desks disheveled, papers and books scattered everywhere, closets broken into. or when i think of the chalkboards with messages scrawled out by some of the two hundred residents stranded on this island, first floor filling up to the ceiling with the toxic storm waters. “we need food and water,” one chalkboard reads. “RIP Jay AKA Slim thug.” open peanut butter and grape jelly containers sit agelessly on a cart in a classroom down the hall. when i was removing hinges from a door frame on a janitor’s closet, i pushed a round, orange gatorade cooler back with my foot to get more standing room; i glanced into the cooler and saw white paper and feces. i haven’t even been up to the third floor yet, or even to the roof where the residents of this elementary school island were airlifted after five days of being trapped. now, in feburary, the volunteers live only on the first floor which has been gutted and mostly cleaned, the final work currently being finished.

i drove around the upper ninth ward with spaz looking for a door that wasn’t rotted or broken. i met spaz yesterday when i asked him if he had a digital camera card reader. he eventually discovered i had plumbing and renovation skills and a truck, and now here i am working to get the building running before the spring break rush of volunteers comes in march. all the doors we found in debris piles were the wrong size or completely unusable. we found a couple rusty bicycles on the street that looked salvageable, at least for parts. one was chopped and converted to fit a banana seat, an impressive contraption to spaz and me. we wrenched off brakes and seat posts, racks and pedals. the frames were orange with rust, but the parts were good. spaz thinks he’s going crazy, each day grating more and more on his humanity. there’s no way to avoid getting desensitized to this setting, we discussed in the truck. on our right there’s a roof on someone’s property, but no house; on our left there’s a silver sedan sitting quietly on top of a red sports car. this has been his home neighborhood for over a month. he quit school and has been doing major organizing work and helping coordinate volunteers. he does security shifts at night in st. mary’s, sleeping lightly behind the front doors. he sometimes deals with local residents coming into the community center: one woman who lost her house needs clothes and a place to sleep, another man who lost his mother can’t go into his home because of toxic water and mold. i don’t see any children here, but occasionally some adolescents. mostly all i see on the street are contractors, FEMA workers with big trucks, and a few adult residents emptying their houses. i would speculate 1 out of 10 residents have returned to work on their houses, some living in trailers parked on concrete blocks in their driveways. these neighborhoods are desolate places, without electricity, character, or energy. spaz thinks many of the people won’t return and i wonder what these people think about when they think about home.