We've driven all the way from Athens to Saint Bernard Parish, La., and we arrive after dark. Because there is still virtually no electricity here, only our headlights can illuminate the absolute destruction around us. Every single house is devastated from floodwaters. Nearly four months after Hurricane Katrina's storm surge topped the levees in this low-lying parish (Louisiana's equivalent to county), the streets finally have been cleared, leaving debris along the s
ide of the road like so much snow after the plow has been through. We are here to work at Emergency Communities, an all-volunteer emergency kitchen that serves three meals a day to the people who are here to begin the rebuilding process. At this point, that includes FEMA and Homeland Security employees, demolition and construction workers, and some residents - a few of whom have FEMA trailers on their properties, and others who come just for the day to work on gutting their homes.
Parish President Henry "Junior" Rodriguez declared all of the parish's 32,000 homes unlivable following the flood.
Our kitchen is the brainchild of the people who worked at the Waveland Cafe in Waveland, Miss., which was hardest hit by Katrina. The Waveland Cafe itself was the brainchild of members of the "rainbow family" of people who gather every year at a chosen national forest and, among other things, set up backcountry style kitchens and feed people. Since these folks have experience feeding lots of people in the middle of nowhere, hurricane relief seems a perfect match.
We feel like it's a little Athens here because hippies abound. The vibe is alternative, liberal and kooky. But let me tell you, hippies know how to cook great food. We get lots of compliments on the menu from the locals, who walk through the serving line saying "God bless you" to each and every one of us. Despite the free-form, non-hierarchical nature of the organization, this is a tight ship, serving three meals a day to hundreds of people, and the numbers increase dramatically each day. A week ago, we served about 300 meals a day and now we're over 600. By next week, we'll likely top 1,000 meals a day. Much of our new clientele comes by word of mouth. We rarely stop working to wonder why, in the world's most rich and powerful nation, we're relying on a bunch of hippies to feed people in a disaster zone.
The landscape is filthy, smelly and creepy. Some homes have "help" spray-painted on them, presumably by the residents who did not evacuate. When search crews went house to house to search for dead bodies, they spray painted giant X marks on each home. The number in the lowest quadrant of the X indicates the number of dead bodies found. At last count, this parish of 67,000 suffered 127 dead and 47 missing. Since the floodwaters receded, residents have added their own spray-painted messages, from the practical (address, cell-phone number, name of insurance company) to the light-hearted ("1cent, will finance," or "ye detour" on a house in the middle of the street).
Our own operation is based in the parking lot of an off-track betting establishment. The first volunteers scraped flood and oil-spill debris off of the parking lot and then blasted it with bleach and water. Since then, in only two and a half weeks, tents have gone up for all activities - cooking, serving, dining, sleeping, dishwashing and storage. All items, from the tents to the food, have been donated. Most of the donations are relatively small, coming from churches, individuals and small businesses - such as our own friends and The Farmacy natural-food store in Athens. But they add up to enough.
After we help prepare and serve the food, we sit in the dining tent alongside locals who have stories to tell. This kitchen has become the only real community here in Saint Bernard Parish, where people gather to talk and make connections and get what they need from others, not all of which is physical.
"Miss Joyce" Couget, 75, tells me her harrowing survival story, which includes a horrific detail I'm not hearing for the first time - of having to bust through the attic ceiling in order to climb to the roof because the flood waters were rising so rapidly. Her husband, Jean-Marie, also 75, had a heart attack while being evacuated, but survived. She asks ("aks" in local parlance) me to fetch her a piece of cake, but her plate is still full. She pushes it away, saying, "I'm not that hungry. I guess I really didn't come here for the food."
Right now, it really seems like a tale of two cities - greater New Orleans and Emergency Communities. Our makeshift city is much more functional at the moment, and that actually shines hope on the prospect of the outside city rebuilding. Everyone pitches in to help, including people who work in New Orleans and volunteer in the evenings or on their days off.
Full-time volunteers have come from as far as Alaska, Canada, California and Maine. We've got young homeless hippies, former drug addicts, retirees who arrived in their RVs, middle-class professionals who jet in for just a few days or longer, and two Athenians -- myself and my partner, Attila Horvath.
Athens has been relatively well represented in the Katrina relief efforts. Just a couple of weeks before we arrived, the First United Methodist Church of Athens sent eight people down to help rebuild homes. The Athens County Chapter of the American Red Cross has deployed 60 volunteers, including a number who have returned for second and third tours of relief work. Other Athenians have come down, individually and in small groups.
Those numbers make us proud of our Athens community, but right now, we're equally proud of our Emergency Community and our larger human community as well. I never imagined I would come to a disaster zone to get a dose of goodwill about humanity. But if a truck-driving, God-fearing Southerner walking through our parking lot past all the cars with sarcastic anti-corporate, pro-environment bumper stickers to sit down and tell their story to a vagabond lefty doesn't inspire some hope in the heart, what can?
For more information about Emergency Communities, go to www.emergencycommunities.org
Editor's note: The author of this article, Mary Reed, is a freelance writer and market gardener who lives in Athens.