With just one day left of our Biloxi experience, this week has been one of teamwork, collaboration, and learning; exposure to a colossal tragedy that happened five years ago and that still isn’t fixed today, and for me, exposure to a culture so different and unfamiliar to me that I felt like I was in a foreign country. However, the experience was a good and enriching one, and will only make the return to my end of the country a more experienced and understanding one.
As a “Yankee,” and a New Yorker in particular, I was apprehensive about coming to Mississippi.
In hindsight, it was the best way I could have spent my Spring Break.
Before coming to Mississippi, I knew that there was, to some extent, still evidence of Katrina damage. What I didn’t understand was just how much damage there really was. As we wrap up our fourth day of working in the community – talking to people who have received government assistance in some form or another, collaborating on different ways for the Mississippi Center for Justice to go about helping these people even more, and putting together bits of media to show to everyone else involved in some way at the Center – I now understand that Mississippi, the Gulf Coast, and America in general is not anywhere near done dealing with the repercussions of the monster that was Katrina.
As I briefly reflect on a week’s worth of experiences, a few events stick out most in my mind:
While interviewing a man who lived quite far from the ocean, I found seashells in his front yard both buried in mud and sitting on the grass. How much water must have covered the land for seashells to be brought hundreds and hundreds of yards – maybe even over a mile – to this man’s front lawn? As I couldn’t see the ocean from any direction at his house, I’d imagine it must have been almost biblical.
While interviewing a man who rode out the storm, he told us that he sat in his living room and watched as the water levels rose ten feet every three minutes. He said he watched other houses float past his at probably forty miles per hour. He also said that he wouldn’t wish his experience on anyone, even someone he hated to death. How frightening could that have been for him? To watch his entire world go under – literally go under water – as he could do nothing about it?
While interviewing a third man, he told us that he was being forced out of his government-funded home because of certain laws and ordinances that were recently put in place, and that he only had till the end of the month to pack up and move. He lost his first home in Katrina, and now this home because of government regulations. How many hundreds – even thousands – of people have similar or worse stories to tell about their inability to buy or stay in a home?
These experiences are truly unforgettable ones as I haven’t seen anything like it before, and have never talked to people with experiences like this before in my life. For this reason, I am grateful that I was given such an opportunity.
Before I came here I really thought New Yorkers were the toughest people in the country – the rough-around-the-edges, “hardass,” straightforward type, and I don’t think I could back down from that opinion in a hundred years. Still, I’m willing to say that the state of Mississippi gives us a run for our money. They have encountered and endured something that New Yorkers never will, and as a result they found a sense of community that is hard to come by. They are a people that are grateful for what they have, and do not dwell on what they’ve lost. I cannot even begin to describe the full extent of what I’ve learned and discovered this week, but the most important point I have come out of this with is a whole new and genuine respect for the state of Mississippi, and in particular the people of Mississippi. They possess a hardy, strong, compassionate, and loving personality, and have found a place in my heart that no state I’ve visited before ever has.
–Steph
