Greetings to y'all from Louisiana. The Bucknell volunteers just returned from an evening in the French Quarter of New Orleans after a long hard day of work.
We began with breakfast around six am. Yes, parents, your children are actually capable of getting up that early. After a hearty breakfast, we had a safety orientation and picked up our PPE- personal protective equipment. Each of us wore a hard hat, goggles, a respirator mask, work gloves and boots for our day of gutting. We worked in two different teams at two different houses. One group worked in home that had been somewhat cleared out. They were involeved in taking out dry wall and insulation, base board, etc. The other group worked in a house that Habitat for Humanity declared had 0% work done on it since the hurricane. This means we cleared out furniture, clothes, appliances, and all kinds of other belongings. As you can imagine, the work was dirty, and hard. We used shovels, crow bars, push brooms and lots of elbo grease to move out arm chairs, beds, tvs, rugs, and more. Many wheel barrows full of debris were taken to the curb for pick up and we built an incredibly sizeable mountain of things to be hauled away. Some personal items, a few photos, a child's baseball mit, an Elvis Christmas ornament, and some ceramic items and china were salvaged for the family. Most of us discovered muscles we rarely get to use in our comfortable lives at Bucknell.
Both groups had water breaks and a lunch break with sandwiches and snacks we had packed in the morning and we all worked until 2 or 3 pm then returned to Camp Hope to clean up and get organized before our trip down town. Everyone seemed to have a good meal and enjoyed their brief time on Bourbon street. Some folks got to hear live jazz and others indulged in hot beignets from Cafe du Monde.
We're all ready to crash again and will head over around 8 am to Bay St. Louis in Mississippi where a few of us worked last January. We'll be involved in a neighborhood clean up project and some house painting there.
I'm very impressed with this crew of volunteers. They are pushing themselves, working hard, and hardly complaining - except for our drinking water, which is supplied by FEMA, comes in cans, and has a metallic, chlorinated taste. We're hoping to get some bottled spring water tomorrow for those who have delicate palates. Everyone is in good spirits, just incredibly tired.
Good night. I will try to write again tomorrow evening if possible.
Janice Butler
Service-Learning Director
Bucknell
