How was Mississippi?

May 2006

When people ask me how “it was”, meaning my trip to Mississippi I feel at a loss for words. How does one explain the overpowering emotions that are swirling and churning immediately after such a trip? There is no simple way to describe the experiences that happened on so many levels. I’m still trying to sort them out. There are the bonds formed with the other Parish members we traveled with, the interactions with volunteers who flocked from other states and backgrounds, and the camp itself. If I had to pick images to describe first they would be the impressions of Mississippi itself.

I had never been to Mississippi, at least that I can recall, and really never planned to visit. Why would I go there when so many interesting and exotic places remain to be explored? I felt moved to go so I volunteered and then didn't put another thought into it until the few days before. The reality of actually leaving my children and husband alone unattended began to set in. Would the world still turn in California while I was gone? I wasn't convinced. Because I just dived into this adventure head-on I really had no idea what to expect. What would we find when we got there? Would the people of the area welcome these uninvited guests who had invaded their territory? I hadn’t prepared myself ahead of time. I don’t read newspapers and it wouldn’t have mattered if I had because the Gulf Coast seems to have dropped out of sight of the media. I didn’t do any internet crawling because I wanted my impressions to be my own. We all know that often pictures and news stories don’t do a situation justice. I tried not to have any expectations although I did have a hard time really imagining that it would actually take 5 years to complete the storm recovery. Skeptical that we might be too late to be put to any real work when we arrived I looked around through the car windows scrutinizing and searching for signs of the storm. My group flew into New Orleans and I will shamefully admit that my first sight of the areas around the airport were disappointing to me as I couldn’t see any visible damage. I selfishly thought to myself 'I hope there’s something for us to do.'

But as we drove east along I-10 we could see that signs were still missing and businesses boarded up. We passed what seemed like miles of ghost towns. Empty structures – houses, community centers, schools and gas stations looking as though all life had left a long time ago and yet it was easy to imagine if only for a brief moment what the streets had been like when they were teeming with their former residents. The landscaping had grown back, but the residents had not returned and quite frankly, I could see how easy it would be to never want to. We drove 40 miles along the highway into Mississippi before we found an open restaurant to grab a quick lunch. Even as we followed the directions to Camp Coast Care we didn’t notice any visible destruction, perhaps a pile of debris waiting by the roadside for pick-up, but we could have been driving down any country mile for all we knew. It took us a while to notice the street names spray painted on the sides of utility poles because all landmarks had disappeared.

We arrived in time for evening prayer. Stories were shared, and as we heard there was work to be done, we newcomers longed to get out into the community to experience some of the same touching moments, to do good works. After what I had seen in New Orleans I thought I had seen it all. But on that first afternoon while being driven to a job site, I was not prepared for the scenes we passed. As I stared out the car windows two words kept running through my head - overwhelming devastation. I’ve lived through a lot of storms but I’ve never seen anything like that. The place looked like a war zone, as though a bomb exploded leaving random destruction - a house standing here and there and yet nothing untouched. One has to constantly remind themselves that this storm happened 8 months ago, not yesterday. The landscape, although beautiful is strangely barren. The strong and stoic Oak Trees that survived the storm are still grand, but they look shell-shocked while struggling to bud in the late spring sunshine. I think they are perhaps symbolic of the people of that region, refusing to lie down completely in the face of so much hardship, their roots strong and deep.

During that first evening prayer the priest who led the service told us that the people of the Mississippi Gulf Coast were so glad that we had come. He described them as a traumatized, depressed group of people and joked that his daughter-in-law who is a doctor said that Prozac should be added to the drinking water. But I saw no visible signs of depression from the people that I came in contact with, only smiles and warmth as they expressed their strong-willed faith in God aloud for the world to hear (it seems that all cell phones in Mississippi are programmed to ring the Alleluia chorus!). How is it possible to keep faith in the face of such destruction, lost family members, houses that you’ve lived in for 60 years just gone, including every picture and memento of a life lived? Patsy, whose house we re-shingled told me that they lost everything inside. They hadn't taken anything with them for safekeeping because they thought they would be coming back right away. She joked that the big screen TV even floated away. I asked her if they had saved any of the pictures and albums. I think of these because each time we move, a box of mementos gets destroyed and it breaks my heart, but there’s always another box somewhere. I can only imagine the pain of losing everything. When I told her this she just shook her head and said, “Well, I got me!” Simply put. It sums up these people who despite the impending threat of yet another hurricane season have been waking up every morning for the last 254 days to face the piles of debris, putting their lives back together one slow brick at a time. We came to Camp Coast Care from all walks of life with a common goal - to touch the lives of the people in that area and leave behind us a better place. We were warned from the beginning that we came to change lives, but we might find that it is our own lives that have been changed. I may not know all the ways that my life has been changed yet, but I do know that I have a new respect for the people of the Gulf Coast and I hope that I have the privilege of returning there one day.