“Thanks Katrina” by Barbara Silvis
December 2010
Three months ago I was in New Orleans…again…
This is the 6th time I have made the trip to do Katrina recovery and the one thing I’ve observed is that it is really all about poverty.
For those of you that can’t go there and do this work, poverty in New Orleans is deep and cuts across wide swaths of the city and the people. After Katrina, it’s even easier to see–there are still broken down houses with big “X”s on them (code for the post hurricane triage effort), and it is dirty and a bit scary.
But beyond the obvious signs, poverty is far more insidious, and when you spend a full week inside a single home, and learn the story-both from the house and from the inhabitants, it is eye opening.
Three years ago, it was in Mid City in a small shotgun that . It was the family’s only asset, and, if it were not for Katrina, would have continued to serve for a couple more years. But we found out the truth of it–the structure was riddled with termite damage. The paper thin walls were literally falling off, and the roof was sagging toward a not-too-distant collapse. No resources to fix it up, and no reason to even look for the termites–just wait until it falls down one day, and then you’ll just figure out something.
This year, it was south of the River, where none of us had been. Nice looking neighborhood, but one of those flooded when the pump operators were told to shut them down and go home. But we learned the truth of that—drug gangs have moved in, and just a month before, twin teenagers were shot to death in two separate instances just a block from where we were working.
Recently I read a devotional on the Thessalonians text “Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances,” so today, I say “Thanks, Katrina”. For me and thousands of other volunteers, the storm gave us an opportunity to live local and get to know the incredible complexity of poverty in a way that I might never have seen, in the context of my somewhat privileged life.
And I also say Thanks, Central Congregational Church, for giving me the opportunity to visit New Orleans and open my eyes, and helping me in turn to open your eyes to the reality of poverty all around us, and to the call that we have to make a difference for all of God’s people.