lower 9th ward

jeff and i were in new orleans for a good friend's wedding this weekend. on saturday, we climbed into our rental car with three other friends and drove down to the lower 9th ward to see the effects of hurricane katrina.

pictures are here. (i took all of these photos from the car so they're not great. i needed to document the damage for myself, not to create beautiful photos)

so. the lower 9th ward. we all felt a little weird driving down there. we all wanted to see the damage but we all realized that if it weren't for hurricane katrina, the five of us wouldn't have dared drive to that part of town. we would have walked the (relatively) safe streets of the french quarter drinking our strong fruity hurricanes talking about how cool new orleans was and how much we loved it.

we would not have driven to the real new orleans. the impoverished new orleans. the crime infested, drug mecca of the city. we wouldn't have given the people who live there and their struggles a second thought. we probably would have talked about how dirty that part of the city is and wondered why the people who live there didn't care enough to take care of it.

but we did drive there. and we saw the damage. and truthfully, when we first turn onto the streets, i was a little disappointed. i was expecting more. more damage. more chaos. more something. i guess i'd read so much and heard so much about the damage that it had become monumental in my mind.

so we drove around a few streets, sort of aimlessly, looking for "the damage". and slowly i started to see not just piles of debris and garbage, but pieces of people's lives. i saw dressers and pieces of headboards. i saw houses with their fronts sheared off and saw people's kitchens and living room curtains. and then the damage seemed monumental.

there has been a lot of talk of rebuilding the lower 9th ward but after seeing it this weekend, i don't know how that's possible. they will have to bulldoze everything and completely start over. and it seems unfair. these people who already had so little now have absolutely nothing. we saw mud covered tricycles on the street. children's teddy bears hanging from fences. we saw writing on house where, presumably, agents had checked the houses for bodies. there was one house that had several dates listed, followed by F/W which we assumed meant food and water had been dropped off on those dates. one of the dates was late october, followed by the spray painted message, "still living here".

and that's unbelievable to me. that there were people still living in that shell of house in that bombed out, deserted ghost town makes me wonder if the family stayed out of loyalty or desperation.

i don't know that there's any point to this post. or perhaps there are too many points to this post. i feel embarrassed that i was a rubber necking tourist, gawking at these people's pain. i feel mad that the federal government so badly bungled the entire rescue effort. and mostly i feel guilty that there are people living in those conditions while i live my comfortable life.