Student Activities Blogs

Miguel Almodovar

NOLA ’09, NOLA ’09, NOLA ‘09

Spring Break was last week and I finally got to go on the trip I’ve been looking forward to all year. The night before I left, I packed up my stuff; I was so excited/nervous/ready to go that sleep wasn’t really a possibility. I finally fell asleep around 1 or 2am and was wide awake when my alarm went off at 7am. President Hogan saw us off, handing us the snackpacks donated by Dining Services. The bus ride down was quite an experience, 30 hours in the same seat with only ½ hour breaks for food. It was incredibly hard to sleep on the bus, even with the help of Nyquil. The highlight of the bus ride was definitely the 4:30am stop at a Petro truck stop about an hour north of Atlanta, Georgia. It had a restaurant in it that sold 12oz. steaks 24 hours a day! Not to mention a barber shop, casino, Movie Theater, and electronics store.

We got to Louisiana late Sunday morning and to Camp Hope early in the afternoon. Camp Hope is based in an old middle school in St. Bernard Perish, which was flooded and then renovated after Katrina. We unpacked our stuff and got ready to go to our worksites the next day.

I was on the Green team and we shared our site with the Yellow team, with more than 20 people working on the site. Our site was on Mistletoe road in the Hollygrove neighborhood of New Orleans. (The house Lil’ Wayne grew up in was a few blocks away from where we worked!) The house we worked on was owned by William ¬¬Larson, he’d lived there since 1950 and would have sold the house after Katrina except his mother asked him not to before she passed away. Right after Katrina he tried to pay contractors to fix his home and instead of doing the work honestly they exploited the situation and ran away with the money, a common occurrence in the post-Katrina Gulf Coast. With his money depleted by these thieves he turned to Rebuilding Together to get his house back to a livable state.

The green and yellow teams in front of the house.

Unlike some of the homes other UConn groups worked on in New Orleans the house on Mistletoe road hadn’t been touched since it was initially gutted. The yard was overgrown, the shed was full of damaged items, and the inside of the house was barren, only the support beams were left. In addition to the necessary improvements to the house, a new fence also needed to be built. This meant removing the old fence first – this was no small task considering each post was buried at least 3 feet underground and wedged in concrete.

Chris and I working on an especially stubborn pole.

The work was very physical and we all went home very sore that first day. By the next day though the soreness went away, the determination set in. It was palpable - the entire team was driven, partially by our intense site leader Emily, but more so by our desire to do as much as we could for Mr. Larson. The most rewarding part of the trip was talking with him, not just about his house and his life but just shooting the breeze with him. It takes an amazing amount of courage to do what he is doing; returning to his home after it was destroyed by Katrina. I don’t know if I could do the same, especially after losing so much money to dishonest contractors.

After working on site all week we were going to go into the French Quarter for the first time. Everyone got all dressed up and it was hard to recognize people without the coating of dirt they had worn all week. We were pumped on the bus ride over excited to see the city, eat some great food and get a taste of the famed French Quarter. On our way to the city we stopped at the Katrina memorial in the lower 9th ward. It’s difficult to put into words what it’s like to see the lower 9th. This is where the levees broke and every single house there was underwater. The best word I can use to describe it is “raw”. There is nothing in between you and what happened to the people there, no TV, no radio, no newspaper to filter the tragedy. Without the filter, the reality struck me hard; I got emotional especially at the memorial. When I walked through those blue pillars I got the chills thinking that the water rose so high. It was an immensely humbling experience.

The Hurricane Katrina Memorial in the Lower 9th Ward

Though it was difficult to be there, I am glad I was because it has given me new energy and drive to go into law. So that maybe I can use it to effect change at a level that may help prevent something like Katrina and the lower 9th ward from happening again. This determination was the biggest thing I got out of the trip to NOLA but it isn’t the only thing. I also made so many good friends on the trip, everyone was amazing. I’m definitely going to go back to NOLA next year.