[Peace-discuss] Our friend in New Orleans Reports

[Jan & Durl Kruse]

Greetings from the center of the biggest natural disaster in the 
nation’s history!
4/19/06

We are so grateful to all of our friends and family who have sent 
prayers, good wishes, kind words, genuine concern, and even treats! As 
most of you know, we evacuated to Houston in the wee hours of August 
28th where Craig and his family graciously took us in for the first two 
weeks of this journey.

When it became clear that this was not going to be the three-day round 
trip hurricane road trip that we all had accustomed ourselves to over 
the past several years, we made plans for the next steps. Adam and Minh 
and Jenni got apartments in Houston and enrolled the kids in school. 
Christopher went to Atlanta to stay with an uncle and finish his senior 
year in high school. He comes back every couple months for special 
occasions and we’re going to Atlanta next month for his graduation. 
David and Rachel and Zeke and I and three dogs went to Thibodaux, 
Louisiana – bayou country – and moved in with an old friend who runs 
the rural office of Agenda for Children and has a wonderful big house 
and an adjoining apartment and a really big yard! We were truly blessed 
by the warmth and hospitality that Dianna and Red Constant provided for 
us for many months.

Each of us went back to work early on in the journey while we also 
worked on getting our houses gutted and tried to keep up with the 
latest pronouncements from the Center for Mass Confusion. We put a lot 
of miles on our cars! Adam relocated his flooded bicycle shop to a much 
larger building and his business is doing very well. All of the “kids” 
came back to New Orleans in January when a few of the public schools 
re-opened, including those that Reina, Haley, and Zeke had been 
attending. Adam and his family are now living in the upstairs of their 
house, as are Rachel and David and Zeke.  Jenni and her girls are 
staying with Bob and Jean Watts. I came back on March 8th and am living 
in a trailer in Rachel and David’s front yard.

What follows is a glimpse of the landscape here in New Orleans.

*********************************************************************

We’ve been flooded, we’ve been maligned by members of Congress, we’ve 
been ignored and dismissed by the President, we’ve been brushed off by 
the Treasury Secretary, and we’ve been trumped by the political clout 
of our neighboring states. We can’t get paid for the oil we generate, 
our wetlands are shrinking at a rapid pace, and the Gulf is warming up 
for another hurricane season.

Jobs are available, but child care isn’t. Neither is housing. The State 
took over the New Orleans Public Schools because we couldn’t get them 
open quickly enough. Now the State says they can’t open them either.

Trash pick-up appears to be run by a lottery system, but no one knows 
where you get a ticket. Fast food joints are paying top dollar but 
rents have gone over the top. Restaurants are open but menus are short. 
No housing plus no child care equals no workforce and that means yet 
another fried shrimp po-boy. (Okay. It could be worse!)  Don’t ask us 
for our address.  We go blank. “You mean where my house is? or where my 
trailer is? or where I’m staying? on weekdays or weekends?”

Trailers are “in!” Unfortunately, hook-ups are “out.” My trailer was 
delivered to my front yard on December 2nd and finally hooked up last 
week. In the meantime, my daughter and her family moved into the second 
floor of their house, and I moved into their trailer. So I gave the 
trailer in my front yard to a nice couple down the block with an 
un-hooked-up trailer. If theirs gets hooked up, someone else will get 
lucky. It’s called trailer-tagging, but don’t tell FEMA! The rules say 
you’re supposed to stay where you’re put. FEMA is right up there on our 
“top ten hit list,” along with the Army Corps of Engineers, the 
insurance industry, and the people who want to make New Orleans a 
“living museum.”

Public housing is “out.” Mixed-income housing is “in.” That means about 
two-thirds of the families that formerly relied on housing assistance 
to make ends meet now have to find somewhere else to live – in a 
top-dollar housing market. Real estate developers are salivating, 
finally within reach of getting their hands on prime real estate 
formerly “squandered” on poor people of color. Professional planners 
are having a hay-day. We have plans coming from every direction with no 
connection, much like what we call “parallel play” in the world of 
early childhood. I keep wondering if the money we’ve lavished on 
planners could have been used to make a down payment on a new levee 
system.

We’ve lost pretty much everything but our sense of humor, our 
unflagging resilience, and our determination to preserve this place!  A 
few blocks from my house (which is close to where I’m “staying” in my 
trailer) there’s a very large pothole, about two feet deep and eight 
feet wide – even bigger than the one a few miles away that cost me 
about $500 to replace a tire and a rim.  Anyway, this particular giant 
of a pothole inspired the landscaping inclinations of some witty 
neighbors. Now dubbed the Broadmoor (neighborhood) Migratory Bird 
Refuge and Wetlands Reclamation Project, the watery pothole, surrounded 
by bits of rye grass carefully installed on its levees, is home for a 
collection of pink plastic flamingos, some tiny living creatures, a toy 
boat, and a stuffed green turtle. There’s also a guest book to sign and 
a cautionary sign about not feeding the wildlife.

It’s that sort of stuff that keeps us going! There’s also the fact that 
we have developed a camaraderie that bonds us together. For one thing, 
none of us can remember squat! I get my phone number mixed up with my 
bank account number, and my driver’s license number. When I tell the 
lady at the bank customer care line to hold while I look up the account 
number that I’ve had for twenty years, she laughs!  “No one can 
remember anything anymore,” she says. The nice young man who takes down 
my information for the housing assistance registry notes the pause when 
he asks for my phone number and says gently, “Take your time.”

The exchanging of nods and good-mornings as we pass along the sidewalk 
has escalated even for this City in which nodding and greeting has 
always been mandatory, but often perfunctory.  When I came back into 
the City for the first time, with my son-in-law, there was no one here. 
You could hear the birds singing on St. Charles Avenue. There were no 
working traffic lights. The only other vehicles on the street were 
carrying troops from the National Guard. We waved at them and they 
waved at us.

Every time we run into someone we haven’t seen since before the storm, 
there’s a reunion scene. Sometimes we forget that we’ve already seen 
each other since before the storm – or at least we’re not totally sure, 
so we have yet another reunion – complete with hugs and kisses and “are 
you back?” and “how’d you make out?” and “how’s your Mama doing?”

Ask us why we stay here and we rise up with one answer – four words:  
This is our home!
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