NOLA - the trip down. I am going to blog about NOLA for the next few blogs, a day at a time.
The group all met at the church. John handed all of the adults a post-it with their 2youth names on it. We were in charge of making sure those 2 youth got to NOLA. This tiny organizing tactic proved invaluable for the rest of the week. Parents of youth transported us to the airport, where we were handed a pile of boarding passes from a proactive ticket agent and crept through TSA. Only 2 youth left their boarding passes at the security station. What a stupid system! Carry your boarding pass through the security, PUT IT DOWN, gather your shoes, carry on, whatever else. It must happen a lot, that people leave their boarding passes. We were on the look out though and delivered the boarding passes to the proper individuals. Once on the plane, we traveled to Atlanta, and reminded the youth to take their boarding passes for the next plane out of the seat pocket in front of them.
Once in NOLA, we picked 4 adult drivers who disappeared on a bus to collect the 4 minivans. We were going to have to shuttle some people and luggage and return to get the rest, but at the last minute we decided to stuff the bags so that we could all travel together and not have to return to the airport for the remaining bags and individuals.
On the way to town, the devastation was apparent all along the highway. We could see entire communities of deserted houses where no one lives yet 2 1/2 years later.
We pulled up to St. Jude's Community Center, just on the outside border of the French Quarter. Our beds for the next week were in a Womens and Mens dormitory. For our week they switched dorms because there were many more women than men. Triple and double bunk beds crammed about 70 beds into one room for the women.
St. Jude's has just recently become the office for Operation Nehemiah. St Jude's is run by Sister Beth and they are very busy feeding homeless, food pantry for people who qualify, and doing tax returns. They also have a cardiac exercise room, for those who can no longer use their cardiac program because it has been closed down, torn down or they cannot afford it. It also has class rooms for Sunday school and a few rooms where residents live.
After our orientation, we decided to walk into the French Quarter for dinner. We split up by adults and their 2 post-it youth. We then went to Jackson Square to have beignets and cafe au lait at Cafe du Monde, which became a nightly ritual.
Home to our bunks, ready to get up at 6am for a 6:30 breakfast. We had to be out of the dining hall, since they feed the hungry at 7:30 am.
So, we learned to take care of each other by collecting boarding passes that were left, by watching out for our 2 youth and sometimes having the youth watch out for their adult, by sharing plates of beignets, by allowing people to move at different paces, by organizing beds by preference, by traveling all in a huge large group, even if we had to travel with a suitcase in our laps.
We also instituted another way to find out if everyone was in attendance. The french exchange groups from our high school do this. Everyone is assigned a number. When someone says count off, number 1 starts and everyone hollers out their number all the way up to 28. If someone is missing it is quickly apparent. There was resistance to this method and it certainly caused confusion to have 2 organizing methods, but there were times when we needed the "count off".
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