It doesn’t take long to find a person or story that moves you around here. In fact, they often just find you.
I was over at the new Distribution Center this morning. We’ve moved it from the Civic Center to what’s called Vista Gym. It looks like one of those big self-storage centers from the outside, with sterile cement walls and a tin roof. But it’s filthy inside. Water must have just settled in there and built up, because the water lines and mud go up the walls at least 20 feet in some spots. Common sense isn’t always on display here, and the Parish decided to start moving some of the goods to the gym without cleaning it. I told a fellow volunteer while we were moving things around that I’d hate to see what would be in the air if we shined one of those really bright lights that can show all the dust and particles floating around.
Not long before I was going to leave, a woman walked in, alone. She had been to the Civic Center and saw the sign telling residents where we moved to. Someone had told her that this would be a good place to get some clothes, maybe some food and water. Turns out, she needed anything she could get her hands on. Rhonda has been living in a FEMA Trailer in front of her Aunt’s house just down the road in Violet. On Monday, the trailer caught fire and was destroyed, along with everything in it. Rhonda and her two children, a boy 8 years old and a girl who is 6, were not home at the time thankfully. She says they don’t even know how the fire started. All she does know is that all of her possessions, and those of her kids, are gone.
Tom (the other volunteer) and I told her to please take whatever she needs. She said she just wanted to get some clothes for her kids for the week, and maybe a few toys and some water. They’re staying at an Econo Lodge down the road through this weekend. FEMA is apparently going to have a new trailer for them by Monday. I couldn’t helped but be moved by this woman’s story. I kind of hung close to her, talking a bit, feeling out like I usually do with the residents if she was open to talking or if she didn’t want to be bothered. Given her circumstances, she had a great attitude, about everything, including talking to me.
Rhonda, just 40 years old but like many people here aged a bit beyond her years, explained how she was laid off from her job a month ago. She had never been to the Distribution Center, never really needed hand outs. But that all changed as of Monday, so here she was. To be honest, I sometimes think about if a resident may be embellishing his or her story; I’m quite positive several I have talked to have, it’s usually kind of easy to pick up on. With Rhonda, though, I never felt that way, and I just wanted to keep listening.
I didn’t push, though. She let me take a few pictures, and then I let her go through the clothes. She was very considerate. She said that she wanted to make sure that what she took was the right size for her kids, so that she wouldn’t take anything that she didn’t need. She was very methodical as she went through everything.
A short time later, I asked her if she minded if I went to see her burned out trailer. She offered to take me over there herself. So when she was done, with clothes, bed linens, water and some toys in tow, we went out, loaded her car and I followed her out. We had to make two stops, though. First, we had to stop at the store so she could get her son a cold Gatorade. He is at a summer camp right on St. Bernard’s Highway. I went in with Rhonda, and at the check out line she pulled out food stamps, to pay for a Gatorade. I told her to save those, and to please let me get it.
Then we went to her son’s camp. They play water games with the hose there, and her son didn’t have any swim trunks after the fire. Fortunately, she found some that would fit him at the Distribution Center, so she wanted to drop them off to him. It’s so hot and humid here, it’s borderline inhumane to not have kids who are outside in some form of water. When we got there, he was clearly happy to get the swim shorts, but he was equally embarrassed to have his mom right there in front of all his friends. I guess that’s what you get at 8 years old.
Walking back to her car, I was asking her how much the summer camp was costing her. She said that thankfully she had paid for it in advance, back when she was still working. She no longer has any money. The $200 she said she had in her savings is paying for the hotel room her and her two children are staying in this week (and it wasn’t enough; she had to ask family for another $200 or so to cover it). So for now, she’s living on donations, and food stamps. So are her kids, including the little boy I just met and watched her give some shorts and a kiss to inside.
A few minutes later, we were at the FEMA Trailer, or what was left of it. By this time, I felt like I had seen and gotten to know all I had wanted to. She stayed in the car, while I walked around it, snapping a few pictures, peering inside to see what had been her home, what were their belongings, all burned and charred. It just seemed anti-climactic. I stood there for a minute, thinking why this would happen to this woman, to her kids. I even wondered what the deal with this fire was, if maybe it was purposely set by her. People here have been known to do that, for any number of reasons. But then I said to myself why would she do that? So she could move into another trailer? To have to buy new clothes when she doesn’t even have any money?
This is what the lingering effects of Katrina do. It put people like this in crappy trailers and left volunteers like me to question why.
Rhonda has good spirit and a good outlook, though. She insists they’ll be ok, that their new trailer will be better than this one, that she’ll find work and that they’ll move forward. Before she drove off to go see her youngest daughter I told her to please come back to the Distribution Center next week as we’ll have more stuff out, hopefully some new stuff that she can use. She promised she would.
(PHOTOS: Rhonda at the Distribution Center, looking through a tub of soap supplies, posing with her son while at his summer camp, and their "former" home)
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