Today our group set off with not ideal conditions. We woke up to a fire alarm blaring throughout Camp Hope at 5:45, went to breakfast right after, and trudged through puddles equivalent to rivers and lakes to our vehicles. Once we got to our work site we were told that it was too soggy to continue our work on David’s house for the day and were then redirected to Habitat for Humanity’s warehouse to do some reorganizing for them. As soon as we stepped inside we were put to work cleaning and putting different sections of the warehouse in order. Some of us categorized nail boxes, some drug huge pieces of insulation to the other end of the warehouse, and others helped sort through new shipments for Habitat’s store. Reading all of the things we did at the beginning of our day seems like it was horribly boring, and maybe if we were working with a different group of volunteers it would’ve been…but the Missouri State students made something that could have been horribly mundane into a morning of jokes and laughter. Carrying the insulation across the warehouse may have been accomplished as a game of catch. Pulling nails out of boards actually became a group effort that took strategy and teamwork. All of the things done in the morning helped forge bonds that would only continue to be built on throughout the day.
After lunch at noon, we traveled to a new work site: a house owned by two people who were greatly affected by Hurricane Katrina. Their house got destroyed during the storm, and continued to be submerged under water for three months after. Just to give an idea of how high the floodwater was, there was a watermark in the middle of the backside of a stop sign right next to their house. That is easily about 8 feet. And that water was standing for three months. So today, our group put on killer white suits that look straight outta Breaking Bad (will definitely include a picture) and crawled under their house to hang up and install insulation. The couple have been living in their new house for a few years now…without insulation. How many of us can say that we go without that small luxury that keeps our utility bill so much lower? That is just a small example of how the people who were originally affected by Katrina are still living with the aftermath today, almost 10 years later. As we were stapling the insulation while wearing our ridiculous outfits, I looked around and saw a group that seemed as though they have been friends for a long while, and not just a group of people who didn’t even know each other’s names a few days before.
After our workday ended around 3, we drove back to Camp Hope to shower and reconvene. Our group decided to go out and try the New Orleans famous “po-boy” sandwiches. So we had a quick “first dinner” here at Camp Hope, because we were all ravenous, and then drove to a local restaurant to be served the biggest sandwich I have ever seen in my life. I split a sandwich with another girl, and my “half” was easily as big as a Subway foot long. After a lot of laughs and shared stories at dinner, we came back to our base to play a few rounds of Catchphrase. As everyone is going to bed, I can’t help but reflect on these past two days and have some realizations of what is going on around me. There is something about volunteering and doing service work with a group of people who are all like-minded in the sense that they gave up a comfortable spring break to go out and do hard, physical labor. As you’re working next to them you all have the same goal and ideals of wanting to help people who have been affected by so much, and that is the greatest means of bonding. Pushing towards something that is more lasting and greater than yourself along with your peers just instills in you a sense of hope for the future and that people are taking a stand to help fix something that they don’t think is right. The guy who’s house we were working on today said something that I think resonated with a lot of us, “It took one and a half days for all of this to be destroyed, and now it’ll take at least 50 years for us to build it back up. But it will never be the same.” Hearing that statement only backed my reasoning for coming on this trip. I want people like that man and his family to know that people really do care, and if more people volunteer to come on trips like this and help, then maybe we can reduce that number down a few years and also raise the hopes of this incredible community we are getting the chance to witness.