6:12 a.m.

That’s what time my alarm went off this morning. I can’t remember the last time I’ve woken up that early (it was probably high school, like 2 years ago). My initial thought may or may not have been, “Sweet Jesus, why me?” But then I remembered that today started our first time on the job with Habitat for Humanity. Although I may not have leaped out of my top bunk, singing songs of joy after that realization, it was still exciting and helped me get up (the coffee played its part, too).

We rolled up to our site @ 7:38 a.m. (with a solid 7 minutes to spare), and I had no idea what we were getting into. All that I had been told was that we were working with Habitat and that it was going to be construction work. Naturally, I pictured being decked out in bright yellow hard hats and tool belts, and chopping up wood with chainsaws and other power tools. So you can imagine my surprise when we pulled up to a plot of land with some cement blocks lying in the shape of a square with some wheel barrows scattered throughout the front yard. Megan, our site leader, showed up then and explained that today we would be working on helping to lay the foundation for the house with cement and concrete blocks. She ran through some of the basics and then we jumped right in.

I started off as a concrete maker/ mixer, which basically entails hauling 80 lb. bags of dry cement into the wheelbarrow, ripping open the bag and throwing it away, carting it over to the hose, spraying water into the barrel, mixing it up with a shovel, wheeling it back to the site, and then dumping it into buckets for the other group members to use (really easy work, am I right?). It’s safe to say that my hands were killing me, and I got very dirty pretty early on. But no worries, I got some sick work gloves (2 left handed ones at that) and we took a lunch break around 11:30 a.m. (I’ve never scarfed down a PBJ faster).

We proceeded throughout the day by cutting down vines and trees on the plot and filling in the cracks between the bricks with mortar until our departure time @ 4 p.m. I can honestly say I have never been so sore, exhausted, cut up, sweaty or dirty all at once in my entire life.

After showering, accidentally napping for 20 minutes and getting two plates at dinner (that’s right, ya girl definitely went back for seconds), we went to Uptown for some ice cream. We wandered down St. Charles Avenue after where I saw some of the largest and nicest houses. I’m talking bricks, columns, fancy arches (might even be called flying buttresses, idk), and the kinds of lawns your dads can only dream of. Gazing up at these mansion homes, the juxtaposition hit me; here we are, down in New Orleans, volunteering with Habitat for Humanity to build homes from the damage that a hurricane left over 10 years ago, and these people seem to be completely unaffected. It’s like the hurricane never even hit this part of town. We later discovered that Uptown New Orleans really wasn’t hit by any of the water from the hurricane/ flood, but it did experience some wind damage. But still. The irony that these people are living like royalty while those in the Lower 9^th Ward are waiting for volunteers to help rebuild their houses is unbelievable.

One thought that kept recurring to me over and over during this was something the Leader of Camp Hope (the volunteer camp we’re all staying at) said the first night we got here: “A lot of people have forgotten about Hurricane Katrina. But a lot of New Orleans citizens have forgotten about the volunteers.”

Gerv out.

(Caitlin Gervich)