Hello from New Orleans! This is Michiko.
The temperature dropped dramatically this morning, waking us
up shivering from the cold. We headed to the Audobon Nature Center with Polly
from UK and started our work!
Today, we continued the work that we had left out last
Friday. We looked around the forest to make sure that all the baby trees were
alright; straightening the trees and the plastic protectors on the bottom of
them, cutting down the vines that were in the way with shears, and etc. Though
the work itself didn’t require so much of physical strength, the coldness took
away our energy quickly. After we have finished the morning work, we took a
group picture with the staffs from the Audobon Nature Center. Despite the fact
that the work we did was only a little, I felt really happy and satisfied when
the staffs told us how grateful they are that we have done some service.
After the morning service, we moved to James’ nursery to do
the afternoon service. Since it was freezing, we played “knight and dragon
game”, a game that you need to run around and be in between two people,
“knight” and “dragon”, you chose, to warm ourselves up. This game looked silly
since people ended up running around in a circle, but it sure did warm us up!
As for the afternoon service, we took away the weeds and replanted the plants.
I did the replanting, but the roots were so hardly stuck that it was so much
harder than I thought. It didn’t go out well with the others either; Leo got
his finger injured from replanting, and Ashley was bitten by the fire ants.
We got back to the common ground at around 3, and some of us
went to the museum, House of Dance and Feathers, with Williams College
students. The founder of the museum, Ronald Lewis, built it in the back of his
house in the Lower Ninth Ward. The museum collections feature the history of
the Lower Ninth Ward and the cultural traditions of Mardi Gras Indians. He told
us how Lower Ninth Ward is rich of its own culture of the second line of Mardi
Gras Indians and is tied up community historically. The whole community would
come together especially for the festival of Mardi Gras. The most interesting story
that he told us was the first Mardi Gras after Hurricane Katrina. I was really
moved by the fact that people who were forced to move away from New Orleans
came back to New Orleans from all over the nation, and when they got together,
all of them hugged and kissed each other on every street crying for feeling
relieved and happy. From this story, I felt how Mardi Gras played an important
role to the Lower Ninth Ward and to New Orleans.
After we had the dinner, we had Smitty, a writer who
experienced all the civil rights movement and an evacuation after Hurricane
Katrina, as a speaker. He told us his philosophy of how racism works in the
society of New Orleans and in the world. His perspective was an eye opener to
many of us since it was new to us.
After hearing from two speakers with two completely different
perspectives, we all came up with some opinions and feelings toward the problem
of poverty, racism, and community. During the reflection, we had an intense
discussion on it, which was a great opportunity for all of us for sure.
Anyway, time here flies so fast that I cannot believe that we
only have 3 more days in New Orleans.
I am looking forward to the service of construction work
tomorrow!
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