For All The Saints: New Orleans, Part I

So to prevent the massive godawful long trip post like the one from last spring, I'm breaking this one up a bit. Here goes:

The biggest purpose of the New Orleans trip was to see what progress has been made since spring break and maybe lend a hand, if possible. We took another bus tour of town, this one covered a bit more ground and included some of the richer parts of town up north that had also flooded. Here some semblance of rebuilding was underway. There was a patchwork of new houses, old houses that had been repaired, and property that was still abandoned. Buisnesses were reopening as well- apparently getting a grocery store back that's close to your house is a big deal. The Lower 9th, on the other hand, was still more or less as it was before. People here just don't have the money to rebuild, and government assistance has been inadequate at best, so there it sits. The tourist areas of town were a bit more lively, though. Could be because it's New Years and there are bowl games in town. Hard to say how it is the rest of the time.

They've still got a long way to go. Over break, they were saying 10 years to rebuild, now that's up to 10-15 (or 10-50, I might not have heard right). The biggest problem seems to be that the general public has moved on. I'm not sure how much of a help FEMA is these days, either. But they're definitely still there, and the message they wanted me to bring back was- go down there. Go to fix something, go to spend money, but they really need the outside support. Our service projects got rained out, so that was a bit of a disappointment, but there's still plenty to do. I'll probably be back spring break-ish, depending on what church puts together.