More about my trip

The more and more I think about what I saw in New Orleans the hardest it gets to explain.
I wrote a lot about my trip while I was down there, but I as read it now it seems rawer than I first realized. I wrote most of it and in heat of the moment, and in most of my writing I was angry. Angry at a lot of different people.
Mad at the government for taking so long to respond.
Mad at the local government for not engraining the levees correctly so they would not break.
Mad at myself for not going down before now, or not being able to stay longer and help more.
Right after Katrina, I was mad at God. (OK maybe not mad, but confused.) How could he let this happen?
My emotions tend to run high when I am in the mist of something that I feel so passionate about.
So when I look back at the four or five pages that I wrote about my experience, there are only a few that I feel comfortable sharing on this blog. If you know me this might seem unusual behavior for me. But I really felt that I was mad for the wrong reasons.

But as far as more of my experience in New Orleans here is a small snippet. Imagine coming back to your house or apartment after 3 – 9 feet of water had receded. Pretty hard to grasp how much damage this much water can really leave behind. Forget about saving any thing. From your family pictures to you insulation, all gone. Now that really puts into perspective how much these people lost, and how much emphasis that we put on possession.
As we drove through the had hit areas of New Orleans, my jaw dropped. I had never seen anything like it in my life. House literally gutted. Nothing left. And some areas of town have not even began to rebuild.
Most of the buildings and houses had an X spray painted on them, marking that they had been searched by local law enforcement agencies. Some months after the storms. The lone thing that stuck out was a number at the bottom of the X. This number represented the number of bodies found in the house. Some of the houses had 1,2, and even three at the bottom. Crazy! The authorities are still keeping the actual number of casualties quite.
The last crazy observation that I witnessed in New Orleans, is that six months after Katrina and Rita most people in the city are still rebuilding. You would think that this would not be happing so long after a natural disaster. But it is. Some are still not able to return to their house. Some people are living in the top portion of their houses. Some of the lucky ones are living in what are called FEMA trailers, literally in their front yards.
So this is a small sample of what I saw in New Orleans. The last thing I want to say is that there is still need in that town. Need of a lot things: volunteers, food, money, etc. If you would like to help out in anyway email me and I can let you know how.