The Last Day

The Rhinos were a little tired, achy, stiff and a few had souvenir bruises, cuts and scrapes.  Saturday started out cool and breezy but by noon the sun was bright and hotter than any day this week.  The highlight of the day was lunch from Crabby Jacks.  The sandwiches were packed and overflowing with whatever filling had been ordered--catfish, shrimp, oysters seemed to be favorite choices.
The work of the day was a little bit of everything.  The college group from Baltimore was already on their way home, so the work site was a little less crowded.  We met more future homeowners and a couple of local weekend volunteers.  The Tybek was put on up to the roofline; siding was begun, roofing work continued.
Here are a few more pictures from the week.

Hammering out Justice

How Firm a Foundation

Lean on Me

 

It Is Well With My Soul

















We are thankful to the Presbytery of West Virginia, RHINO, our friends and families and all who supported our trip and efforts this week.  We pray knowing that God will bless our small gifts and multiple them into the blessings of safe homes were families can grow and love and enrich this community.


We also celebrated this week with those who will soon make big changes in their lives.  Brenda will be retiring in 3 weeks and in April,  Marie and Cam will be married.  God's best to all each of you in these new chapters of your lives.

Can You Say Facsia?

Fascia is a term which generally describes any horizontal surface which spans across the top of columns or across the top of a wall^[1]. From the Latin word, meaning "band" or "doorframe"; in architecture. The word is pronounced with the "long-a" sound, /ˈfeɪʃə/, rhyming with the Japanese word geisha. (From Wikipedia)

Being on a build site, one is exposed to the language of construction.  Today (Friday) many of the guys were up on ladders preparing the facsia.   The trusses were finished with the sheathing on front and back.  Chalk lines marked the studs so that work could begin on cutting and nailing the siding.  Windows were installed.

One of the HFH homeowners working with us today was Pam.  Pam has an adult son in school and a teenage daughter.  Her daughter is having difficulty finishing high school due to mental health problems.  Pam is working on her hours for home ownership on top of holding down a full time job.  Her family lost their home and most of their possessions in Katrina.  They had moved to Arizona, but Pam wanted to bring her family home.  Throughout the day Pam was willing to do any job on the site, joking that when she first started with Habitat she was afraid of the ladder.  Now with her experience on the construction sites she is excited to soon be able to take care of her own home.  Every home owner has their own story of their journey to their new home.  

Lunch was provided for us by the Loaves and Fishes ministry of Trinity Episcopal Church. http://www.trinitynola.com/page.aspx?pid=224  They have a food truck and travel from work site to site, providing sandwich lunches to volunteers and residents who are doing work to rebuild New Orleans.

Thanks today to Brenda for providing today's pictures.

May the Wind Always Be At Your Back

Gentle breezes made the heat of the day bearable on this our 3rd day of work in New Orleans. This was our warmest day so far, around 80.  The bright sun and warm air felt good to these West Virginians, but the end of the day showed many red faces, arms and legs.

We begin each day with a gathering in the hotel atrium before we leave for the worksite.

We read a reflection written by previous RHINO participants, we share how things are going and encounters we had the previous day.  One of the most meaningful parts of the work is to meet and work alongside future homeowners.  Sometimes we meet the person or family who will be living in the house we are working on.  We also get to meet those who are working on the hours Habitat requires as the Sweat Equity every homeowner must "pay" to Habitat.  We also enjoy getting to know the college students we are working with this week. There are hundreds of college students spending their spring break in NOLA, not for Mardi Gras but to help rebuild the city.

Today most of us worked at 9320 Olive Street.

 The first day five of our team had worked preparing the foundation at this site.  Today we built up the concrete block pilings that will put this house above storm water level.  This was heavy, hot work--  lifting blocks up an onto pilings; mortaring; mixing cement; filling the blocks with cement.

Someone was constantly checking that all the pilings would come out straight and the same height.  At the front of the house a block wall was built in the same manner.  There were some moments of taking two steps back just when we thought we had gone a step forward but by the end of the afternoon this part of the building was complete and we heard the Mountaineers had prevailed over Clemson.  (Let's Go--Mountaineers)

Todd, Ron and Jim Carrano were at the other site.  They got all the trusses put up so roofing work will begin tomorrow (I think).
Tonight we had dinner at the home of WV native John Martin and his wife Chickie.  They are members of St. Charles Avenue Presbyterian Church.  We were blessed with a delightful evening and great food topped off with singing around the piano, enjoying the musical talents of Daniel Heidt.

Today was Rick Cook's 55th Birthday.  HBTY, HBTY, HBDR, HBTY!

A Half Day of Work and We Are Tired Anyway

All of us were at 8800 Olive Street today, along with the group from Stevenson College.  With so many on the site it was slow getting started as small groups received instructions and some had to wait on doing B until others finished A.  This was a half work day for us as we would be touring NOLA with church guides in the afternoon.

The hammering continued along with measuring and cutting, carrying back and forth and getting up and down ladders.

The outside sheathing was finished which meant we could move on to protecting the wood by swaddling it in Tyvek. This involved more hammering, from inside and outside, from on the ground, on ladders and over the top of the wall.

We worked until lunch time and enjoyed sandwiches and chips on the porch of the Land House, the headquarters for RHINO.  Four members of St. Charles Avenue Presbyterian Church each took a car load of us on a tour of NOLA, highlighting the areas hardest hit by Katrina and the recovery.  We first viewed a graphic presentation of the area affected by Katrina.  You can view this at nola.com/katrina/graphics/flashflood.

This evening we once again we fed by the great cooks of St. Charles Ave. Presbyterian Church.  Fried catfish was the centerpiece of the meal accompanied by a salad bar, red potatoes, green beans, fruit and cake and ice cream.

Hammers and Shovels and Nails, Oh My!

Tuesday morning the WV Rhino team showed up at the designated site, 9320 Olive Street, promptly at 7:45 a.m.   We saw the beginning of some foundation work.

After some discussion 5 stayed at this site--Allison, Brenda, Mark, Dan, Marcus and Doug. Their tasks the rest of the day including digging, removing the wood frames that held the concrete until it had hardened and pulling nails out of boards.  The digging out of the wood was an almost impossible task until Mark and Doug ran to Loews and came back with a Spud Bar.  For a more technical explanation you will have to talk to those who were there.  Maybe some pictures will help.

Mark Miller attempts using the power of his mind to bend the shovel back to its original shape.

The rest of us moved a few blocks down the street to 8800 Olive Street.  We joined a group from Stevenson College, near Baltimore.  As you can see the basic framework had been completed so most of the day was spent putting up the sheathing.  Have you ever heard the sound of 50 hammers, hammering?  Quite overwhelming at times with hammerers inside, outside, on the ground and up on ladders.  

Bob and Jim Carrano with help from Cam and whomever happened by spent the day measuring and cutting and measuring and cutting again to get the sheathing ready for the front and back trusses.

Tired and sore, the weary home builders were fed by the wonderful people of St. Charles Avenue Presbyterian Church. The evening's menu: New Orleans style red beans and rice with sausage, served with salad and fruit, with peach cobbler and ice cream for dessert.

Wasn't Katrina 5 years ago?

Yes. Katrina happened the end of August in 2005.  New Orleans and the Gulf Coast have still not completely recovered.  We see flood, mudslides, fires, earthquakes every year, sometimes very close to home.  People and communities pull together and life it seems goes on.
Katrina was not just any storm.  It was the costliest natural disaster in our nation's history, as well as one of the five deadliest hurricanes.  Then the failure of the levee system and the failure of government at all levels to respond magnified the disaster.

We saw today a neighborhood that was flooded to about 6 feet of water.  Our Rhino group was a part of two new builds in the neighborhood.  Walking around we saw new homes, brightly painted with well kept lawns and Mardi Gras decorations still up.  We also saw homes in the process of being rebuilt.  The saddest were the homes that still bore the signs of the flood.  Clear water lines on the outside, rusted fencing, and plants growing from the inside out.  We saw the spray paint designations left by National Guard units as they combed the neighborhoods after Katrina.  And we saw city workers surveying a lot and marking it for destruction.

So the city has not recovered, signs of hope are mixed with signs of the past pain. I am reminded of the  crocus at home that often comes up through the snow, proclaiming against the evidence that spring is on the way.
If you want to learn more about New Orleans and Katrina here are some suggestions:

PBS created a website companion to its NOVA feature "Storm that Drowned a City"--http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/orleans/

Dave Eggars novel, ZEITOUN, is based on the real life Katrina experience of one family.

One Dead In Attic, by Chris Rose is a collection of the columns the author wrote for the New Orleans Times-Picayune in the year after Katrina. He captures the despair as well as the lunacy of the days immediately following Katrina, and the impossibilty for many of ever returning to normal.

For a history of New Orleans, I recommend The World that Made New Orleans:  From Spanish Silver to Congo Square, by Ned Sublette.