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Dulac 12/15/16

Today, after we finished eating a simple breakfast, we continued ours community service in Dulac. One of the group continued their work in Ladonna' house; they were flooring one of the room in that house. The other group, which is the group that I was in, started ours work in the Dulac community center; we were painting the theater's stage to black. When we were in the community center's theatre, the first thing we did was removed all the chairs and other equipments that were placing in the stage. After that, we separated the stage into different pieces. The stage was created by those pieces; therefore, it was easier for us to paint the stage after we separated it. We used white primer to paint the stage pieces, and than we used the black code to paint the stage pieces after the white primer got dried. Ours group finished ours work at 3:30 PM, and than we had some free time until 6 PM. We had dinner at 6 PM, ours dinner was gumbo and monkfish, it was delicious. After dinner, we stared ours discussion/reflections at 7:30 PM. The discussion was intense and interesting. I expressed that the Native American should leave their homeland in order to creat more opportunities for their children because Dulac is not an ideal place to live; most classmates argued that other people should respect the Native American culture, and they should not worry about whether or not they should leave or stay. Overall, the day went very well. --John

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12/15

Hi this is Astrid! So today we continued our work in Ladonna's home. She so kindly made us pancakes and brownies! It surprises me that often times the individuals that need most help are the kindest. I saw this again when Mrs. Stacey from the thrift store, she gave us a basket of oranges for no reason. Everyone here is so friendly and warm and I have enjoyed my time meeting everyone thus far. We ended the day with a heated discussion about our time here, the book, and how we see the world. I leave you with the question that is still in my mind, how will you take this experience with you?

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Community of Dulac

Were are on day 14/18 and for my group we are at the end of day two for our new work site. It really is amazing how quickly the time has flown by, with our days so structured and hands-on the time seems to melt away. It seems everywhere we travel we meet even more amazing people with each having their own stories and trials that seem to make me and our group feel like not only are we almost not doing enough but that there is never enough that we could do. And that has been something we have struggled with. We could go on for hours as a group on how deep and convoluted the injustices run in these communities we have been devoted to improving. There simply aren't words in the English language to fully encompass what we have witnessed. What we take away from this trip will be invaluable to our individual development but also to the way we impact our community. We now have more perspective to add to how we see our role in this world and how much a few hours of work changed a person's life or impacts our community, however we chose to define community. -Brooke

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Dulac 12/13/16

Our group went to a house right down the road from where we are staying in Dulac. The homeowner's name was LaDonna and she lives at the house with her 11 year old child Caymen, and her husband who's a shrimper. The original project consisted of replacing the flooring the Caymen’s bedroom. This, however, quickly ballooned into a much larger project when we learned some of the joists, which hold the subfloor up, we rotted and no longer attached to the base of the house. The wall between the room and the outside also turned out to be almost completely rotted through, turning this one day floor replacement job into almost a complete renovation. It's a lot more work than we expected but it’s well worth the effort. LaDonna and Caymen really inviting and clearly appreciative. This kind of work is why we are here; to help those affected by flooding and disaster who do not have the means to fully help themselves. If feels good to be able to give Caymen a room without holes in the floor and walls. Meanwhile in Houma, the painting crew continued. We finished up the main room, tv room, and kitchen. Everything looked much brighter and cleaner. There was one boy who was new to the home and had ran away from his first day of school. A police officer brought him back to the home and spoke to him about how school is important. We had mixed feelings about how the other employees of the home hung around and did not seem to be effectively engaging with the teenager. RD Ben, who almost took a job in a home like this thought that the boy should have talked to a counselor, which they are required to do in these types of homes in Massachusetts. We are reminded that we are in a different state with very different politics and budget priorities. We are also reminded by the confederate flags on the houses and Blue Lives Matter stickers on the employees cars that there is still lots of racism entrenched in the south, which affects how these programs with mainly people of color are run. Tonight we had spaghetti and brownies for dinner, it was amazing. We then had a long group discussion about the whole day, along with the ethics of service. The money that we spent coming down here to do service would have had a very large impact, but there is also hope and energy that volunteers bring which is desperately needed. Also we in a way exploit the struggles of these people in order to learn about these issues. Jan reminded us that we will take this experience to educate more people on our experience back at union as well as create lasting change in the Schenectady community. - Kamin and Katherine

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Monday 12/12 - Dulac Day 1

The day started off at around 8:30 am, instead of our usual 7:50am. We had a cold breakfast at our house and met with John: the Dulac Community Center Director and project manager. John gave us a brief description of our projects for the week; the work  in Dulac will be similar to what we did with the Lower Ninth.

After breakfast we headed to a house near our home to help women by the name of Ms. Karen with her home. Her home was recently destroyed by a fire a few weeks ago, and part of the house, including the roof, master bedroom and kitchen, were badly destroyed. A team of six stayed to help her salvage some of the stuff that wasn’t damaged; they managed to save some the photos and furniture.

The rest of us helped paint a children’s home in Homa. The home is a place for boys and girls between the ages of eleven and seventeen who have no place to stay because of different issues with their family and home life; most of them are from places far away from Homa. They currently have eights girls and eleven boys aged between. They have ten buildings ,and our project was to paint three rooms in the boys’ cottage: the recreation room, main room and kitchen. When we first walked into the house, the colors on the walls made the rooms look dark in conduction with the low lighting. We started by painting the recreation room with a coat of blue, and the other two rooms with a coat of primer. The rooms already look brighter and more welcoming compared to the when we started.

The day ended with a nice meal made by our lovely chef Kandy. At dinner we had a speaker from the Dulac area by the name of Mr. Roy Parfait, a local Houma artisan. Along with his wonderful woodwork crafts, he also brought with him drops of knowledge and stories. He gave a short tale of his life growing up in the Dulac area, and his time in the military. One could really see the struggle and hardship that the Houma people have gone through. We all learned a lot from his stories, and have a better understanding the Dulac area.

To end the day, we had a short group recap and reflection of our days events. We also spent the remainder of our night playing Uno and trying to finish this 1000 piece puzzle (almost there!). Time is slowly ticking closer to when we will have to leave Louisiana, but our remaining days will definitely be an adventure. 

- Catherine and Andrew 

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A busy day painting away!

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In order to go through our 'inner journeys', some of us might be looking for learning how to be calmer or maybe find a way to form a meaning of their lives, and some others might search for a sense of confidence or an escape from feelings like envy or anger.

Before coming here, we never realized how much travel, the outer journey, can participate to our inner journeys; we clearly now see how every destination we think of contains within it qualities that could possibly help character nourishment: there are places that could help with anxiety and others improve one's self-esteem. There are activates that are good for reducing egoism and others that are good for helping us realize what we truly want as a future...

Today, we learnt how working in a garden (1) can function as a catalyst for ‘perspective’, an assist to move away from being self-absorbed towards being resilient and sharing. we learnt that visiting the French quarter (2) should never be referred to as a ‘place to chill’, something to enjoy and then gradually forget about three days later; wandering around such a place should be an occasion to re-orient personality: It should be a cry out to become better people;

We are leaving New Orleans as more conscious travelers, aware that we need to look for places that could convey psychological qualities like sharing and perspective; we should always aim for places that will push us towards digging within.

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(1) We visited and worked at capstone garden project in Lower 9th Ward, run by David Young

http://www.capstone118.org/

(2) Evening time was free time to check out things of interest to us in the city

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We left work early yesterday, and Bob, once again, volunteered to bring us to sightseeing. We went to the city park, the garden district, the French quarter, and so on. During this trip, I knew more about Bob, and I thought he is actually a very nice guy. I wrote my misjudgment about him, and I want to take those words back.

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December 9th, 2016

TGIF!

Today we all woke up feeling a bit drained. It’s Friday, so we were on the last day of a full week of work. We woke up to chilling 35 degree weather which was a bummer because we all want it to be warm!. The usual breakfast was prepared (bacon and eggs), and we were off to start our day. 

Layered up and ready to go, we arrived at out work sites for the last day of working with lowernine.org. By this point, I would say we were all fairly dedicated to finishing as much of the projects as we could in the little amount of time we had left. The two painting groups kept on painting, and killing it, while the group working on St. Maurice st. continued installing the flooring and siding. Kaye and Ellen also joined the St. Maurice st. team, which was a nice addition. They really helped in making progress with the floors. Kamin and I almost finished the putting up the plywood on the back wall of the house, but we unfortunately ran out of time. Leaving our sites behind proved to be harder than we believed it would be. We worked for four days on our sites and learned a lot about what goes into rebuilding. One thing that we learned is that it is a very slow process. Even with 10 people working all day (like on my site), the progress seemed slow. I think we were all very proud of what we had accomplished in these few short days, however, we wish we could do more. Every thing we did truly matters to the amazing people who are trying to bring back their neighborhoods and homes. The group that painted a house after a house fire got to meet homeowner (Lathan) and hear his stories. Meeting the local people and being able to hear their stories and hardships is part of what drives us to do what we do. I think some of us became attached to our projects and the people involved. Personally, I wish I could stay through until the end to see the finished home I was working on, and I know others felt the same way. At around 4:00, we headed back to the lower 9th house to meet with Laura, the executive director. We were able to share highs and lows of the week in order for her to improve and work on the programming for the next groups coming in.

When we returned to project homecoming volunteer village, it was time to shower and get ready for the gala! Though we were tired from a long week of hard work, we were excited to dress up and go out! Before the gala, we talked about the highs and lows of the week in regards to how we were feeling. A lot of the lows were about the cold weather, which isn’t a bad thing, considering we can’t control that. A few highs included learning to use power tools, being able to see that the work we were putting in was paying off (fresh coat of paint, new walls, etc.), and being able to meet and hear stories from residents of the lower 9th ward. Hearing these stories proved to be very meaningful to the group. 

Off to the gala we went. There were a variety of items available for the silent auction, which a few group member bid on. After realizing that there was no food for the pescetarians and non-pork eaters, we soon decided to head elsewhere to get dinner. What better place and Popeyes. Now the night is over, everyone is in bed, and it is time to sleep, but.......

Lastly, we couldn’t do any of this without our fearless leaders, Jan, Ellen, and Ben. A sincere thank you for a week full of laughs, coffee runs and delicious doughnuts. I feel extremely lucky to be a part of this group full of amazing people. 

<3 Alyssa 

Group working on siding and flooring at St Maurice st.

group working on painting Lathan’s house after a house fire

other group...not pictured

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We woke up to eat breakfast. The breakfast was good. We had the usual eggs and bacon. Everyone was very tired this morning. It's been a week since we have been here and everyone has been working tremendously hard, not only getting to know how to utilize the construction tools but also adapting to the rich New Orleans culture. We returned to our respective construction sites and continued working on the assigned projects. Cameron's group is almost finished with the deck. The other two groups continued painting. It's interesting to see the progress of each group. We have accomplished a lot in just a couple of days. It feels very fulfilling to be doing all this work for people who need the help. For lunch, we went to Ester and Errol's house. We listened to their experience post Katrina. It was enlightening seeing how much they had been through and how they were resilient and strong. Their house was amazingly rebuilt. Everyone in the group had an oppurtunity to tour the house and admire the design by the volunteers. It was fascinating to see what volunteers can do for people and to see the finished house. For dinner we had a guest from the Gulf Restoration Network. His talk was really interesting and engaging. A lot of people had questions pertaining to the wetlands and the nonprofit about what they do and the future of the gulf coast. In the evening we had the opportunity to go to Rock N Bowl. It was a great way to experience the Louisiana culture. Most of us danced to the music and it was very different from what all of us are used to. There were people playing the washboard which we have never seen before. This was very interesting to see. Overall, the experience at Rock N Bowl was very enjoyable.

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Another day hard at work!