Volunteer Work in New Orleans, by Shannon Lee

Shannon Lee is a participant in the JustWorks Katrina Rebuilding camp in New Orleans.

When we finally got to work, we were divided into three work groups: gutting a house, working for the Blue House (involved the clearing of yards and removing junk off of property), and working on the wetlands. Pretty much everyone wanted the gutting project. I got the wetlands, which, by the way, were actually very, very dry.

The task at hand was to clean up all of the garbage lying around an environmental sanctuary. Upon hearing it, I was relatively disheartened. I mean, picking up garbage? Anyone could do that anywhere. Some of the things we found and picked up changed my mind. There were bits and pieces of housing insulation everywhere, metal utensils, ceramic tiles -- it just showed how powerful Katrina was and how far it transported things.

Some of us had also found a turtle that was just parched. It was situated so far away from any water, and we managed to save it. Seeing and hearing that really put the purpose into the deed. The sanctuary was just so empty and wrecked. All the trees were completely bent and fallen, the weeds were growing out of control, and the building and education centers were looted and completely desolate. It was a pretty eerie sight.

The gutting crew was in charge of the gutting of a bakery storefront that was just in the process of being turned into an evangelical church (pretty ironic, considering we're all UUs). While they were gutting, they were paid a visit by the man who owned the facility and was described as being so amazing and grateful. This was a man was married for 40 years and had lost his wife during the hurricane, along with almost everything else that he owned. And yet, he still had the warmth in his giant of a heart to be so loving and thankful.

When you hear something like this, you really just can't help but be grateful for all you have, and feel so overwhelmingly heart warmed that it brings you to tears. The actual process of the house gutting sounded incredible as well. The fluidity of it all, how everyone's energy seemed to radiate into one another and the beauty of each individual working together without words, was such a spiritual experience.

We were all able to gut together today. You can't imagine what it was like to gut these homes. I mean, we were removing things like ID cards, old family portraits, old report cards, buckets of old 45s and records, letters, and most disturbingly, the remaining skeleton of the family dog.

Even though these were all material things, it was so amazing how personal they were. It felt like you were just invading these people's homes and throwing everything they own out. There's really nothing like it, and it sends shocks right through your heart. You got to know the people as you were demolishing their things, and yet, we never met them.

When you think about the statistics of how many houses were destroyed and are in dire need of attention, it's pretty minimizing, and the work you're doing seems relatively insignificant. But the catastrophe that was Katrina can't be seen only as a statistic, a number. The story of Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath is the story of individual people, families, and communities. When volunteering, it's good to keep in mind that it's quality over quantity. The homes we gutted belong to people, not numbers, and need to be treated as such.

Though Katrina was a horrible natural disaster, it was also the display of so many systemic problems the United States is plagued with. It's like Katrina stripped and washed away this layer of what looked like an ideal U.S. city to reveal this raw and problem-ridden society.

During one of our reflections, someone quoted Eleanor Roosevelt, "A woman is like a teabag. You never know how strong she is until you put her in hot water." Replace woman with government, Hurricane Katrina was that hot water. I expected immediate reaction on all levels of the government, but I saw nothing. It's like they don't care about what happens to the citizens of their own country. That's not disappointing. That's terrifying.