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Below is the quick version of our trip to the Gulf Coast, though I realize it seems rather long. Click here to check out our photos. Read the entries below for details on various aspects of our trip, written topically rather than chronologically.

Friday, March 16: After work, we drove from our home in Silver Spring MD, through DC, down to Blacksburg VA. It was sleeting when we left, and snowed a bit as well in Virginia. It took us about 5 and a half hours. We spent the night with our friends Ryan and Elyn.

Saturday, March 17: We listened to Irish music in celebration of St. Patrick’s Day as we drove from Blacksburg through southwestern Virginia, eastern Tennessee, the northwestern corner of Georgia, across Alabama, and into Mississippi. We got to Hattiesburg MS around 6 pm CDT – the trip took about 11 hours. We moved into our volunteer housing, a Habitat home that had been turned into a bunkhouse for 12 people. We were the first ones to arrive. We drove around Hattiesburg a little bit – a cute university town (home of University of Southern Mississippi) but perhaps struggling a bit economically.

Sunday, March 18: We got up early and met one of our Site Supervisors, J.R. We also met the group that had arrived late the night before and was staying in the bunkhouse next door – 12 students from the University of Maryland Law School. J.R. gave us various projects in the three Habitat homes across the street, which were in various stages of completion. Dave and I installed a doorjamb in the kitchen, and helped a pair of law students install a vanity in the bathroom. Since the week promised to be full and intense, J.R. only had us work a half day. We all had lunch around noon and then the law students went off to go canoeing. Dave and I spontaneously decided to do the two-hour drive to New Orleans to see how it’’s recovering. (Read the report in “On Katrina“.) Before heading back to Hattiesburg, we had dinner at the home of our friends John and Christy in Jefferson Parish, and heard some stories about the difficulties of living in a city that is having difficulties coping with post-disaster realities.

Monday, March 19: The build team gathered around 7:30 am, now including not only us and the students from UMd, but also a family of three from Seattle and a group of 20 or so people from a Baptist church in Bethlehem, PA. Two men from this group were our new housemates, and the rest were staying in hotels nearby. The main goal for the day was to frame the walls for a new house, which at the beginning of the day was only a cement pad next to the three in-process homes. In addition, there were smaller jobs that needed to be done in some of these houses. Dave became a leader on the team framing the new house, while I and a girl from UMd put moulding around inside door frames at the most completed house. We finished up close to 5 pm —– a long day of construction! The law student invited us to join them for a yummy home-cooked dinner, then we all went out bowling.

Tuesday, March 20: Once again getting an early start, Dave continued to head up the framing team, leading the crew on putting up inside walls. I ended up heading up a paint crew in the second-most completed house. A new group had been added to our team, a bunch of undergrads from Earlham College in Indiana. They made a great paint crew, and we got the inside ceilings and walls of the entire house primed and ready to paint the next day. After work was done and we were cleaned up, Dave took me out to dinner for my birthday at a cute locally-owned pub called the Keg and Barrel.

Wednesday, March 21: The law students had left but we still had a good sized team. Dave kept up the work on the new house, and I helped out for a while putting up some of the ceiling joists. Starting mid-morning, I oversaw a new group from Earlham College to paint the walls and ceilings of the house I was working on the day before. It was another full day of work. Afterwards, Dave and I picked up take-out barbecue from a local place and took it to have dinner with our friends Sue, Ellen, and Will, the family from Seattle. They were staying in a cabin on a lake at a state park about 10 miles down the road. It was a fun and relaxing evening.

Thursday, March 22: The Earlham College students moved on to do some work down in New Orleans, and most of the folks from the Baptist church had formed their own crews working on smaller projects such as patio roofs. That meant that Dave’s crew, which had come to the point of starting to put the roof beams on top of the house, consisted of the family from Seattle and our Site Manager, Mike. It was slower going than earlier in the week. I helped for a while, handing up roof beams as they were being cut. I later did some cleanup and detail work on the third house, to get it ready for Monday’s inspection before the drywall could be put in. After work, Dave and I drove around the Hattiesburg area, inspecting some of the hurricane damage and also general state of Hattiesburg. We had a very unhealthy but very tasty dinner of Gulf Coast style fried seafood.

Friday, March 23: Dave continued to work with Mike, Will, and Sue on getting the roof up. He had help from a few new individuals: two local women who volunteer every Friday. Ellen and I were tasked with a couple of other projects on this house, and were fortunate to have a few hours of help from a couple of great local college students both named Lindsay. We put weather-proof wrapping on the front of the house, then installed windows and sealed them. About halfway through the day, the folks from Pennsylvania headed out, and the job site got very quiet. By 5 pm, everyone was tired, and J.R. was ready to call it a day. The new house had most of the roof beams on it, and the windows were all in and sealed. It had been a good week of work, and we said farewell to our new friends from Seattle and to our great Site Supervisor J.R. Then we went to Keg and Barrel to watch the Hoyas beat Vanderbilt — hooray!

Saturday, March 24: We gathered all our things out of the volunteer bunkhouse and packed up our car. We said goodbye to Mike, who told us we could come back any time. We hit the road around 9 am and headed toward Nashville, going back through Mississippi and Alabama. It took about 6 and a half hours to get there. We stayed with our friend Joyce, and had a chance to enjoy more Southern culture by eating at Jack’’s Bar-B-Que and checking out a bluegrass concert.

Sunday, March 25: We left Nashville at 8 am and drove for hours and hours, through eastern Tennessee and Virginia. We were so happy to get to I-66 and head toward DC. As we got into the DC area, we listened on the radio to the Eastern Division NCAA basketball game, in which Georgetown magically beat UNC to head toward the Final Four. Go Hoyas!

Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast on August 29, 2005 with a force and intensity that was greater than forecast. The city of New Orleans suffered the greatest damage, largely because the city is shaped like a bowl, and the levees that hold back the bodies of water that surround the city broke and the entire place filled with water. The communities along the Gulf of Mexico, such as Gulfport and Biloxi, also suffered greatly, particularly the homes and businesses within a few blocks of the beach, due to 27 foot waves known as storm surges that literally knocked down buildings and washed them either inland or out to sea. (There’s a lot of great detail on Wikipedia if you’re interested: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Katrina)

As Katrina proceeded, it whirled up Interstate 59 like a weed whacker, snapping trees in half, knocking down signs and utility poles, and peeling roofs off of buildings. This was the damage that was sustained in the Hattiesburg area (central Mississippi), causing some areas to be without power for up to four weeks and some businesses to close due to a lack of capital to rebuild.

Continue reading “On Hurricane Katrina” →

While Hattiesburg was hit pretty hard by Hurricane Katrina —– certainly harder than a community 75 miles inland is typically struck by a hurricane —– it didn’’t suffer nearly the damage that the communities further south sustained. On the other hand, though, the Hattiesburg area wasn’t as diverse economically as New Orleans, Gulfport, and Biloxi. The main ““white collar” industry in Hattiesburg is the University of Southern Mississippi (aka Southern Miss), and there is also a hospital. Most of Hattiesburg is working class: many jobs are military (National Guard base Camp Shelby is nearby), industrial (there are plants for Pepsi and Budweiser, as well as some local industry such as a foundry), and service sector (small shops and restaurants, and of course Wal-Mart). One of the women working with us to do her ““sweat equity” in order to qualify for one of the Habitat homes told us she was a Nurse’’s Assistant.

Check out our photos of Hattiesburg, including some photos of remaining hurricane damage.

The Hattiesburg Area Habitat for Humanity affiliate had been building homes at a rate of 2-3 per year. The street we were working on had about 7 of these homes, which already had low-income families living in them. Once the hurricane rebuilding effort got underway, the affiliate seized the opportunity and set a goal of building 40 homes per year. So far this year, they had built the two homes that were currently the volunteer bunkhouses (though one would have a family move into it in April), plus the three existing “in-process” homes that were there when we arrived, plus the one we started the week we were there —– all this by mid-March! With the help of weekly teams of volunteers and donations coming in like never before, the Hattiesburg Area Habitat for Humanity is able to offer safe, decent housing to families who would not previously been able to think of such a thing. Some of them were evicted from apartments after Katrina when the landlords determined that it wasn’t worth fixing the hurricane damage. Some of them may have lost jobs when their employers closed or had to cut back after the disaster. Others are simply hardworking low-income families who are living through an ongoing unrelated pre-and-post-hurricane economic disaster.

Kudos go to the incredible staff at the Hattiesburg Area Habitat for Humanity, who we were fortunate to work with while we were there: the Site Manager, Mike, and Site Supervisors Earl and J.R., and staff member Natacha, who wears many hats trying to identify families, coordinate volunteers, and raise funds for the affiliate. Visit their website and find out how you can contribute at http://www.hattiesburghabitat.org/.

Faith is a major motivation for me and for Dave to spend a week building homes for low-income families. Jesus set an example of serving the poor, the sick, the disadvantaged, and said that any time we do an act of service for ““the least of these”, we are also doing it for the Lord (Matthew 25). The Bible says that if we present ourselves to God as ““living sacrifices”, it is considered a ““spiritual act of worship” (Romans 12). It seemed appropriate to us to do so by sacrificing our spring break and vacation time and spend it doing hard work for God’’s children rather than relaxing on the beach somewhere. This gives us an opportunity for us to give voice to those who have none (Proverbs 31) by sharing with our friends, families, and blog readers the truth of how working families are faring in the post-Katrina Gulf Coast region.

Habitat for Humanity was founded on similar philosophies. It’’s not a missionary organization, but it follows the example of Jesus Christ by caring for impoverished families all over the world, in a compassionate, respectful, and sustainable way. Habitat’’s materials are quite clear about the fact that it is a Christian organization, starting with its mission statement and streaming through its website, printed materials, and its monthly magazine. Habitat is equally clear that it welcomes supporters and volunteers of all faiths to join in fulfilling its work. Check out the “Theology of the Hammer” page on its website: http://www.habitat.org/ap/theology_hammer.aspx.

Continue reading “On Religion” →

If you volunteer for Habitat —– particularly for an entire week —– you should not kid yourself that you’re doing a nice little service project. If you want to do something that helps someone else and feels good, stop and think about what you’re getting into first; maybe tutoring or handing out sandwiches is a better choice for you.

A Habitat build is a construction site, and while most of the workers are not stereotypical construction workers, the work is still the same, and the dangers are the same (if not greater, since there are lots of rookies).

At the beginning of each day, the Site Supervisor is supposed to give a safety talk. It varies in length and scope, but the one thing that is always emphasized is: don’t leave anything on the top of a ladder. You or someone else may try to move the ladder and then you’ll have something come crashing down on your head.

There’s a very good reason why they make all volunteers sign a waiver.

Continue reading “On Construction” →