Contributor: Marcus Mundy

Misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows. -- William Shakespeare

I am certain that 19 months ago my cousin did not envision my sleeping in the extra bed in her trailer home. Strange bedfellows, indeed.

Still, I will spend another night in Peggy and Ellsworth Frank's FEMA trailer, another brief night of slumber, another early morning (this time to catch my flight), in the selfsame bunk bed I mentioned in an earlier note. Most of our Flight of Friendship "team" from Oregon is traveling back west today, having worked, observed and cared feverishly, while empathizing furiously, for a few important days in Louisiana.

Today's tale, however, is about a few generous Oregonian hearts and my last full day in New Orleans.

Today is the day I had reserved to honor my Grandma Mary, and my Grandma Lillian and Grandpa Vernel, and my Mom, and my cousins. To honor my family by working a bit to get the home in which my Mom grew up, a quiet little house ensconced near the corner of St. Anthony and Humanity Streets in the Seventh Ward, in a better state than when I arrived. I had hoped to spend some time and try to take their minds off of their misery by doing what I could in the time I had.

I got up early to pick up tools at a lifesaving place called Hands On Network, where tools can be borrowed and returned for the myriad day jobs confronting nonprofit agencies and individual New Orleanians as they seek to rebuild. I dropped them off at the house, went to the hotel, and rustled up the "crew".

Rather than undertaking this personal journey alone, as I had once planned, I was joined by a new "family" to complement the efforts for my own family. Sho and Loen Dozono, Kristen Dozono, Tad Dozono and friend Aaron, Sunshine Dixon, Patrick Eckford and the quintessentially useful Rick Denhart of the omnipresently helpful Mercy Corps all spent the better part of Wednesday working like dogs for people they had never met.

How they came to be there was a story in itself. Even back in Portland, at the planning meetings preparing for this trip, Sho and Loen (in particular) were doggedly obsessed with identifying a project with a personal, Portland connection. They kept asking, and eventually we determined that this project was do-able. (I was grateful for their offer, and glad to be able to do something tangible for my Mom's favorite little cousin).

After many eleventh-hour calls and through Mercy Corps's connections, I finally got through to the Hands On Network, which provided us the tools to work. The rest was Beaver State sweat equity, and it was delivered unflinchingly by the highly unpaid crew of volunteers.

Without hesitation or pause, they scraped paint (and scraped paint and scraped paint) in the heat, in the sunshine, on precarious ladders, at risk of lead-laden flakes inveigling their way into their pores, and did not stop until we had attacked most of the house (now home to my younger cousin Ayana and her family). They hammered loosened boards, ripped down no longer useful parts of the porch and house and the intrepid Patrick even went so far as to perform minor carpentry work (borrowing time and tools from the workers across the street) to shore up a bedraggled portion of the formerly-screened-in-now-open-air porch, and its support stanchions.

They would let Peggy and Ayana do precious little to assist, allowing them only to captain the trips to Lowe's for the occasional need such as paint or equipment.

They paused but briefly for lunch (tasty fried chicken, and greasy but delicious French fries; there wasn't a Zupan's around the corner) and then got right back to it. If they were on the clock, I would have had to pay them overtime, because I know it was more than an eight-hour day.

They refused to leave until we had made a noticeable difference, which to the crew meant painting (with primer at least) the front façade of the house so that that one thing was done for the family. It also meant honoring a request by Ayana that the symbol appearing on her house, and most houses in New Orleans, the big "X" with cryptic code denoting whether or not any dead bodies were found in a home after inspection by government authorities, be sanded off and painted over. The team undertook this particular job with alacrity.

Young Sunshine worked until it was time for her afternoon flight to depart, but the others toiled onward.

I was an awful painter but no one seemed to mind.

Not a complaint was heard throughout the day.

The pièce de résistance for me was that at the end of this long day, Mr. Eckford committed to returning later to more completely address the work we had not finished. (True to his word, he appeared the next day and continued his work.)

At long last what I found I had discovered -- and right near Humanity Street at that -- was humanity.
The personal act of giving themselves, and their time and effort, to fellow human beings was moving and meaningful, will be appreciated always and, despite it impacting just one little house on one little street in little old New Orleans, will be remembered forever by my family, the surprised recipients of this gift.

This was the best of Oregon, of the United States, of the world, encapsulated in small acts of generosity, sacrifice and kindness which made a difference to folks who hadn't had too much to be thankful for in the aftermath of this natural and manmade disaster.

This last, unheralded, unpublicized, hardly planned and barely organized event embodied for me what this trip was all about: finding and filling needs, caring for people as the individuals they are (not as the media fiction or, worse, nonentities they have become), and realizing that if smart people of goodwill want to make a difference in the lives of New Orleanians, they have but to make it happen.

My exhaustion at the end of the day was the best tired I have felt in a long time. As I showered in the too-short shower and laid down in the too-small bed in the too-expensive but still too-tiny trailer, I felt that the trip was worth it.

I trust, hope and expect that Portland, and all of Oregon, will continue the momentum established by this hardy group of citizens and help New Orleans all the way back. I thank the Dozonos, Brent Stewart, Bruce Sampson and Randall Edwards (the co-chairs for Flight of Friendship) for providing me the opportunity to receive (as so many FoF members mentioned on the final gathering Tuesday evening) much, much more than I gave on this visit to one of the greatest U.S. cities.

New Orleans is us.

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"The idea concerns the fact that this country wants nostalgia. They want to go back as far as they can -- even if it's only as far as last week. Not to face now or tomorrow, but to face backwards. And yesterday was the day of our cinema heroes riding to the rescue at the last possible moment. The day of the man in the white hat or the man on the white horse - or the man who always came to save America at the last moment -- someone always came to save America at the last moment -- especially in 'B' movies. And when America found itself having a hard time facing the future, they looked for people like John Wayne. But since John Wayne was no longer available, they settled for Ronald Reagan -- and it has placed us in a situation that we can only look at -- like a 'B' movie."

The excerpt above, from a Gil Scott-Heron song called "B Movie", came frequently to mind during my stay in New Orleans, particularly the refrain of the song:

"This ain't really your life,
Ain't really your life,
Ain't really ain't nothing but a movie."

The first part of this song came to mind because many of the people we encountered wanted to "face backwards," opining "what-if" after inconsequential "what-if". What if a review of the levee system had been conducted earlier, with a remediation prior to this tragedy? What if information about the severity or risks of danger had been communicated earlier? What if one of the two bridges in and out of the Ninth Ward had been accessible during the hurricane, rather than lifted up? What if the damage had been to the French Quarter and the Garden District, rather than the poorer sections of the city? What if the displaced and deceased had not been Black?

Many of the folks just wished someone, or something, or some government had swept in to save them at the last minute. It wasn't meant to be.

The song's refrain reminded me of how they feel now. It's as if they are living through someone else's life and not their own. As if, like a movie, once the closing credits roll, they can leave the theater and continue happily with their pre-Katrina lives. Many conversations confirmed this feeling - conversations with my family, Leroy the doorman at the hotel, the folks we met in our tours, even locals in the restaurants we visited. It was always more wistful than real, however they were brutally grounded in reality and knew that the "road home" was not going to be that easy.

I guess I prefaced all of my remarks about this day, our day of action, because I believe context is key as I begin to describe how my day went.

There were many projects available to us today. Some of us planted trees. Some carefully tore down homes. Some built a storage facility for the Oregon products yet to be shipped down to New Orleans. And some cleaned up neighborhoods.

Our group, which included fellow Oregonians Myron Fleck, Tom Kelly, Maxine Fitzpatrick, Jan Woodruff, Vicki Tagliafico, chose to help rebuild New Orleans by helping small business recover. Small business is widely recognized as the backbone of most regional economies, and we figured if we could help them, our time will have been well spent. Our task was to mentor several small business owners trying to get something going post-Katrina.

The entrepreneurs ranged from a fisherman to a construction owner to a nonprofit to a landscaper to others. We worked with them individually and in groups, on issues ranging from marketing to priority-setting to strategy to taxes to administration to IT to communications to finance.

All of these professionals were focused on success, committed, willing to work hard, smart and willing to do what it takes. They certainly did not fit the more-than-occasional characterization of malingerers awaiting a government handout to bail them out of their problems. Each member of our mentoring team committed to maintaining contact with our "mentees" until we are sure they have received the needed benefit from our interactions.

That night, the closing reception and report-outs were highlighted by the downloads of the success of each of the respective work projects; by the comments of Sho and Loen Dozono (the King and Queen of Mardi Gras); and by both humorous and moving commentary by leaders of the United Way (Brent Stewart), the American Red Cross (Thomas Bruner), Michael Stewart of the Portland Water Bureau, the Urban League of Portland (moi) and many others. Poignant were the final comments of the evening, as they came from New Orleanians themselves: survivors, rebuilders, and leaders all.

The good part is that, after a long day of laboring, planting, guiding, mentoring, deconstructing, reporting the results of the day at the evening's final gathering and, above all, cooperating with folks in New Orleans, it became clear to me that New Orleans will come back. Curiously, the final thought that came to mind as I shut my eyes was that the seven principles of Kwanzaa reflected the determined New Orleanians I encountered during this trip.

1. Umoja (Unity) To strive for and maintain unity in the family, community, and nation.
2. Kujichagulia (Self-Determination) To define ourselves, name ourselves, create for ourselves and speak for ourselves.
3. Ujima (Collective Work and Responsibility) To build and maintain our community together and make our brothers' and sisters' problems our problems and to solve them together.
4. Ujamaa (Cooperative Economics) To build and maintain our own stores, shops and other businesses and to profit from them together.
5. Nia (Purpose) To make our collective vocation the building and developing of our community in order to restore our people to their traditional greatness.
6. Kuumba (Creativity) To do always as much as we can, in the way we can, in order to leave our community more beautiful and beneficial than we inherited it.
7. Imani (Faith) To believe with all our heart in our people, our parents, our teachers, our leaders and the righteousness and victory of our struggle.

Tomorrow, I will focus on my family.

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Today is the day to get grounded.

We begin our day by touring.

It would take the writings of Dostoevsky, or some other darkly disposed Russian writer, to fully express to you the sadness and desolation represented by current-day New Orleans. This is getting to be a theme of my reports, but today we took a more extensive tour than yesterday, and saw more of the unpleasant conditions our fellow citizens are experiencing in the Crescent City. Right now, the Big Easy is anything but.

We toured the pre-Katrina impoverished and post-Katrina decimated Ninth Ward; saw a slightly deforested levee and received a telling lecture from the Sierra Club; visited the Lower Ninth Ward Neighborhood Empowerment Network Association (NENA) Center, a neighborhood center helping residents get back on their feet through housing, administrative and informational support); visited the Rosa Keller Library in the Broadmoor neighborhood (the aforementioned neighborhood that fought back); were delighted by strong women at another community center; and were constantly reminded as we went from stop to stop that it is the in-betweens that frequently matter. And the in-between views of New Orleans, from the lofty perch of an elevated bus seat, was consistently disappointing: home after dark, shuttered home.

Still, some views were uplifting. For example, how often do you get to see a governor and a mayor plant a tree together? Quintessential Oregonian behavior in a Louisiana elementary school.

Another highlight of our day was walking a "second line," a New Orleans tradition, from a refurbished church and community center to a lovely, recently restored home adjacent to a levee where we had lunch (chicken, red beans and rice, crawfish, and more), heard local music, discussed what we had seen and heard to date, and girded ourselves for an afternoon of more illumination. The sun was high and hot, brightly exposing the dinginess of the community surrounding us. Yet spirits were high, hope was afoot and we charged forward, determined to learn. And learn we did.

The highest point of my day, however, was reserved for the ladies of the Ashé Cultural Arts Center. Each one of the ladies who spoke represented a different facet of the recovery effort, and to a lady they were eloquent, uplifting, positive and inspiring. If they represent the typical spirit of New Orleanians, then New Orleans will be back in a big way.

As hard as it is to believe, most of my compatriots from Oregon and I were exhausted from a day of sitting on our butts being ferried around on a comfortable bus, listening to heartfelt speeches and comments ranging from Governor Kulongoski and Mayor Potter to the incomparable Tricia Jones of NENA and the unforgettable Pastor Bruce.

What was exhausting was that we were finally getting a mental handle on the enormity of what is confronting these folks in New Orleans. And it was that revealed reality, through whatever empathy we could muster, that wore us down. We realized that it was depressing and challenging to us; we also realized that we would fly back to Oregon, and these folks had no choice but to remain, rebuild and restore - or retreat.

Tomorrow we hit the ground.

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It is April Fool's Day, and I feel as if someone has played a horrible joke on the city of New Orleans.

My first, and probably last, night spent in a FEMA trailer was odd, eerie, still and slightly surreal.

After driving around a battered New Orleans last night, my cousin Peggy brought me to her and her husband's current home, which was a small FEMA trailer nestled in front of what used to be her home on Wingate Street, three blocks from the London Avenue Canal - a canal which, during Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath, breached in three separate spots.

The breach flooded their home; the water rose to a level just six inches below her ceiling. It sat there for three and a half weeks, and then receded leaving a destroyed home and neighborhood, mold, shattered memories and a 19-months-and-counting administrative and financial nightmare.

I slept in the lower bunk of a narrow bunkbed near the bathroom. The toilet in the bathroom was so close to the tub that one needed to turn sideways to use the facilities.

I stand well over six feet tall, as does my cousin's husband Ellsworth, and my head was slightly poking through the vent in the top of the shower when I cleaned up in the morning. There is hot water, heated by a propane tank, which must be heated by flipping a switch for quite some time before you need it in the morning.

Taking a walk

I had a short night's sleep, arising at 6:30 because I wanted to walk the neighborhood. As big as I am, my cousin didn't want me to go alone, so she got dressed and away we went.

It was very quiet. There were only a few street lights (we are lucky: their trailer is right under a light). We walked and she proceeded to tell me which neighbors had left, which had come back, which were working on their homes, and which nobody had been back to since the storm.

She showed me house after house that was now being rebuilt, usually on foundations that elevated them from 8 to 15 feet higher than they were originally. She shared with me that because there is limited (or no) flood insurance for homes below a certain height anymore, as a result of the hurricanes, that that will now be the rule. Most of the cost of these structural changes will be borne by the residents.

We toured her neighborhood, walked on the bridge overlooking the canal, looked at the buildings on the University of New Orleans campus, which is a stone's throw from her home, and passed house after decrepit, destroyed or demolished house with few signs of life save for the odd trailer here or there.

What struck me most about this tour was her lack of defeatism, her positive attitude. She is resolute, as are many of her neighbors, to rebuilding.

A small FEMA trailer, home to Mundy's cousin and her husband, stands in front of the still-damaged house. Photo: courtesy of Marcus Mundy

A new reality

Peggy shared with me how overrun her parks were, so they could hardly enjoy even that small getaway. There are more animals - including rodents - proliferating in the neighborhood because of the overgrown vegetation. Safety issues abound. For example, she must chain her propane tanks to her trailer because they are routinely stolen, and "the club" is seen inside of most cars securing the wheel.

We toured and talked, and walked. There were some hopeful signs: a neat house with the statue of the Virgin Mary carefully enshrined on the front lawn. Cleaned out, cleaned up, manicured lawns amidst the desolation, raging against the dying of the light. I finished the walk knowing that these folks will not go gently into that good night.

Despite all, and as dawn was coming into its fullest light, my cousin made a delicious breakfast of grits, sausage, eggs, and waffles for me on one of their two plates, and orange juice in one of their two glasses. I sat at their table, where only one person can sit at a time because of the lack of legroom, and watched the morning news.

This was the beginning to a long, wonderful, enlightening day.

Touring with the Flight of Friendship

We toured the wetlands of this region, acquiring a sense of both its natural beauty, with its unique flora and vegetation, and wildlife. We also got a sense of the power of nature, as we learned about the erosion of the wetlands and the coastline, buffer zones that, when fully formed, protect the Gulf Coast from the ferocity of hurricanes like Katrina and Rita.

During this tour we were able to get pictures of both a governor (Oregon's Governor Ted Kulongoski) and a gator (name unknown); not your usual combination.

We had a po boy lunch, and then began to tour levees. There are parts of the city whose destruction you wouldn't believe, passing a memorial where we learned that the flood waters in that part of the city - the 9th Ward - topped 18 feet deep at times during the event. As we safely traversed the city on an air conditioned bus from a lovely hotel in the largely unfazed French Quarter, the contrast between our accommodations and those of many, many New Orleanians was both stark and unfair, even though our task her is to help.

In fact my hotel room, a single bed room, was far more space than Peggy and Ellsworth have in their small FEMA trailer, a trailer which at one point held six folks, including children and grandchildren.

We toured a neighborhood, Broadmoor, that fought back plans to wipe it from the face of New Orleans and turn it into greenspace, learning what determination and the power of collective effort can do.

Finally, we convened back at the hotel, had dinner with two mayors - Portland's Tom Potter and New Orleans' Ray Nagin - among a host of other focused Oregonians and New Orleanians. We heard stories of both despair and hope, heard pleas for help and requests for direction, and firmed up our resolve for the next phase of this effort.

Tomorrow portends more tours and hard work, but tonight, goodwill and good intentions reign.

You can read Mundy's previous entry, "The Need for Truth and Understanding," by clicking here. You can also Mercy Corps' efforts to help New Orleans recover by making a generous donation to our Hurricane Katrina Rebuilding Fund today.

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I was only beginning to understand, or at least trying to understand, what this kind of new reality really meant.

Today started like a lot of other days: up before the children, shower and shave, out of the house early, no breakfast, meetings lined up.

Today was also extremely different: I was leaving town, beginning on a journey to help others. I introduced the Mayor of Portland to an unseen television audience, I flew to the city where my parents first met and I spent much more time on reflection than most days.

I reflected on my children. I tried to explain to my kids why I was leaving them on the last weekend of their spring break, and why it was so important that I go; to them, initially, it was so much drivel. Before I left, however, and since we had talked about Hurricane Katrina and its effect on folks, they knew that I was going to try to help.

I reflected upon the value of the trip itself. The Flight of Friendship is many things. It most certainly is a heartfelt, well conceived and generous outpouring of humanity and love from one city to another, from people to people. This "mission" defines Portland, and Oregon, at their best. In my short seven years here, I have not always seen that.

I reflected on the impact we could have. Early on, I was determined not to go if surrounded by well meaning but clueless Portlanders with too much time on their hands. There is too much work to do at both the Urban League of Portland, the nonprofit group I lead, and in New Orleans for this group to do anything but hit the ground running and try to make a difference.

What heartens me most of all is not the Flight of Friendship, it is the determination of the leaders of this group to continue far beyond the flight.

This trip is important.

Beginning to understand

My flight was a little hairy, a little turbulent. During the occasional turbulence, I tried to imagine what it would be like to be caught in a hurricane with flooding, with banal decisions left behind, and life and death decisions confronting me moment by moment. I could not.

I tried to understand what my family and friends in New Orleans had gone through, during the hurricane and since. I could not.

My cousin Peggy Frank met me at the airport, drove me into the city, and began to share with me how very little I had understood about the last 19 months in New Orleans.

She began to explain to me how the "real normal" had left, and she shared with me the routines of her life.

The things she did without made a much longer list than the things she now had. The losses she shared in a matter of fact way were as painful to hear about as almost anything I have before.

She began to drive me around the city, even at midnight, and show me places that I had seen in my younger days: my grandmother's house, the now closed Charity Hospital, her destroyed home. It was saddening and maddening, even to see the devastation at night, without the visual detail of the daylight.

Most of all, she told me what they needed here in New Orleans: they needed their resiliency to be respected; they needed understanding; they needed the rest of us getting out of their way; they needed to have the governments facilitate, not impede; they needed truth.

Mercy Corps' New Orleans-based Gulf Coast Hurricane Recovery team recently hosted a delegation of more than 100 Oregonians, including Mundy, Governor Ted Kulongoski and Portland Mayor Tom Potter. Mercy Corps' 11-member team briefed Oregonians on the state of recovery efforts, facilitate their volunteer work and introduce them to community members who are working to bring their city back. You can help that work proceed and expand by making a donation to our Hurricane Katrina Rebuilding Fund today.

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