feb 16

February 16, 2009

We decided Saturday night to just go to bed at 10 and set the alarm for 4:30am to finish packing. I tossed and turned a bit and then crashed. Rockstar hubby was in the spare room finishing off his coughing cold. I woke up in the middle of the night and then rolled over to check the time. 5:23. We had to be at our rendez-vous point at 6:30 and it was a 45 minute drive. I flew.
We got to the airport and checked in, then waited. We boarded a teeny tiny little plane with about 50 seats on it. I managed to keep my eyes closed for the hour flight. I think a rookie 12 year old was landing the plane though. It was insane. I’m so glad I took gravol because my breakfast of a green protein shake would have been all over baldy sitting in front of me. We flew up, down, side to side, sped up, slowed down. It was brutal. He didn’t get the ‘landing clap’. We collected our wits and shuttled ourselves to the right place in Philadelphia. Yes, the airport is huge, but not as huge as I thought it would be. There were stores (Gap?!) and a dunkin donuts but not Starbucks. There was a wannabe spot but I decided to forgo the caffeine fix (yes, I know I’m not allowed any but at that point I didn’t care). As we waited to be called, the ‘boarding agent’ announced that there were not enough seats on the flight and she would be calling us by zones, and if we were last in line, we would not be getting on the plane. Which freaked the four of us out by the way as we were in Philadephia, waiting to get to Houston so we could drive for 4 hours to our destination. But we boarded and I managed to sleep the entire time and we landed well. We found our group of Disaster Relief people, snagged a rental and at 6:30pm, left the airport. But first we needed food. We stopped at Wendy’s. I ate a salad. I drooled watching everyone else scarf burgers and frostees.
We couldn’t see much. There weren’t a lot of lights and not a lot of traffic. We stopped briefly at Walmart to get essentials such as sleeping bags and pillows that wouldn’t fit in our suitcases. We drove around the coast and were mesmerized by the beautiful building with lights all over them, looking like a magical fairy land of castles and turrets. Upon closer inspection we discovered that they were actually all oil rigs set up with lights all over in pretty ways. It was so weird.
We arrived in Cameron at 11pm, found our jammies and crashed on the floor.

We woke up at 6am and found that the power was out. Breakfast was cereal and juice. As we finished eating, the power came on. We loaded up and headed out to the site.

I can’t tell you the devastation we saw. You wouldn’t believe me. Every single house was destroyed. I mean, you see pictures of it on tv and they try to show the worst ones, but it’s so different when you see it in person. A bungalow would be tilted backwards, with the bottom half of the walls ripped off, the top of the siding still on. Mud was everywhere. Cars had been pushed/thrown/blows onto large cement blocks and couldn’t be removed. Every house that was destroyed had spray paint on it of the person’s name and address. One house had a large ‘Help’ sign on it. The houses being rebuilt were all on very high stilts, like starting at the third story of a house. They look like homes you’d find on the ocean, except they aren’t beach houses. They are just tall, lonely looking houses looking over the dead grass and dark muddy lakes that can’t be bothered to disappear. Everything is gray, brown, muddy...it’s bland. The main road has deep ditches of water on each side. The ocean is a good 10 km away, but you can’t see it for all of the dead reeds, grass and trees. The hardware store is just stilts and a roof. Under the roof are tables with boxes of supplies and bright lights shining on them.
Myself and D dropped off the men at the work site. The church.
In Cameron, they were ravished by two hurricanes. Practically everyone had their house built again when the second one came through. The people are so polite. So kind, so friendly. But so tired. So...hopeless. RSH and M got to talk to a family across from the house they were rebuilding. The father was a fisherman. Well, he fished for oysters, then for shrimp. RSH said he was so friendly and polite ‘yes sir, no sir’. Puts all of us Canadians to shame I think.
But today, I felt useless. I tidied and organized the kitchen. Then we drove to the nearest town, Lake Charles, which was an hour drive, including a drive over an insane bridge. Spent 20 minutes trying to find the health food store to find out it was out of business. Ran to Walmart and didn’t buy everything because we were running so behind. We had to rush back to make dinner.