Keepin It Cajun: Whistle While You Work [Tuesday Update]

We arrived at our H4H site at 7:30am on Tuesday morning, where we met our project manager, Andrew (aka Catfish) and his assistant, Elissa. Also on site that morning was a sweet woman with a stereotypical N'awlins accent, named Joyce, who will be the proud (we hope) owner of the house that we are building. Rounding out the Habitat crew were John and Mark, who are two great guys that volunteer their time just because. Mark is more of a 'veteran' if you will, but he is a pro with tools and knows how to teach you new things, but not before making you realize how dumb your original intentions were =P John is a really nice guy too, he's a music professor at Tulane, and plays guitar in a band - it just goes to show the wide range of volunteers and great people there are out and about. Meanwhile, we learned that Elissa is assigned to H4H through the Americorps program, which is also how Andrew initially got involved with H4H before they offered him a full-time spot as a project manager.

For this first day, we predominantly worked on the floor of the house, which is raised about four feet of the ground with cinder blocks...it seems to be the new anti-flood construction style. Most of my day was spent with Mark, as we were installing floor beams for the front porch. It really was a blast to get working on the house, especially because we got to work with Joyce and learn about her family.

When we got back that afternoon, our trip coordinator, Linda, had arranged for us to tour some of the less-seen parts of New Orleans with a local named John Wilkes Booth (yea, I don't believe that's his real name either). Now, you want to talk about stereotypical N'awlins - this guy was it. He was this little old man, wearing jeans and a dirty t-shirt with a twang like no other. Also, I'm pretty sure that 98% of his sentences ended with "N'all" (translated as, 'and all'). He took us to see the levys and the Mississippi River, as well as the 9th ward where there was a lot of damage, that is still visible 6 years later. It was quite the tour with some beautiful views and some intense ones. What was most interesting to me is that prior to this week, I thought that a levy was some type of steel reinforced wall that was used to keep the bodies of water in check. On the contrary, for those of you who don't know, a levy is pretty much a sand dune, just with rocks and dirt...almost like a beaver dam. That being said, after Katrina occurred, they decided to put in steel beams that travel 70 feet into the ground to better support the levys.

Wild stuff.