Our cab winds through New Orleans’ streets, escaping the French Quarter’s isolated decadence for a Habitat for Humanity building site in the Ninth Ward. At the site, April steers my friend and me through rows of Easter egg-colored houses perched on cinderblock pylons. A single mother of three, April is sweating through her equity hours to earn a Habitat home.
Although April has just ended her night shift at a children’s group home, her effusive thanks to us and the non-profit reverberate through the otherwise silent streets. The nearby ramshackle houses bear the tea-colored scars of the floodwaters and neon-orange tattoos from first responders searching for Katrina’s victims.
LiAnna DavisCLICK IMAGE TO VIEW
A new Habitat for Humanity house (left) sits next to a home damaged in Hurricane Katrina.
A supervisor breaks us into teams to tackle the much-acclaimed rebuilding of New Orleans. Our job?
To build a flower box.
I gaze at the flood detritus—a basketball hoop, a Big Gulp cup from 7-11, a rusted Buick. Building an ornamental flower box here seems as futile as moving a mountain one wheelbarrow full of earth at a time.
As we piece together the wooden planter, sawdust whirring off the chop-saw clings to our sweat-soaked skin. Our shovels overturn sandy ground, chalky shells, and a little girl’s hair elastic with pink plastic balls on the ends.
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One New Orleans resident lives in an RV outside his/her home until repairs are complete.
At break, April recalls the days after Katrina. A former EMT, she served in the Superdome emergency shelter. “We ran out of food and medicine after a couple of days.”
Her smile broadens as she passes around her children’s picture. “My 4-year-old daughter performed for the elderly people to pass the time. They called her the Princess of the Superdome. We did the best we could with what we had,” she says, shrugging. “We just have to keep going.”
We return to our flower box, and our wheelbarrow, to move a mountain.
Reach the reporter at ashley.biggers@asu.edu.
