Jambalaya makes my tummy go J-A-M-B-A-L-A-Y-A...New Orleans

Like any city, New Orleans immediately spoke to me the definition of itself. This was a one word representation of a city’s spirit; COMMUNITY. Driving through the streets of the city, it slowly panned into a scene of France with connected zero lot line homes (I know what this means thanks to my internship with the Perry Property Group) and townhomes. Just the sheer lack of distance between homes of each home is enough to unite this area. Then we arrived at St. Bernard’s Community Center (a center for people in the 9th Ward in poverty and still recovering from Katrina), and I found a new type of Cajun community.
Remembering back to Katrina, I had been a freshman at Belmont. The next four years of my life have drastically changed me, and from the stories I heard at St. Bernard’s of the 9th Ward, after Katrina, the 9th Ward along with the rest of New Orleans was developing too. Stephen, a staff member at St. Bernard’s Community Center, guided and directed our group into activities such as taking inventory of food to be handed out, organizing clothes, and helping people carry groceries. The Louisiana day was muggy and sticky, but with sweat pouring down my face and my 40/40-souvenir hat on, I found a peace in the physicality of service moving containers of food and soaps into order. Looking at this area now with so much unbelievable damage, my mind couldn’t wrap around the fact that this place or area was much worse in damage. In comparing my growth as an individual in the past four years to New Orleans’ aesthetic and community reconstruction, I believe maybe we are at the same level of development.
As we drove by towards Bourbon St. for Beignets and coffee at Café Du Monde, Chris told our group a fact about New Orleans, which drew my attention away from looking wide-eyed across the French Quarter. “New Orleans is below sea level and they bury their dead above ground,” he confided, so when it floods the city doesn’t have a Night of the Living Dead scene of floating bodies. Thinking of this now I see how this area had to start repairing from less than nothing or below a standard level of living. Building is hard work involving sweat, dirt, and intelligence, but building on damaged ground is so much harder. It is easier to train a puppy than a dog who has been abused. It is easier to start from nothing than a destroyed something. In that, New Orleans has grown at a slower pace since Katrina maybe because it was like starting not for the first time but over and a little behind the starting line of the race. With that, the 9th Ward workers still had an air of the word that I had sensed from New Orleans. A word of promise.
COMMUNITY. The word kept calling like sweet nothings in my ear. Kept seeping from the fabric of a broken area. The word oozed from the watermarks, dilapidated homes, faces of the staff members at the mission, and the expressions of those they served. This gives me hope. Hope for New Orleans to continue this feel of community, which lies even in the nearness of their houses. Stephen said with an excited grin, “Every other city has a 5 year rate of people that stay. New Orleans has a 50 year.” I hope refugees return with a new sense of yearning and determination which only distance can bring to build New Orleans. Next time I return (which I fully intend on) I will hear COMMUNITY calling to me again to join in on the Cajun atmosphere.