And We're Off!

SOMEWHERE OUTSIDE IOWA CITY, IOWA – 4:28pm

Three busloads of Oles left the Buntrock Commons parking lot at 9am today, Good Friday, despite the unwelcome blanket of fresh snowfall that covered most of Southern Minnesota earlier this morning. From all residence halls on campus, nearly 120 students lugged their duffle bags and pillows toward the Buntrock Crossroads. Even the snow did not deflate the energy surround this trip and it certainly did not stop Ole Spring Relief III from departing for Biloxi on time.

Just one day before, students were busy finishing up mid-terms. One OSR3 trip coordinator, Emily Segar ’09, expressed her giddy excitement around 11am during the final OSR3 committee meeting immediately after finishing a morning mid-term exam. She had just found out that her afternoon class had been canceled. But no rest for the weary; Segar had laundry to do. (Seems like I wasn’t the only one to leave packing to the last minute).

Segar and I met up again later that day around 4pm at the Office of Student Activities where she, fellow trip coordinator Ishanaa Rambachan ‘08, committee member Jamie Carlyle ’09, and I convened for our excursion to Sam’s Club in Apple Valley to purchase food for a couple of meals during Easter weekend at Camp Biloxi.

Conversation on the way to our shopping destination bounced from boyfriends and post-grad plans, to music and celebrities. But once we hit Sam’s Club parking lot, it was all business. We flashed a membership card and proceeded to disperse – these ladies had come prepared with a grocery list for 120 people, and we had only one hour to cover the floor, get through the check-out with three carts full of bananas, apples, oranges, bagels, loaves of bread, sandwich fix-ins, and enormous vats of Miracle Whip, and load up the mini-van. We had to hit the road by at least 6:20 in order to be back on campus, unload the food, and beat the Basil’s delivery person to the C.I.V.I.C. honor house at Lincoln Inn, where the planning committee would soon be joining us for a pre-trip pizza party.

En route back to Northfield, I finally got a chance to talk to these students about their involvement with OSR3. For all three of these committee members, this is their third time going on this particular Spring Break trip to do relief work along the Gulf Coast. When asked why she kept returning, and became an organizer, Segar said OSR1 was one of the best experiences of her first year at St. Olaf.



“This trip is the epitome of the community ideal at Olaf,” Segar said. “We heard about community from Admissions, and then from our JCs [junior counselors], and from professors. For me, all the talk culminated in this trip.”

Carlyle agreed. She said that this trip is much different than any of the other traveling she’s done because students get to work side-by-side with their peers, in addition to shifting the focus from academics to physical labor.

“We spend months at school worrying about us, us, us,” Carlyle said. “This kind of trip puts me back at ground zero. It reminds me what I’m really working for and that my trials are small hills compared to [those of] others.”

Rambachan shared Carlyle’s sentiment of bursting the St. Olaf bubble, if only for one week, to personally encounter the ongoing hurricane recovery process that so many Americans have faced every day since August 2005.

“Katrina taught me that America is far from perfect,” Rambachan said. “The beauty of America is not in how quickly our government responds or in the strength of our technology, because both have failed us. It is in the genuine desire of citizens to help our neighbors.”

Rambachan, Segar, and Carlyle all said that over the past couple years they have seen progress each time they’ve visited work sites in New Orleans and Biloxi. Yet feelings of uncertainty regarding exactly how much progress still surfaced in our conversation as we neared the Hill.

“The estimate our first year [doing an OSR trip] was that recovery would take eight to 10 years,” Rambachan said. “Three years later they still estimate it will be eight to 10 years. The reason I keep going back is that help is still needed. And there’s nothing more exhilarating than spending a week with fellow students who want to do good.”

According to Segar, garnering as much excitement for this year’s trip, in comparison with the first two years, has been more of a challenge, mostly a result of reduced media attention on the continued recovery efforts. It’s “old news.”

“It’s been a lot of work,” she said, “but being on the committee, our own excitement for the trip builds up for six months,” she said. “It’s our job to keep the momentum going for students. We’re fortunate that there’s still an atmosphere of support for this trip on campus, when a lot of the country has—to be honest—forgotten about it.”

Judging from the first six hours of the trip, filled with chatter of past experiences and anticipation, these Oles have not forgotten what they came down here for.

Check back for more updates about OSR3. It may be a day or two before we find wireless Internet, but there will be plenty to keep you posted on.

Photo credits for this entry go to George Cunningham '06 (top photo) and Greg Kneser (group photo).

Deja Vu

NORTHFIELD, MINN. 12:20am --

Two years ago, on approximately this night, I was doing approximately the same thing: packing until midnight, trying to find enough clean pairs of socks to toss into a suitcase already filled with t-shirts, old denim jeans, sunscreen, and work boots. Now a graduate and employee of my alma mater, I once again feel like a student. I guess a degree and an apartment can't change everything, because here I am procrastinating until I have no choice but to proceed with the tasks at hand: last minute preparations for a trip not-yet-taken, but highly anticipated.

Two years ago, I was a junior getting all set to leave for Ole Spring Relief (now referred to as OSR1). Having done several service trips in my late teens and early college years, I thought I had quite a few significant volunteer experiences under my belt. I soon learned that none of my experiences could prepare me for witnessing firsthand the monstrous effects of a natural disaster like Hurricane Katrina. In March 2006, nearly seven months after the hurricane hit New Orleans, houses were still filled with water, sludge, and the scattered remnants of lives and homes. Many had not been opened since their inhabitants fled the neighborhood for higher ground.

Now, this year --two years after the first OSR trip-- I'm told that some houses along the Gulf Coast have still not been opened, gutted, or torn down, leaving bedrooms to mold over, photo albums to deteriorate, and the trinkets and heirlooms that once decorated sitting rooms to vanish from memory.

I've heard from many of the student organizers of this third OSR trip that they have seen progress since the first trip in 2006, which had students mostly removing debris and doing clean-up work. During Spring Break '07, OSR2 spent much of their energy taking down drywall, and now this year we are expected to help out in the rebuilding process. As exciting as it is for us to revisit New Orleans and Biloxi each year to see how far the efforts have come, the time must past much slower for those whose property and lives have been taken away by flood waters over two and a half years ago.

I'm getting pretty nostalgic remembering my first glimpse of New Orleans back in 2006. I recall our tour of the Ninth Ward and the story of Robert Green and his family. I recall the faces of the homeowners we helped search for family photos amidst the rubble that lined their boulevard, waiting to be removed by garbage trucks we weren't sure would even come. Most of all I recall the gravity that floated in on the coastal air and saturated the Gulf. It was a heaviness that touched everyone and everything in Lousiana and Mississippi, and a heaviness that reached the many Americans who made their way down South to volunteer or tour the area --many times both. But even more powerful than this weighty feeling was the camaraderie that arose from the debris of this disaster.

Now, here in Minnesota, sitting among my own belongings --sleeping bag rolled up, backpack ready to go --I am once again sent reeling back to the emotions that go along with a group of people trying to fix a wound we're not entirely sure how to heal, but one that we know must be worked on if we are to offer any kind of hope for hurricane victims --our fellow Americans.

I'm excited and nervous and tired. And I'm a little embarrassed to share this, but my thoughts are beginning to wander and I wonder if we'll see any "high profile" citizens while on OSR3. Apparently Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie bought a house in New Orleans, and although we'll only be stopping through there for a few hours on our way to Camp Biloxi in Mississippi, I have faith that our Oles will find something equally exciting to chat about once we step back onto the bus. In 2006, my OSR1 group in New Orleans came across Denzel Washington filming a scene from the movie Deja Vu. The film, which postponed shooting after Katrina hit the Gulf Coast, decided to resume filming in the same section of the city as before, both to stimulate the economy of New Orleans and to bring hope back to this devastated area.

OSR3 may not be bringing too many "celebrities" with us on our buses tomorrow morning, and we may not be working on a blockbuster movie, but perhaps this blog, which will continue from the Gulf Coast, will refocus our attention on the continued efforts to rebuild these communities in the ongoing wake of Hurricane Katrina.