BILOXI, Miss. – 10:43pm
Shoshana Blank ’10 said that Bourbon Street seemed alive and well today in New Orleans, Louisiana.
“Last year we went to Bourbon Street in the middle of the day on the weekend and it was dead,” Blank, who volunteered in Mississippi last Spring Break, said. “There was no one walking around and a lot of businesses were closed. Today there were people everywhere and there was music in the street and tons of restaurants were open.”
Blank and over 100 other Ole Spring Relief III participants visited the French Quarter of New Orleans today en route to their final destination of Biloxi, Mississippi, where they will spend the next week helping Lutheran Disaster Response with hurricane recovery efforts.
Students were thrilled to get off the buses and stretch their legs by walking around the Crescent City for a few hours earlier this afternoon. From French donuts (“beignets”) and café au lait to fried alligator and seafood gumbo, students found their surroundings mighty tasty as they discovered one of things New Orleans is best known for—the food.
OSR3 participants got to experience the street art scene of the French Quarter, as well. The area, which sustained little damage in August 2005, today hardly bares a mark of Hurricane Katrina, aside from the photo books that tell the stories and the T-shirts that bitterly commemorate the disaster in tourist souvenir shops. Buskers, street performers and painters once again adorn the sidewalks around Jackson Square. Two years ago at this time, just a handful of hopefuls sprinkled the area. But according to students who had visited New Orleans prior to Hurricane Katrina, the numbers are still much less than when tourism in the French Quarter thrived just a few years before. Community members agreed—it’s just not the same.
“I talked to a man and his wife for about 15 minutes on the boardwalk along the [Mississippi] river,” Blank shared with me tonight in the dining hall tent at Camp Biloxi. “He said the two things he misses the most about New Orleans are the music and the food.”
While the recovery efforts are still continuing in New Orleans and all over the Gulf Coast, the heavy-handed destruction of Katrina has left its mark, especially on residents and returning OSR participants, who must “hurry up and wait” for the time when New Orleans will be back to her old self again.
This entry's photos came from George Cunningham '06.
