Salem Katrina Team Report for December 14

I got back to Mississippi last Friday, and am now waiting for Joan and our son Ben to arrive next week.

“Oh, my God. Oh, my God!” exclaimed the woman behind me on the flight into Gulfport. She was seeing the wreckage of Katrina for the first time, and it made a terrible impression on her....on all of us! We landed and while taxiing to the gate, the man in front of me was on his cell phone and then flagged a flight attendant…she waved back and indicated “when we’ve parked”. When we reached the gate, he said there’d been a death in his family and he needed to turn around and fly immediately back to Houston, which the crew arranged for him. I spoke with him in the terminal, and there learned that it was his wife who had died in an automobile accident after dropping him off for his flight. What could I say? I felt so inadequate, and after holding his shoulder and offering to run whatever chores in Gulfport he needed done, I left. Since then, I’ve wondered what was wrong with me - why the heck didn’t I offer to stay, to get him a cup of coffee, to offer something more. Fine Christian I am!

That evening I drove to Jackson to pick up part of the team from a church in Monmouth (near Salem), and enjoyed the drive back with them. Great group, headed by Gale and Denvy Saxowski who’ve led many such mission trips before. Our Dodge van has proven useful to them. Despite their 3AM arrival at camp, they were up and working first thing – good for them! We’re all staying in the D’Iberville PDA camp while the new Gautier camp is set up over on Martin Bluff Road which is closer to our work sites. There is a displaced family camp next door set up by Navy SeaBees using Army tents...looks like the set from the TV series Mash.

We met our first hero of this week. While off to breakfast with the Monmouth folks, we ate with a family from Georgia here volunteering for awhile. Their 5-year old son, Nicholas, gave another child his Game Boy to help make up for that kid’s storm loss. Great kid who will be a good man, that Nicholas! And, he walked around and gave each of the cooks a big hug! Does life get any better?

Our camp manager Steve is doing great running things. Teams reporting to Gautier will find themselves well-taken care of by him. He has already got a Christmas dinner invitation for himself, and most of the camp will be shut down between December 23-26. It seems most relief activities of all area agencies are closing during the actual Christmas days.

Needs: I need some money, folks. I need to give money to a two meals a day “soup kitchen” that is run by “Sunny” in Gautier, called Rose’s Deli. Google her! She’s become quite famous and you’ll learn a lot. She runs a small deli next to a gas station and after Katrina simply started cooking for free and giving away food to the needy. She quickly went bankrupt but her rent has been taken care of for some months by physicians with the RICE organization who met her…but now she has run through those funds and needs $600 a month for her rent. She and her family pay for her soft drink syrups, meats, and breads, but the rest is usually donated. Steve and I drove around and collected over 150LB of food for her pantry, but she’ll go through that in handouts in a day or two for the 50 or more families which turn to her for help. I need money for victims’ glasses. I need money for wood planks to be placed under tents to raise them from the mud. I need money for propane for people who can’t buy it…FEMA only covers the initial two small tanks and its cold here now. You get the idea. Send money, please. If you don’t want to send it for Katrina (“Salem Katrina Relief” at this church or yours, please send it for relief of the earthquake victims in Pakistan.

This place is a terrible mess but it is much less of a mess than three months ago. The people are in pain living this way and it hurts a lot during Christmas to know your family is still in an Army tent, hoping to get a FEMA trailer someday, which you’ll in turn be forced out of by the middle of next summer. There are lots of good contractors but so many rip off artists you want to run them outta town! Everybody’s nerves are shot and you can tell from the aggressive driving. They’re nice folks who want their lives back so they can be nice folks again. Today I noticed many small backpacking-style tents for people camping between the local WalMart store and the interstate. What a terrible mess.

About the D’iberville PDA camp. This is a little plastic tent city set up in the town’s baseball field. Along side us are a contractor’s trailer village and rows upon rows of Army tents set up for displaced families. We’re between the two. Our little blue tents are manufactured in Canada and they are indeed plastic, and open up for assembly much like an accordion fold. They have plastic floors and I imagine they’ll last a season or so, longer if they get wood under them to get off the mud. I think there are two to a tent. Heat is provided by kerosene burners, with the warm air piped into the tents. Nearby generators make sleeping hard until you get used to wearing ear plugs. No electricity in the tents yet but maybe someday.

Our great PDA manager works out of a donated trailer some kind Presbyterian sent down and thank goodness for that! There are two small tents without sides which serve as a kind of storage area and gathering place, not very comfortable in the wind and cold, much less so when it rains. We’ve built a wooden walkway only part of the way through the camp using freight pallets to try getting off the mud, and there is a little snack bar originally used during the ball games where we heat coffee in the mornings. Not too comfy but it gets the job done. Meals are eaten over at the city’s food kitchen…very basic but the cost is right. Last month, we were able to cook for ourselves back in Gautier and this new arrangement saves food preparation time as well as clean-up...and its free.

I invited the Monmouth folks over for a campfire and we had our own devotionals last night. Got to know them a bit better. Sure is nice to visit after a day's work. Supposed to have pretty bad weather tonight and for the next few days.