Pilgrimage Journals: New Orleans

Reflection  06/28/07

On the tail end of the day, I feel like I’ve experienced a lot of new things in very quick succession.  As of yet, I am not sure what I have learned or what exactly I will take from New Orleans, but I am overwhelmingly thankful for being here.  

Visiting the Lower Ninth Ward was the most striking part of the day.  Over the past year, I have learned and had discussions about what happened during and after hurricane Katrina both at school and with friends.  Even from a distance, it evokes complicated layers of confusion, frustration, sadness, sympathy, and anger.  Seeing it in person made everything I had learned seem unnecessary.  Even two years later, the physical devastation, the anger and attachment of residents, and just the monumental scale of what happened are even more evident in person as they were through a TV screen and through a newspaper.  What seems silly to me is why the relief is so slow coming and why people are still living in such reduced conditions if 5,000 tourists have come through and seen it all so plainly.  

Coming here makes me hope that I hang onto the initial explosive emotions I felt while being there, and constructively turn them into productivity.  I am really looking forward to coming home (yes, I know, even though the trip just began) as a San Franciscan 15 year old and finding ways of somehow incorporating all of these thing into daily life.  Not bad for day one.  I am really excited about the rest of the trip.  

Lily Moebes