The second week in Meridian was both discouraging and hopeful. Hopeful, because there were many teams calling to volunteer their services. In fact by the end of the week I had scheduled enough Volunteer facilities teams to fill all available beds on the Coast …… about 2500 per month….. through February. I knew I was helping where my skills could best be used. It was discouraging because I could see no quick solution to return the lives of those who had been through Katrina back to normal.  It would be years …..and ….. I realized how much we have back in Michigan. Yes there is unemployment, and a faltering economy, but at least there IS an economy and jobs. We have so much in Michigan and throughout most of this country, we forget, or perhaps never really understand what it is like to have nothing, to lose everything.

I also knew that the message of Katrina was faltering. The Media has moved on to other news stories, and the image of the broken homes of Mississippi is fading from the collective mind of our nation.

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The following message I wrote to myself.

It is Wednesday evening of week two. My time is growing short. The trailer seems confining and I do not have the city services and I guess you could say luxuries that I am used to back in Michigan. After 6:00 pm I am bored, and in the back of my mind distressed over all the suffering I hear of on the coast. There is nothing to distract me. I have a much more realistic idea of how those that have lost everything feel. I have left most of my connections back in Michigan. I will go back to them, but on the coast they have nothing to go back to, no home, no job, no church, no school, no family pictures, nothing familiar. Everything is gone. Now they live in a trailer with no hope for an improved future any time soon.

I realize that President Bush has really dropped the ball on this disaster. He has left his Christianity at the white house door. Back in the 30's when the Great Depression hit. The same loss was prevalent throughout this country. The solution sought by President Roosevelt was to create work camps to get people back to work. This game them a full belly, an extra jingle in their pockets, but most of all hope a feeling of self worth. The Bush administration does not understand this idea of self worth. Sad isn't it?

Today the Center's Director had me work with another volunteer in the morning, reviewing the Coastal church sites and calling them to find out who had space in January for additional volunteers. I was successful at placing a few teams. Another volunteer had a call from a California church team flying into Jackson Mississippi. The team needed a ride with all their stuff from Jackson MS to their Coastal worksite. This volunteer took it upon herself to call churches in the Jackson area in a quest to find one with a church bus that could drive them to the coast. By the end of the day we were successful. I put in a call to the church coming to MS and left a message for them to make a final contact we me. All day to help one group….. time consuming.

Another church called us wanting to donate food to those displaced. The only way the church could donate food was to collect at least a pallet full, wrap it and deliver it to a warehouse. Anything less was not possible. This discourages groups from collecting food, but there are just not the resources to deliver small quantities to the coast.

I did communicate with a number of groups coming to help and tried to answer questions, reassure and praise them in their efforts. They needed the encouragement. I feel new teams know, they don't really understand the magnitude of what volunteering on the Coast is like. This makes them really nervous about coming and helping. They need as much encouragement and information as they can get. They also don't fully comprehend how rewarding their time here will be both for them and for the people they have helped.

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I guess in summary this week was a repeat of much of week one. It continued the reinforcement of everything I have seen, heard and experienced. The impact of this is almost too much to try and explain. How can one describe the gravity of the situation? I did send out an e-mail during the week in which I tried to compare the destruction in Mississippi to the I-96 corridor from Lansing to Detroit. I calculated the total destruction for 10 miles on either side of that freeway should give those from Michigan some understanding of the size and extent of the destruction. I could add more stories to this writing, but there is a story for every person who lived here and every volunteer who has been here has their own set of stories. Anyone interested in more stories will be not be disappointed by a search of the internet.