Spring Break in Mississippi

So I started writing this blog entry and never really finished it. So much to write about, so little time...ah, the end of term time crunch.

At this rate it may never be finished to my satisfaction, but better I at least post this as-is so that those of you who are interested can read a bit about my experience. Here you go!

March 8 - 15, 2008

Our trip to Mississippi began at the Philadelphia airport on March 8, where due to Spring Break travel craziness we were stuck in line for an eternity, so long in fact that we were unable to check in for our flight and instead of departing at 9 we were put onto a 4pm flight. Another segment of our group had successfully made it through, but this hassle turned out to be an inadvertent teambuilding exercise for the rest of us. The majority of the group was second-year social work students I hadn't met before, and many of them hadn't known each other well previously either. After spending six hours together, when we finally triumphantly arrived late Saturday we were already feeling like a pretty tight group. (I also knew these were my kind of girls when, after hearing about our long delay, one made the suggestion, "Well, I guess we may as well go get breakfast somewhere. And cocktails." Pancakes and mojitos, let spring break begin!)

We flew into New Orleans, but the focus of our work was actually a town called Bay St. Louis in Hancock County, Mississippi, located right on the gulf. While New Orleans received much of the Katrina coverage, many people in Mississippi were hard-hit by flooding after the storm -- in one neighborhood we visited, the water had reached 30 feet. Walking through the neighborhood we looked up at the trees and tried to fathom what that would look like, and could scarcely imagine it. More than one person told us stories of friends and family who had only survived by clinging to these trees as the water rose, holding on for several hours. (Although it might not be legible, the sign nailed to the tree in the photo below reads: "Hurricane evacuation route", with an arrow pointing up.) One such individual we heard about was a man in his late 70s. Others were caught by surprise when the water rushed in, never expecting it would rise above a few feet. As the photo to the left references, some of the older residents had lived through Hurricane Camille and felt they knew what they were getting into, only to find Katrina was nothing like the earlier storm. Some volunteers heard heartbreaking stories of people who were with small children when the water came in, unable to hold onto trees or buildings, and drowned as a result.

Our group stayed at a Presbyterian church which has several cabins in which it puts up volunteer groups, Christian and secular, who are in the area doing rebuilding work. Our group was unique in that we weren't doing any construction but rather trying to offer our skills as social workers to help assess and meet the mental health needs of the community. The 15 or so of us were divided into groups which spent the week helping various organizations and individuals, such as working with kids at the Boys and Girls Club, spending time with the elderly at a local senior center, and helping staff a resource fair related to rebuilding. One pair, LaToya and John, spent their week learning the ropes at a local independent radio station, WQRZ-LP, which had been pivotal as an emergency broadcaster throughout the storm and its aftermath. (Click here or here for links. In addition to a great stick-it-to-the-man independent philosophy, they also play a lot of great blues -- check them out!). They were both naturals and by the end of the week all of us volunteers were tuning in each morning while we were driving around out in the field to marvel at their DJ skills, in what they dubbed "The Ebony and Ivory Show". Several of us (myself included) were also able to visit the station and even given little news blurbs to read. Supposedly my radio persona was very NPR-esque. Hrmm. It also proved an excellent vehicle for posing questions to the local community, such as my deeply pressing Southern food-related questions: Was a po' boy just a southern take on the sub/hoagie/grinder? And what on earth was muffeleta?

I was paired off with a second year student named Sara, and we were placed with a local organization, Katrina Relief, which works with locals to help them complete their rebuilding. The organization's founder had sought out assistance in hopes of creating a support group based on her and others' observation that while people might visit such a center to get help with a concrete issue, they ended up also pouring out a lot of their anxiety, stress and frustration in the process. She and others wanted somewhere to refer them to meet this need. Sara and I ended up being a good match for this task as we both approached it from an investigative standpoint. We wondered, for example, if there already were support groups in the area, and if not, why not? What was the availability of counseling for community members, and were they accessing it? Was income a barrier, and/or negative perceptions of "going to a shrink"? Based on these and other questions, we began making connections with anyone we could think of in town who might help us better understand the nature of the situation, from the Salvation Army to City Hall, the state representative's office, and the local welfare office. The work proved fascinating, as we discovered that despite our predictions, the way locals viewed the situation was often very different, and there was by no means consensus regarding what needed to be done. Some believed sufficient counseling services were already available, but people were not seeking them out; some believed people cared less about counseling than about getting their more concrete needs met, such as working on their house or paying the bills. Sometimes, rather than specifically asking about mental health services, we would ask open-ended questions such as "What do you think this community needs?" or "What do you think future volunteer groups of social workers could do to help?" and these often provided the most surprising answers, such as several citizens' complaint that following the storm, the community lacks a grocery store. Another shocking complaint was related to housing -- with many apartments damaged and subsequently torn down after the hurricane, apartments are scarce, and with scarcity has come a huge increase in rent prices -- sometimes as high as $1500 a month.

[Note re photo above to the left: in the distance, what you see is the green steeple of the Baptist church, blown to this location from its original position more than a block away.]

One thing that became clear was that this community faced many challenges even before the hurricane, namely poverty. For those people who had been barely hanging on prior to the storm, it exacerbated an already tenuous situation. There were issues related to drug abuse (crystal meth and crack), troubled schools, unemployment, poverty, welfare dependence, and so on. After hearing this, I was surprised to find that rather than wanting to jump in to the work in Mississippi, I felt even more motivated to continue my work back in Philadelphia, where families are struggling with the urban versions of these very same problems. The trouble, of course, is that unlike the hurricane, these problems do not have clear origins or clear solutions. Also unlike the hurricane, these problems cannot be attributed to the uncontrollable forces of nature but rather beliefs about personal failings, worthiness and responsibility come into play and complicate matters -- just as with urban poverty.


The trip was by no means all work and no play, however. Along with the fact that we had a fantastic group and all of us came away with many new friends, local people were extremely hospitable, welcoming, and grateful. Our first day out in the field handing out fliers were were invited to come back that evening for a barbeque, and then found out we'd all been invited to yet another barbeque that same night. Luckily, due to the nature of small towns our quandary was solved -- both families lived on the same street. One of the families then invited us back for a Saturday barbeque down at the river to celebrate their daughter's fifteenth birthday, and when we informed them that we were actually flying out Saturday, they moved the party to Friday night to accommodate us. We also stopped by a local bar called Turtle Landing, where a previous volunteer trip had made connections with the owner. Again as it is in small towns, we ended up running into some of our new friends there as well when we stopped by one afternoon to participate in a "chicken drop"...pay a dollar, pick a number, and sit back crossing your fingers that a rooster decides to hover over the one you picked. Sadly the pot of money wasn't won by one of our group, but it was an interesting...er...tradition to partake in.
Items to write about in a future continuation/revision:

• Race and racism - comparisons between the South and Philadelphia
  
• The n-word
• ("...here we don't fly [confederate] flags, we use sheets.")
  
• New Orleans and Bourbon Street (in my opinion: Imagine if a Vegas casino decided to do their own version of Bourbon Street, with a sort of plastic, too-new, facade feel to it...except it's the real thing. And the endless string of strip clubs -- including "Larry Flint's Barely Legal" and a place called "Love Acts" where one could apparently pay to watch people have sex -- was less than ingratiating.)