Again this year Alma College students and staff spent their Winter Term break working with the National Relief Network www.nrn.org in the organization's clean-up efforts in the Gulf Coast states as a result of Hurricane Katrina. The following is a report from Kelly Malburg, a sophomore from Grand Rapids.
All of us are extremely familiar with what happened down south as a result of Hurricane Katrina. The Alma group went down expecting to make a positive impact on someone’s life, but I don’t think any of us completely comprehended how big of a difference we were going to make.
Things didn’t start off looking too hot for us. Halfway through the drive our bus caught on fire and we spent forty five minutes standing on the side of the highway in the pouring rain waiting for another bus to come pick us up. One of the first few days we were there the bus broke down again before it made it to our campsite so we had to call for a entirely different bus. That bus worked but the bus driver got pulled over for speeding on our way to the worksite. Once we arrived, the group split up and went to a few different houses to gut or to drywall.
Initially the house to be dry walled was a skeletal structure consisting of bricks, floors and a roof. Our goal by the end of the week was to drywall all of the ceilings and walls of the entire house; four bedrooms, two bathrooms, six other rooms and several closets along with all of the hallways in between. The group assigned to this house split up into five different teams that all began working on separate rooms within the house. By the second day, all of the ceilings and a few of the walls were done. During a normal day we began working at 8:30 am and worked through 4:00 in the afternoon- with a half hour lunch break at some point during the day. We spent our days measuring out drywall to fit perfectly everywhere and used our muscles to hold it up while someone else screwed it on.
Although the week did consist of a lot of work, the Alma group had no trouble finding time for fun. During the day there was a constant game going on of who had the better screwdriver, we jammed out to the music and the family’s dog recently had three puppies that we all had fun playing with. Amanda Bishop, and Alex Wagner, our student coordinators, and the National Relief Network did an amazing job of providing us with plenty of activities back at the campsite.
The first couple nights we spent time at the campsite the first night having a middle school dance party- making sure not to get too close- and the second night having fun with a few games of catch phrase around the campfire.
We also went on a Bayou, or swamp, boat ride which was an adventure in itself. We saw snakes, alligators, a bat flew into John Gibbs’ face and one of the boats ran out of gas. At that point it was well after sundown and we used a flashlight to navigate back in order to not run into any trees! Throughout the week we had two different crawfish boils which some of us thoroughly enjoyed as well as dominated and others were a bit disgusted at how they were to be eaten.
Thursday afternoon before we loaded up to head home we were given a few hours to split up and relax on Bourbon Street. Shopping, exploring and many of us ended our week by grabbing dinner at the one and only Margaritaville!
At the beginning of the week we had no idea what all of us were getting ourselves into. Many of us had never used power tools before, let alone played a critical role in building a house that someone was planning on living in. The owner of the house, Carrie Torres and her husband had three kids and a dog and this is where they were planning on raising their family, this is where they called home. We were the reason that that they were able to get back on their feet and move on with their life despite everything that they lost in the storm.
Although Alma’s a small school there were many people on the trip who had never met before. All of our differences were overlooked once we arrived and we came together and did something amazing. At the beginning of the week we were a group of college kids who had no idea what they were doing but we came back with many new friends and knowing we had made a profound difference in many people’s lives.
