Montgomery, AL

Posted October 10th, 2005 by Michelle

So much to say, and only five minutes on a computer- the first time in ten days that I’ve sat in front of one. Many apologies to my family and friends for not emailing them directly, but I have no memory for email addresses…

I’ve been in Mobile, Alabama for the last week. I’ve been working as a case worker, helping clients affected by Rita and Katrina. It’s been unbelievably frustrating, unbearably hot, long days, extremely hard work (filled with daily breakdowns), and more granola bars than any human should have to eat. It has also been the best vacation- yes, vacation- of my whole life. When I get home, I will try to describe these days, this work, and these people- our neighbors down here on the Gulf Coast- but I’m afraid I’ll never really be able to. Within minutes of getting here, a team of eight formed who have colored and enriched this experience in every possible way. Indeed, I’ve had a total of perhaps- and this may be a high estimate- of five minutes entirely by myself.

The experience I need to write about at this moment, as there are a hundred people waiting to use this computer, is our trip yesterday. The whole team somehow got our first and only day off and we went down to Biloxi and Gulf Port, Mississippi. The pictures you’ve seen on the news do no justice to the utter devastation, the utter flattening of whole communities. I have never seen anything like it. Right along the coast in Biloxi, we were driving down what used to be a boardwalk and noticed these massive buildings that seemed incongruous… it turned out they were the casino ships. These ships must have been twice the length of a football field- so huge you couldn’t wrap your mind around them- and in the violence and madness and surges of the storm, they were lifted from their bearings out in the water, washed inland, tossed, turned, wrecked, ripped, and then eventually laid to rest several hundred feet inland, landing on top of everything that was there. I have a picture of one of them that landed on a six-story hotel, and clearly, it was so high it just settled directly on top, shaving the side of the hotel clean off. We could see into the rooms whose walls were sliced open. You’ve never seen anything so large, so destructive, these massive ships covered in barnacles from being in the water for so long, sitting completely on top of what used to be homes, restaurants, lives.

Anyway, more to come. I am well, and safe, and exhausted, and hot, but loved- very much loved- and very much changed from once again being where I want to be, where nightmares don’t haunt me and sleep finds me, even if I only give it a few hours a night. I love all of you, and I’ll be home soon.