this is going on a website along with some other things by other people about NOLA volunteering

i remember seeing signs on campus for organized, one- or two-week trips to the disaster areas. a girl in class announced where you'd need to go to sign up and that anyone was eligible. it'd be over spring break. i told a roommate i wanted to go. i told someone else and they said if you're going to go some place go some place cool that's not fucked up. in the spring, in my public speaking class a student from tulane was introduced. the teacher said to help him out if he needed anything. i remember the question he asked after one of my speeches: 'so do you need to do anything to hike these mountains? or you just go and it's free.' i said 'yeah. you just go. you have to know where they are. you have to find the trail heads yourself.' during finals when i was walking into the library to study i saw a free standing cork board with pictures from the organized trips. a bunch of students had their arms around each other and were all smiling. there were fallen trees and destroyed houses behind them. the ocean was in some shots. they were doing work with gloves and buckets in other shots. 'i should have gone,' i said to myself. 'i can still go.'

in june, while working at my summer internship, i googled 'katrina volunteering,' or 'hurricane relief' - i can't remember for sure. a small non-profit came up first. the application looked easier than the habitat for humanity route. the people in the pictures seemed 'cool'. the questioning pointed towards cooking experience. i was wanted manual labor but applied anyway. my plane ticket was for the day after my internship ended. i stayed out with my friends until 4am the night before, drank beer, and smoked marijuana. i left the house while they chugged, danced and sang.

in new orleans my taxi cab driver had trouble finding camp hope. i didn't have good cellphone service. he showed me the water line on the houses. when i got to the front office of the elementary-school-turned-volunteer-compound (camp hope) there was a confusion about who i was volunteering for. there were three groups - e.c., habitat, and americorp. e.c. ran the kitchen. habitat and americorp did gutting throughout the parish. a woman wearing a cowboy hat and cowboy boots from e.c. showed me around. i put my things down on a cot in what used to be a classroom. i went to the kitchen and signed up to help with kitchen preparation. the kitchen was empty. two other new arrivals were shaving carrots. i went back to my cot and laid down because i was tired. i looked at the cement floor, at flies landing on it, and at the metal studs where the walls should be. wires snaked everywhere. an extension chord stretched into the middle of the room. i charged my cellphone. i thought 'everything is the same.'

i put on a bandanna and went to the kitchen. there were more people in there this time. more kept showing up. i helped with the salad. an americorp girl and i chopped things and put them in the salad containers. we worked up against the ipod stereo system while the rest of the kitchen hectically operated under the direction of a short girl wearing a bandanna and neat clothing. when dinner was all prepared, we carried and rolled it up to the gymnasium-turned-cafeteria. during this time i met a lot of the people that worked there, or i made eye contact with people and they must have thought: 'new person'. after dinner was ready i served food on the food line for about an hour. then someone took over for me. i sat at a table with some food. i stayed quiet and sat near the people i knew were also new. the people who had been there longer acted differently. they talked more, or ate very fast and went back to work - they talked to locals who they had friendships with. they looked comfortable in dirty clothes, had long hair, and carried themselves with the ease and pressure of routine. after i ate two plates at a moderate speed i returned to the serving line. a second wave of volunteers came to eat. a few straggling locals came to eat. then we just sat around behind the serving line and eventually no one else came.

we started hauling things back to the kitchen where the trays, bins, and pots had already started to pile up on tables near the dish pit. three people were working the dish pit. it could have been a younger guy who didn't get around to helping in the kitchen or a restless older woman or a random americorp person or a person like me who just felt comfortable and useful - in the beginning anyway. i helped wash while talking to the other people at each sink. the music had continued playing from dinner prep after being changed several times. someone put on paul simon very loud. the rest of the kitchen had been cleaned a little while after the dinner was sent off to the service line. around ten or eleven the kitchen was finally quiet and sat there waiting, desolate but comfortable... and random people would gather in it, or a single random person would come walking through looking for a cup, a snack. i learned that the kitchen would never really rest. i learned how different e.c. was from habitat and americorp though i was never really confused. people called each other baby, love, and were flirtations. or people were strangers.

in the days to come we'd be drinking in it. mixing of random flood liquor, sharing of foam cups of daiquiris happened frequently after hours during my two weeks. it was a good feeling when this was going on. sometimes when everyone wasn't joining it felt bad, excessive. for a few days there was actually a keg in one of the reefer trucks. half drunk off daiquiris i made my first phone call to a friend from home. i talked while lying in my tent in my classroom. i told them there were so many things i want to tell them about. it wasn't about destruction or anything because there wasn't much of that around. we had toured the 9th ward and things but to me inside camp hope was the most interesting. it felt good to be excited about something. when i returned two weeks later to my friends drinking and smoking to their mixed cds, as i had left them, i didn't have much to say. it wasn't worth describing at that moment anyway.

i worked in the kitchen most of the time. the days felt long. between meals i felt worthless. i never woke up early enough to help make breakfast but i got around to serving it and eating it; still, sometimes neither. taking part in making the meals was fun because they were such huge ordeals. sometimes we'd be short of help. you couldn't blame anyone. there was one time we ran short and had to act desperately. me and the person i helped make lunch with were at the back of the property smoking a joint with two other people. it had just down poured that morning. i felt bad being there, but i knew being high the rest of the day would be fun. there was a careless atmosphere in the mosquito tent. the couches and chairs we sat in were drenched. one person was pointing to something on a map to another person. one guy with long hair and tattoos was standing and telling a story that made me feel uncomfortable. a woman walked towards us from behind the reefers, calling out the person who was in charge of lunch. she was saying they were running out of food on the service line. we rushed into the kitchen and spread fish sticks out on five or six large baking sheets. he looked at me with red eyes and said, 'i'm so high.' i laughed. i thought 'whatever' and felt safe once the smell of the fish sticks reached us from the ovens.

there were different things too. we hung out on bourbon street one night - fifteen closer local bar we went to two different times. it was just past the giant oil refinery. the ominous, giant, evil oil refinery. there were ultimate frisbee games in the muddy field. one of the dogs got lost. we rode bikes to a near by park. a local gave us a tour of some of the areas of the native people, the islanos. we loaded and unloaded trucks of palates of food. we tried to catch an alligator with store bought chicken. we fished for crabs with store bought chicken and made a crab gumbo. i had lunch downtown and walked around the french quarter. i gutted a house with some habitat for humanity volunteers. some of the time i was bored. i'd walk through the kitchen, out back around the basketball courts and generators, around the reefers, through the empty hallways with graffiti on them, through the empty gymnasium-turned-dining-hall. at night sometimes i'd sit outside the hallway door and stare through the barbed wire fence into the woods smoking a cigarette or a joint. one night a few of the volunteers got a band together and jammed. that night i got into one of those conversations with this guy who just sort of hung around with the e.c. crowd. i still remember him saying 'control breeds more control, man. you see?!'

on my second to last night - maybe, i don't know - we went to the place called the warehouse just beyond the refinery. i had had a few drinks during the day already. it was one of those random nights when suddenly everyone is in a mood to celebrate. i think a few people were actually celebrating their birthdays. i could afford like two drinks then resorted to drinking neglected drinks on the tables and bars. other people were scrounging for drinks too. half of our crew danced on the dance floor. i sat at a table with a few people i hardly knew, smoking cigarettes. people were drunk, smiling, and hugging each other, dancing. one guy i had worked with unloading one of the trucks had been dancing with a beer bottle in each hand. his pants were sagging showing his tan-line and white butt. eventually some locals wearing football jerseys started a name calling match with him. it was over and the guy said he wanted to go home because he had to work early. i said i'd go with him. i felt depressed because i was leaving louisiana soon or wasn't drunk enough. before we could leave midnight came and someone else's birthday became important. the person was sleeping in a trailer outside until his son dragged him in. he danced on the dance floor with is bare feet while the crowd of kitchen workers sang into the microphones on the stage. as we rounded up to leave outside the bar, the man whose birthday it was hugged his son. his son said, 'i love you pops.' the man looked sad and red faced. girls with dreads i'd never seen before were standing around him, hugging him, saying, 'you're going to be fine,' and 'go to tennessee with laura and you're gonna get cleaned up and have a nice breakfast and you'll feel better.' i think he said he didn't want to leave or something. we crammed into an RV. the man's son, the guy who was dancing with two beers and some other people and i rode back towards camp. the man's son was telling a story about an old lady who trolled through flood waters in a fishing boat looking for her horses. one horse drowned and the other was shot by a sheriff where it was tied to a bridge safe from the storm waters. this story was disputed heavily during the ride. they were shouting over the music. i was fascinated until i decided i heard enough. i sat in the back across from a girl in a black and white patterned dress. she was smiling at me. i looked out at the refinery passing under the orange lights. i thought about all the bullshit everywhere. i felt relaxed.

i felt more and more eager to leave as my time came near. some people talked about extensions to their stays. i saw that some people weren't going to leave. i think i recognized an older guy who worked there for a month with his wife on the subway last fall. he got off in brooklyn, before me. i was surprised and happy to see the people i did when i returned to an e.c. kitchen (goin' home cafe) in the 9th ward eight months later. when i think about why i went there and did those things with those people i feel confused. i feel nostalgic. i think it helped me during periods of aimlessness. i don't know really.