| By Audrey Vail
I was told it would be a life
changing trip. I was told to expect the worst. I was told to be ready
for heart break and devastation. I was ready for it all.
But when I got to Louisiana, I realized
I was not ready for what I found. I was not ready to meet such nice and
caring families who were trying to keep their farms and livelihoods
afloat after a natural disaster. I was not ready to meet 18 strangers
who would become some of my best friends. I was not ready for this trip
to truly change my life.
The Alpha Zeta Gulf Coast Work Trip opened my eyes to so many new things.
Gathering in St. Louis sounded crazy
when Alpha Zeta Associate Director Brian Reuwee first mentioned it. Why
not just meet in Louisiana? Little did the group know that Brian's idea
would set the tone for the entire trip.
Kansas State University had the largest
group from one school but we did not know each other. I had never met
anyone from another Alpha Zeta chapter so I did not know what to
expect. The people I met totally blew me away.
I was expecting a bunch of nerds who
had nothing better to do over winter break. I know, I know, I would be
one of them as well. But I was totally wrong about the other members
that I met. These students were not nerds. They were caring individuals
who wanted to make a difference in the lives of the hurricane victims.
During the 12 hour road trip down
south, the two vans had very different atmospheres. The Silver Bullet,
the one I rode in, was very calm. Most of us slept for a while and then
watched a few movies. The Marshmallow van was the complete opposite.
The people in that van got to know each other in some very odd ways.
Once the group got to Hammond, La., all
19 people came together and the work started. The group working for
Jeff Addison gave them a different experience from mine. I worked with
Henry Capdeboscq Jr. building a seven-strand, four barbed wire fence
around his rye-grass field.
While working with Henry, he talked
about the hurricane and how it had affected his family. His
eight-year-old son Carter helped out for a while and he told me about
when the hurricane actually hit. He never seemed to be afraid of the
hurricane but he described it was just a huge rain storm with a lot of
wind. Carter said his school was closed for three weeks after it hit
and they had to make up the missed days at the end of the spring
semester.
After finishing a few miles of fence
for Henry, the Addison family made lunch for the group. We had homemade
gumbo, shrimp fettuccine alfredo, and homemade wild hog sausage.
We bid the two families good-bye and
traveled to St. Bernard's Parish to help out John Gallo. While the men
built a machine shed, the girls cleared his field of trash, cut down
trees and made brush piles. While picking up trash, one of the girls
found a paper with four pictures of a new born baby. Another found a CD
that was for a sweet sixteen birthday party complete with a song list
that had every song dedicated from someone special to her on her
birthday.
These little moments are what changed
my life. I could not image what I would do if this was my stuff
strangers were picking up off the ground. I could not image losing
pictures of my niece, my friends and my family. You could tell after
something like this was found the girls really started thinking about
what it would be like to go through such as bad natural disaster.
John and his friends took us to
lunch on a cruise ship and then showed us a subdivision in their area
that had been hit really hard by the hurricane. When you are told that
people lost everything, you really don't understand the true meaning
until you see the destruction. My heart sank looking into the houses
covered in mud, grass and trash. The only thing that helped me get
through this was talking to the residents who had moved back to
rebuild. It gave me confidence that their neighborhood and southern
Louisiana would rebuild and become what it once was.
We went back to John's farm and
finished his shed. After a hard days work, we headed into New Orleans
to enjoy Bourbon Street. The French Quarter was not damaged badly by
the hurricane so most of the restaurants and bars were still open.
The next life changing
experience was working for Delos Thompson and his family. His daughter,
Kathy Jo, was a sophomore at Louisiana State University and helped us
while we worked. She told us how the university closed for a week when
the hurricane approached in precaution but it only seen a few inches of
rain and some wind. Kathy Jo also talked about how hard it was to stay
at school in Baton Rouge and try to live life normally while her family
was constantly working to rebuild fences, repair hay barns and clean up
the mess the hurricane left behind.
Our last night in Hammond was great. We
all went to dinner and then hung out in the residence hall we were
staying in. A few went to sleep, exhausted after working hard, but
there were others who stayed up long into the night.
A few hours later, the group was
dressed, packed and loaded into the Silver Bullet and the Marshmallow
Van for the trip home. Our final picture was taken on-campus at the
Friendship Circle in the Friendship Tree, a fitting ending to our work
trip down south.
The Alpha Zeta Gulf Coast Work Trip
turned into more than just a hurricane relief work trip. It opened our
eyes. It made people like me realize that just sending a check is not
enough. Physical labor meant more to the farmers we helped out more
than any check that any of us could have sent. This trip turned a group
of college students from across the national into better people.
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