New Awlins- prayers for a city

On a busy Friday afternoon, Wazza, Luke and I caught a tram along one of the grand, beautiful house and tree-lined avenues of New Orleans. As is often the case, Wazza and I slipped into conversational Hebrew.  A fellow passenger, a lady of middle age and African American descent asked us, “Are you Israelis?” Stunned, we answered in the affirmative in an attempt to keep it simple but after thinking about it I am not really sure in the greater sense if for us it was less or more complicating. She then shared her dear memories of visiting Israel during April 2002, a dark period of second intifada marred by Jenin and Netanya. She and her church group went straight to the site of the Netanya attack moments after it had occurred and prayed. And they went all around Israel and prayed.  They have been on two such visits to pray. I wanted the tram to slow down in time and space so I could ask her more but her stop arrived and she made her way off the tram. We wished her a shabbat shalom and she wished us a, “Shabbat shalom y’all.”

On a bus ride to the swamp lands we met Victorio, our driver. Victorio is born and bred New Orleans. His accent is classically Southern. He drove us past the church he was baptised, confirmed and married in. He comedically was quick to point out he was not molested there. Victorio sweats in a swimming pool, something I can relate to. Victorio wants to be mayor one day and owns twenty-nine guns. Twenty-nine guns he previously used regularly but hasn’t shot in eight years.

For a city that already has so much personality and festivity that characterise its very existence, it is hard to fathom how a devastation like Katrina becomes so engrained in a city’s identity. Not dissimilar to another New city. Strikingly dissimilar to our blessed sun burnt shores.

Many restaurants on their menus share their Katrina stories.

Walking down the streets you can see faint flood lines on the houses.

Many houses still adorn a painted X near their doorpost. The X represents the evaluation of each house in the eventual search over the city with numbers and other symbols at every point.  Above the X- the date the rescue crews arrive, often many weeks after the waters subsided. To the right of the X- the number of occupants: O meant no one was there, A represents how many alive or D…. Underneath the X- the number of animals. And on the left- some include other details, like if there was a hole in the roof to escape the escalating waters.  It is hauntingly reminiscent of tonight’s Passover story where on the eve of the final plague the angel of death passed over the houses adorned with lamb’s blood.

Victorio drove us through East New Orleans. There was barely a hint of a recovery. He told us of businesses never rebuilt or reopened. The hospital that serviced a significant part of the population remains closed. Patients are forced to travel many more miles to seek the help they require. This standard of developing world care in the developed world unfortunately is something I am becoming all too familiar with. The only reopened business was the building supplies store.  One cannot help but smirk at cruel irony.

Louisiana produces up to 40% of America’s oil and gas. It has a pro football and basketball team. New Orleans is the new ‘it’ town to film movies and tv shows. It has year round world-renowned festivals and has booming tourism. Yet it remains America’s fifth poorest state.

We hired a car and drove through the Lower Ninth District, the suburb where the levees designed to protect against flooding were overcome by Katrina’s storm surge with a barge breaching the levees. Federally funded and built levees designed to protect the people. The streets are now bare like autumnal trees. The very few houses that remain are shells of their former selves and tattooed with those flood lines and X’s. The rest of the houses are gone like toothpicks scattered across an empty table. The Lower Ninth is emblematic of the majority of the flood affected areas that have not recovered. Uneducated. Social security dependent. Poor. Black. 

Vulnerable. One cannot help but smirk when it starts to make sense.

Victorio wants to be mayor to start some resemblance of recovery. Victorio owns but has not used twenty-nine guns since Katrina because he no longer cares for hunting and killing. Again I found myself wanting time to slow and to ask so much more. I wanted to ask, “Victorio- who came and prayed for your city?”

Just visiting: anecdotes and appreciations

1. In July, I went canoeing in the Katherine Gorge with Pip, Waz and Gabzi. Whilst chilling on the edge of the gorge, this French couple overheard us exclaiming, “How awesome?!” They asked us, “What is this word awesome?” to which, the only fathomable response was, “This is!” with our arms flailing wide open, admiring at what those who are fearing would call divine.

2. During the week between the preliminary and grand finals, my brothers joined me to tackle the Jatbula, a sixty seven kilometre hike from Katherine Gorge to Edith Falls that follows the natural water ways. We started the hike in the last week of the season. It was hot. Forty plus degrees hot.

At the end of the first morning’s short but warm walk we arrived at the first water spot. We were warned but as we approached the pool and the bottom of a small fall we found nudists. Our water spots had nudists. Late middle-aged nudists. Nudists as in naked. It was not hot. Like negative forty degrees not hot.  

And each day we would arrive at the next campground the other group were already there and in all their glory. Slowly, over the nights our camp sites came closer and meals more together as we traded favourite trails of walks and memory. I could not help but admire how comfortable this group was in their skin and how it enabled so much possibility.

This was the first time it was just us three boys on a trip together. We spoke of the Brownlow, the winner already declared, but without reception, would remain unknown for some days yet. We spoke of brotherhood. And of the made up games that decorated our childhood and the high hopes we had for each other.   

3. Nanny journeyed on her retirement trip to Darwin in December. She has this uncanny ability to capture an audience. It did not surprise me one bit that she made friends everywhere she went and even managed to get rides with strangers.  Every workday I was amazed by my friends’ preparedness to entertain Nanny and in a matter of moments she became their grandmother as well. The fact my friends did this for me is testament to strength and quality of friendships we fostered in Darwin. This, the flight in Kakadu and the Channukah party were just the flickers of many highlights.

4. So in the end it turned out that I too was just visiting. I learnt a lot on many different levels. I will miss the complex uncomplicatedness. I will miss being outside. I will miss the balcony beers and sunsets. I will miss the hospital, its mentors and patients that have taught me the unbound limits of the human resilience.  I found it fitting that an Indigenous elder I cared for at the very start of the year called out to me from her cubicle in the emergency department during my last week of work.  Such are the circles in this small world we undeservingly call ours.

5. And I guess I was just visiting Melbourne now too. To those who say it never changes, my time away has shown that it almost certainly does. Some obvious like the traffic but most, more subtle, like widening chasms between restlessness and acceptance. I am off again today. More visiting. More new words and worlds. More family and friends. More circles. Stay tuned.