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?”