There are lots of things wrong, but the work of the soul is filled with great sweetness.
Abby Bogomolny

All the toilets are broken*
and the stall doors stand ajar.

Volunteers sleep on linoleum floors of St Marys of the Angels School.
We arrive to find there is a lice outbreak. What mattresses there are have to be covered in plastic.
We find an empty classroom on the third floor and roll out sleeping bags.
Heads not checked for lice by the Medic cave will not receive dinner. We enjoy the food anyway because of the company. Meals are served from Tupperware containers whose lids are dotted with flies. Kitchen workers report at 4:30 AM.
We hear they do not tie back their hair.

The showers drain into pvc pipes, held together with duct tape. The pipes drain directly into the gutter. Another non–biodegradable Alberto VO5 puddle floats by as you wait for a five-minute cold water shower, which is nothing compared to the toxic chemical soup that washed in 16-30 foot waves over the Lower Ninth Ward.

A generator produces power for the refrigerated truck behind the kitchen and a few fluorescent lights that work.
Orange extension cords draped over the lighting fixtures of St Marys snake their way up stairwells and out windows.
The one outlet used to charge everybody’s cell phones has been moved. It will be connected later in another place,
but no one knows where.

The surrounding Upper Ninth Ward is a ghost town. Modest wooden bungalows, some single family, others duplexes circa 1930s through 50s, stand abandoned. Most were filled with four feet of toxic flood water for three weeks. If an owner fled before the storm and came back two months later, the house was filled with river mud, mold and warped wood. Few in the neighborhood have electricity. Owners need a city permit before they can have their power turned on. They need a licensed electrician to examine their wiring. Everything shorted out in the flood. Now the city is far behind in inspections.
Few 'lectric lights shine in the Ninth Ward.

Beleaguered hangers on to the movement, the marginal, the heads and even spooks drift in among us. After all, there’s free food and no one actually checks to see if you join a work crew. Some bring dogs, tie them to outside posts, and leave bowls of dogfood outside. Now there are rats behind the kitchen.
Maybe they moved in first to the pile of bulging garbage bags, kittycorner to the school. A bio-mediation team sprays the pile down with microbes that will outgrow the harmful ones to reduce the smell and danger. When a City of New Orleans garbage truck shows up, we help them load it, and cheer loudly as they drive away.

Social justice is messy, but work of the soul is sweet.

Some want to subvert the mission—
We want this neighborhood with the largest percentage of black ownership in the nation to have a chance of being rebuilt. So we call homeowners. "Hi. My name is Abby and I’m calling from Common Ground in the Lower Ninth Ward. How are you today? Pause . . . I’m calling to be sure you know that the city of New Orleans will be publishing a demolition list of properties in the next two weeks. We’re trying to prevent any accidental demolitions. Have you decided whether you are going to rebuild your home? Pause…listen to a story the likes of which you’ve never heard before…"We weren’t just neighbors, our kids grew up together, we know everything about each other … Now my house is no longer there. It floated off the foundation and is now on someone else’s lot. Say, am I still responsible for it …I going to have to pay to remove what’s left on someone else’s land?
How can I find out if I’m on the demolition list? Do you have the list?
No, the city is releasing it 250 addresses at a time. It’s going to be published in the Times Picyune. Why isn’t the city publishing the list at one time so people can see it?
It’ll also be on the city website www.cityofno.com.
I don’t have the internet. What should I do?

Tim and his wife argued before the storm. She said, "You’re crazy if you don’t leave with me. We can still get out." But he needed to stay. This was his home. But his wife convinced him, so they drove with the kids to her mother’s people in Tupelo. He said people there were so nice, but it wasn’t his place. After the storm he couldn’t make any money, so he came back to his house that had 3 feet of water in it. Good think he did ‘cause he bleached it up til a person couldn’t even tell it had been flooded. It smells good cause he got to it right away before the mold could crawl up the walls and sulphurize.

Working in the Common Ground Distribution Center, we unloaded the donations given to CG by the United Methodist Church: pampers, bleach, buckets, brushed, canned food. No big box store interested in setting up shop nearby, funny thing huh? Can one ever rest easy or be free as long as others are trembling with need?

Then there was J, detained by the New Orleans Police Department for looting his own house. Yes, he had begun to clean out his house and had started the hard work of gutting out thewalls down to the studs, but the Police picked him up, thinking he was looting. They didn't believe he was the owner. Wife had to come down from Shreveport to show documents 'fore they’d let him go. Too much trouble to check public records. Easier to rely on the tried and true.

Then we’re helping Henry gut his house and before we begin in our Tyvek suits, he says his neighbor told him he shouldn’t leave before the storm. We’ll get through this like we’ve been through the others. Well, he said, all the songbirds left, and the ants had all climbed up out the ground and were crawling high up the telephone poles. Then he saw that all the songbirds had left. Henry's a painter over in Algiers, and he said it got eerily quiet that last Friday at work. When he saw the buzzards perched on a sturdy tree...just waiting. They didn't seem to be in a hurry to go anywhere, so he figured he'd better right away. That’s when he told his elderly neighbor, "you tell your daughter to come pick you up now."

In the middle of debris, no electricity, hot water, in the presence of rats, lice and even spooks, the young ones pitch in to rebuild, bright eyes filled with the advantages of being raised someplace else. But bicycling through the streets of the Ninth Ward it's hard not to cry. "We're not just neighbors here. Our kids grew up together and we know everything about each other like we're family, even though family is also right across the street or one road away. This has been our home. I live here, my granny, my mother, my sister and brother family, their kids. What do you want to know? This was our life. Now it's a ghost town. Will it ever come back? It'll come back We always survive. But it's not gonna be like it was before."

In Our Own Words *** ©2006 Abby Bogomolny

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************************************************************************************"Eminent Domain for Whom?"*******

Common Group Relief needs carpenters, plumbers, electricians, gardeners, health care workers, legal volunteers, educators, researchers and bicycle repair people.

What services does Common Ground offer residents?

gutting of houses

supply distribution centers

tool lending library

computer access

access to City of New Orleans information

Question? Contact (504) 218-6613
or email to volunteer
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