Since the beginning of April those of us on the Katrina recovery team have been learning about the various aspects of the disaster, from the scientific to the personal to the psychological damage to the preventable mistakes that call for the disaster to be called a man-made catastrophe. This was all very abstract to me. I saw the pictures of devastation and watched the videos documenting human suffering, and I knew intellectually it was a terrible thing that no one should have to experience. But it still felt like a movie to me. I repeatedly experienced a brief wave of emotion, quickly forgotten as I re-disconnected myself from an area and an occurrence I had never experienced.
This afternoon we went to the Presbytere Museum and toured their extensive Katrina exhibit. The exhibit begins by reminding the viewer of the resilience of the area, highlighting other hurricanes the area has survived and focusing on the progress made since Katrina. It was paired well with the end of the exhibit, which highlighted measures being taken to prevent this again. The middle, though, was what shocked me. With a pair of jeans. A man trapped in the flood zone, knowing there was a real possibility he wouldn't survive, wrote his contact info, blood type, & SS# on his pant leg in permanent marker so his body could be identified. I stood there staring at those jeans pinnedbehind glass for a long while, shocked. I considered the desperate conditions that must build up to lead a human being to prepare for his own death in such s pragmatic way. I thought about how it would feel, what state of mind one would have to be in, knowing I might die very soon, and then having the efficiency to plan for my dead body's fate.
It was haunting, and though it's still hard for me to imagine, no longer does Katrina seem like a movie. Now when I think of Katrina I think of jeans, and writing my own information on mine, and knowing I might die in a current of rank water, the bloated bodies of my friends and neighbors hitting against my own as we floated down streets past Walmart or Taco Bell. It's disturbing. And I can't say I can imagine what it would be like to be that guy with the jeans. But being here, in the heart of New Orleans and seeing personal artifacts that humanize has created a connection, even on day 2 of our trip, that has completely changed how I think of what happened here and the very real people who were forever affected by this tragedy.
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