Friday, June 15th

Friday – Our last day on the job. It was a strange morning in that five of us shoved off for the Habitat site while the other five slept just a bit later and went to Animal Rescue New Orleans. (see Carla’s entry for more details on this)

Sam, Angie, Rose, Dottie and I returned to the houses on Galvez. It was more of the same – very similar to the work we’ve been doing all week. I have a few mixed feelings about Habitat now that the week is over. The experience this week has been nothing short of spectacular. We met countless great people and did work that was much needed in the area. But we discovered one hard reality about Habitat. It is unskilled volunteers doing very skilled labor under the guidance of house leaders who themselves have been working with Habitat for only a few short months. Because of this, we constantly built portions of the homes that we not up to proper code or that were flat out wrong. Much of our work during the week involved fixing things we had done on previous days.

But while the endless “fixes” were at times maddening, the overall experience of the week was fantastic. It’s easy to forgive the workers at Habitat considering they are trying to manage 400 volunteers each day, long term volunteers from Americorps, and several house leaders who are just learning to build homes themselves. It’s an awesomely huge undertaking and everyone at Habitat should feel extremely proud of the work they are doing.

One thing, one very good thing, we noticed at Habitat was the way in which they treated their volunteers. It was a very forgiving environment where volunteers where encouraged to try new things and were assured that any mistakes they made would be “ok.” There was a great deal of positive reinforcement on the jobsite that made everyone feel very good about the work we were doing. And we were constantly “forced” to take breaks to stay strong, hydrated and out of the sun.

We commented several times on site, the few of us that have been to NOLA before, that the overall attitude with Habitat was different from the attitude we experienced at Hands On. Habitat long-term volunteers and employees seemed much happier in their work than did the Hands On long-termers. Unfortunately I think we caught Hands On at a period in which many of the volunteers were suffering from some major burnout. That’s not to take anything away from Hands On. The experience with them was fantastic as well. If it wasn’t, we probably never would have wanted to come back.

On a few different occasions we compared this trip and work we did to our experiences on previous trips. Of course there were goods and bads on each trip. In my opinion the experience with Hands On was a bit more rewarding in that we could measure our progress much more easily. If 10 people went into a house to gut it, by the end of the day you could see tremendous progress. Sometimes you even finished a particular job in the course of one day. However, Habitat provided a more laid-back work site environment that was not such a drain on you physically. I liked the actual work we did at Habitat. I learned some new skills and I wasn’t draped in Tyvek all day long.

The moral of the story is that both experiences had their high points and low points, but both were experiences I will reflect on extremely positively and will take with me throughout the rest of my life. I’m grateful for everything these experiences have given me. They’ve changed my life, they’ve opened my eyes to some unfortunate realities in our country, and they’ve afforded me the opportunity to rub shoulders with some of the neatest, kindest, best people I’ve ever met in my life. If you’re reading this and haven’t done a volunteer trip like the ones I’ve taken, you must. You will never be the same.

On Friday we continued to work on the floor system of the unfinished Galvez house. We worked quickly and redid some things that had been done the day before. Our crew was smaller which gave us all a bit more elbow room.

Sam and I spent most of the day working side by side. What a coup it was having Sam join us. He made the trip exponentially better just by being there. I greatly appreciate Sam’s friendship and feel lucky to have shared this experience with him. Thanks, Sam, for your hard work and your drive to get all of us out every night. You were “the best” entertainment director. More music!!! There must be a band playing somewhere!!!

Friday was capped off with another muy fun night. We broke from work a little early to make sure Sam had enough time to get ready and get to the airport. We all bid him and his PT Cruiser a tearful farewell around 4:00. Angie and Kirsten rode out with him to the airport because they needed a rental car for Saturday.

Several of us took naps around the house in the early evening before we, once again, headed to the French Quarter. We did some souvenir shopping along Decatur Street then met Cynthia and Justin at Pat O’Briens for Hurricanes. Janet didn’t order one but experienced the joy of a Hurricane anyway. Our waiter Felix dumped a couple drinks on Kirsten and Janet, giving them a syrupy, bright red shower. Those girls – they just can’t hold their drinks.

We did a bit of a death march through the French Quarter following P.O.’s. We walked and walked and walked, some of our group weaker than the others because they hadn’t eaten in a long, long time. Finally we settled on Angeli’s on Decatur for dinner. By this time it was around 12:00. Dinner at midnight – that doesn’t happen every day. But it was a very good meal and our last chance to hang out with Cynthia and Justin.

Another awesome day in NOLA!