When giving a helping hand turns into an unparalleled experience.
Most collage students look forward to their winter break, come one, who wouldn’t? You get to sleep in, hang out with friends and family, play X-Box till your thumbs turn blue, and hopefully get some goodies from old St. Nick (Ok, it’s really your Mom and Dad).
For a group of GCCC student’s, this past winter break wasn’t just about them, it was about helping people in need.
It’s been almost three years since hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans. For most people in America, life has moved on. For people down in the “Big Easy” it’s anything but normal, and life is still not easy. Kate Dibbern was one of the students that wanted to give something back to people that needed it the most. “I don’t think it will ever be back to normal, maybe in like 20 years. It’s still really bad down there.” Dibbern said, “People have forgotten about it and the government has stopped helping. Most of the work, like 90 percent of it, is being done is by volunteers.”
To many people visiting the hot spots of New Orleans the city looks beautiful and festive, but if you dare to venture just a few blocks away from the tourist attractions off Bourbon Street, you’ll see how devastated the city still is. “You still see homeless people everywhere,” Dibbern said. “We saw like 200 homeless people on one overpass.” Many of the people of New Orleans ran into contractors that took advantage of them and didn’t do the work correctly. Dibberns worked with other volunteers to help fix some of mistakes that the paid contractors made. “I mostly did a lot of drywall and puttying.” Dibberns said, “Another group got to gut a house, that’s the fun stuff. Breaking stuff and tearing the toilets out and tossing them, I was kind of bummed. They were telling me all these cool stories and I was like, well… I got to put mud on a wall” Dibberns said laughingly. “I guess someone had to do it.”
Those types of jobs are the thankless duties that the volunteers on this particular trip did everyday. This kind of labor might not be fun for most people, but it is essential to getting someone’s home back to a livable standard. The people that volunteer to rebuild and repair homes help get peoples life in order when they have nowhere else to turn. There are still some things that that can’t be replaced. There were many sentimental possessions lost in the disaster. “All of their family photos they had packed in this box were ruined,” said Dibberns. “This house was like right by the levy that broke; there were pieces of the old levy still there.”
So much of the city was destroyed and many lives with it. Most people think that the best parts of New Orleans are back up and running, and that true if you think the best things are Bourbon street and the French quarter. For Dibberns, the best parts of the city are still in great need. Dibbins thinks the best parts of New Orleans were some of the places off the beaten path. “I personally liked the places off Bourbon Street, where everyone was living.” Said Dibberns, “I would go running in the evening and I would just go in a different direction each night, and just go to some random place, it was cool” For people visiting this part of the country, the first thing they notice is the food is a bit different from what you get in an average western Kansas restaurant. Dibberns shared her experience of eating some of the local delicacies. “The people that owned the house we were working on took us out to eat, and I tried everything, I had so much food I never ate before, like crawfish, oysters, soft sell crab, and squid.” Said Dibberns. “I would dissect my food before I ate it and I was like, look it’s got little legs, I was intrigued by it.”
While working and taking in the culture of New Orleans, and meeting the people that were devastated by this disaster, had a profound effect on Dibbers, “Going down there I was humbled by the experience.” Dibberns said. “Felt so bad because I totally over packed for the trip. I brought tons of clothes and shoes; I was like oh gosh, I feel horrible.” This trip can help us realize that no matter what we have in our lives it can all be wiped out in the blink of an eye. Many of us that have a good life take things for granted. Sometimes we feel sorry for ourselves when life goes doesn’t quite go your way, but for Kate Dibberns she now has a new outlook on what really matters in life. No matter how bad your life gets, there is always someone out there that has it a little bit worse. “I felt bad because the week went by so fast.” Said Dibberns, “I would like to go back, there is still so much work to do and one week was just was not long enough, it’s still so sad to leave with so much more to do” The group Kate Dibberns went with was from the Trinity Lutheran Church. The Church plans trips down to New Orleans every year.
