Tales from the Front Line

Somewhere, between Houston and Missouri, there’s a kid named Larouche, in a big white van. I’m sure he’s driving his mom crazy. He’s loud, and he’s got a lot to say. He’s tough. He speaks like an adult, but I think he must only be around nine.

Somewhere, between Houston and Missouri, Larouche is hitting or hugging his baby brother and laughing at, or teaching his three-year-old cousin.

I don’t know the younger brother’s name. He kept telling me, but I couldn’t understand what he was saying, and I was a little traumatized by my inability to pronounce Larouche’s name correctly. I understand that frustration. My name is rarely pronounced correctly, and I hate not being able to say other people’s names right.

Both Larouche and his brother can dance. Larouche more so. He spent Saturday night showing me his dance moves. They are pretty impressive. His younger brother can do a ‘flip’, which is really just a cartwheel, but even that is more than I can do. So, what can I say?

They’re good kids.

They seemed oblivious to the fact that they were far from home, and had lost everything they knew.

Last week, I had a really hard time at work. I felt completely shaken because what I find my identity in was disrupted. It made me uncertain. It made me want to seek out some kind of affirmation.

This weekend, I looked around at a room full of people who had no identity left. Everything that they thought defined them was gone - their families, their homes, their pride, their ability to feed and protect their children.

Larouche and his brother were immune to this loss of identity.

I guess that’s the thing about kids. They haven’t learned the lie yet that what others think about them, or what they own, or who they love, defines them.

It’s God in them, I think.

Larouche and his family were meant to go to Missouri on Sunday morning at 4 AM. I arrived at 2:30 PM on Sunday, and they were still there, sitting in the hot sun, sitting in a circle around their new belongings.

Larouche seemed happy to see us. That’s a lie. He seemed happy to see my camera phone. He was into taking pictures. I wanted to tell him to become a photographer. I wanted to tell him he should buy a camera. That seems like an obvious transition for me, from interest to pursuit, but that transition isn’t possible for this kid and his family. Not just because of Katrina’s devastation. I doubt “photography” was ever really an option for this little man.

Their family had been waiting for their ride for hours, but didn’t have a means of contacting the driver so I gave them my cell phone to use. I played with Larouche, his younger brother, and his unbelievably cute cousin for a little while, and then said my good-byes and headed off to the building I was going to volunteer in.

The walk between the buildings was pretty horrible on Sunday. It was so hot, and my feet were fatigued. My friend Brandon had blood all over the back of his socks from blisters. I wondered how you would make the trek to use the phones if you were elderly, or had lots of kids.

I finally reached the Astrodome, and my phone rang. Larouche’s family’s ride was having a really hard time finding them. I described where they were again, hung up, and continued walking into the dome. My phone rang again.

I was frustrated. I was tired. On Saturday, I had worked on impossible tasks. You don’t just sign-up to volunteer and then help someone. It’s thankless. You just can’t help these people in a visual way. You can fulfill a moment’s need, but it’s draining and it’s too much, and everyone’s taking, and there’s no give in return.

I’m not going to lie. When I realized the driver was clearly lost, the last thing I wanted to do was stumble out of the AC into the hot sun, and head back towards the Arena.

I did though, because what else can you do?

The driver was lost. I didn’t want to tell Larouche’s family she was here before she really was because I was worried something would go wrong and they would be disappointed. I stood in the middle of the street, and I waved one arm, and held my phone to my ear with the other, and told the driver I was wearing a blue shirt and waving my arms.

I looked from side to side, peering into the blinding light for the glimmer of a white van. I urged her to just keep going toward the rollercoasters in the distance. Keep them in her vision, and keep going straight, and sooner or later we would collide. I stood there, waving and glaring at the Texas Cyclone ride like the wise men must have looked at that bright star in the sky.

And then we did collide; like a mirage the white van curled around the corner. And she literally giggled over the phone when she saw me standing there waving. I laughed out loud to, and kind of shrieked: “I see you!!”

She pulled up and I ran and got them. We lugged the bags and bags of someone else’s hand-me-downs that they were clinging to towards the van. The driver insisted they re-prioritize because all of the bags wouldn’t fit. This triggered a fight. Already the family had attached themselves to their new belongings as some sort of hope, as some sort of identity. They had a hard time leaving it all behind again.

As they stood there, fighting in the street, Larouche leaned over his seat and asked to see my phone one more time.

He took a picture and then I asked for my phone back. I was worried about losing it, to be honest.

He looked up confused and wondered aloud why I needed it back, wasn’t I coming with them?

My heart stopped in that moment. All the weekend’s work came rushing down on me. The moments of helping desperate people, giving all I had to them, and still knowing that it wasn’t enough; still knowing after pouring yourself into someone that it hadn’t helped or changed anything. I wanted to save these people. I wanted to take them to a place where they could have a chance at life and have a moment without fear and the anxiety and the crushing weight of reality. But that wasn’t a possibility, so instead I had just done what I could in a moment and resigned myself to the reality that it was futile and pointless.

And then a nine-year-old kid, a great dancer, leaned over his seat and expressed honest confusion that I was not a part of something larger than this moment.

What do you say?

No. I’m not coming with you. I’m going home. To a family who will never let me down. To a huge dinner, that I’ll probably complain about if it doesn’t fit my needs. To check the status of my new camera on Amazon, and to cry myself to sleep, not because of the horror I’ve seen, but because I have to go back to the blessing of a job I have in a few days.

I stood there, and I smiled and asked him if he would teach his brother how to dance.

He told me that was a given. Of course he would. He was more worried about me. Who would teach me how to dance?

I told him, I’d do my best to teach myself. I told him I’d keep his pictures forever. He asked me if he could have my camera phone.

For a single moment I almost said yes. But then reality, the world, and the recklessness of that descended on me, and I shook my head and laughed. It’s insane to give someone your phone. Would I pay the bill forever? When would I cut him off? How would I contact my mom? I have no money. The practical issues with that go on and on.

I wish I had given it to him.

Instead I waved goodbye, and walked away from the white van, with the driver and mother still arguing. Neither said thanks. Neither looked up as I walked away. I didn’t say goodbye to them.

I want to pray for this boy. I probably will, for a few days. Maybe even a few weeks. But he and I will never meet again, and he will grow into the man that his family demands he be, probably aggressive, probably a little bit frightening to white suburban me.

He’ll probably stop dancing in public.

He’s probably forgotten me already. It will take him longer to forget that phone though.

When I first got there, to the Astrodome, a Red Cross person grabbed my mother and I and asked us if we could help. We said yes, obviously, that’s what we were there for. Eager, ready and excited to get involved, to do some substantial good.

The Red Cross guy took us to a shaking woman in a wheelchair. He explained quickly that she needed help finding her family, and then he was gone.

The woman had no idea where her family was. I don’t mean, within the Astrodome, I mean, within the country. She had gone to hospital with her eighteen year-old daughter, who was giving birth to her first child two days before the hurricane hit.

When the electricity went, her daughter was in critical condition. They airlifted her out. They had told the woman, Mary Irene , that she would go with her daughter but, at the last minute, wouldn’t let her on the helicopter. They wouldn’t even tell her what hospital her daughter was going to.

So, she was left there. When the rescue workers came to get her out, she had no idea where her daughter was, if she was okay, or where the rest of her family was. She heard a rumor that they were in Houston, so she asked to be sent there.

When we encountered her, she was broken. She couldn’t even cry. She was just assuming her family was dead. When they had carried her out, she told me the bodies were like leaves in the water. No one in Houston had any record of them, but then, no one there had any record of her either because she hadn’t been registered. I spent about three hours trying to figure out how to get her registered. No one seemed to know anything. There was a complete breakdown of communication in that place, and it was impossible to coordinate.

I went home on Saturday night, having spent most of the day posting notices and carrying cardboard signs seeking “Tyrone”, to no avail. I didn’t feel helpless or frustrated, I just felt done and pointless. My efforts were futile. Her family wasn’t there and if they were it was impossible to find them in all the chaos.

I met Larouche and his dancing brother later that evening. Then, I left the buildings feeling empty and drained and disconnected. I couldn’t relate to these people and I wasn’t sure they could relate to themselves. Mary was shell shocked. She had no idea what had happened to her, she was just trying to cope moment by moment.

Irene was white.

She was the only white evacuee I spoke with all weekend.

If you have a city, and you pour water on it to the point that everyone has to leave, the people left behind are always going to be those that don’t have the financial or familial means to evacuate.

There will always be poor; that’s the reality of our society. However, to see so clearly that the division of wealth coincides with race was shocking to me.

It’s wrong. It’s wrong that we live in a country that proclaims that integration took place years ago, and then to see a disaster so clearly illustrate that this is not the case.

Honestly though, what hope do these people have? For some of them, the situation in the Astrodome is better than the situation they faced before the Hurricane hit. That’s inexcusable.

How can we help them now, but would have walked blindly by before? How can we be so giving when we’ve ignored this problem for so long and will continue to do so in our own cities?

And soon, things will fall apart.

Soon, when the volunteers get bored, or get over it, or when the country begins to forget, these people will still be living within a foot of a stranger, with no personal space, in a room where the lights never really go out.

They will still be wondering where their families are, and they will still be wondering where they should go, or how they should live, and I don’t want to be cynical but the result will be the desperation of man coming to the surface in a visible way.

In some ways, culture doesn’t matter. If you took everyone who lived in Beverly Hills, and stuffed them in a contained environment and took away any sense of duty or responsibility and revoked their right to protect or care for their family, it would only be a matter of time before people started to go crazy.

People will go crazy. There is a horrific wildness inside of man.

I saw it this weekend.

There were things in that room that didn’t delight God.

On Sunday, people came from churches to talk to the evacuees. They wore pristine white suits and skirts and stepped over the mess and the dirt. They walked passed volunteers who were covered in trash and filthy from caring for people’s physical needs. They walked around and handed brilliant white slips of paper out, which proclaimed the need for repentance. They explained to the devastated mothers that they had brought this on themselves. They explained that each child lost in a raging flood from Heaven was, in fact, their fault.

They said all this without ever getting a finger dirty.

I don’t see God in that.

Jesus told us that He is the poor. Jesus told us that He is the needy. They stood there, as Jesus lay broken, and told Him that He deserved it. They stood there and spoke of saving Him while He starved to death, from lack of genuine love.

It was fatiguing and draining and sickening to stand in that place on Sunday and look around and feel the war between God and Satan in such a real, tangible way.

God was there though. That I knew on Sunday.

After I left Larouche and his family in their white van, I walked over to help sort donations. I had come to Houston to talk to people because the idea of engaging with someone on a relational level sounds nice. However, after a day of that, I felt like I might die if I had to give any more of my soul away.

A friend had told me on Friday that the first couple of people you talk to, you feel awkward and inhibited, but you get over it. He was right. By Sunday, I felt no division between myself and these people. I had nothing to offer, they knew it and I knew it. I just sat there and stood beside them and stopped trying to relate or empathize, and just did what they asked.

I decided, though after saying goodbye to Larouche, that I was through with talking to people. I headed over to the donations building to stand around and sort shoes, but I passed a man on my way who asked me if I lived in Houston. Without thinking, I slowed my pace and walked a while with him.

He told me he was thinking of staying in Houston. He told me that the people were nice here. He told me ‘thank you’ on behalf of all the people in the Dome.

I just listened and invited him to stay in Houston, and wished him all the best. He had no family left. His daughter had been somewhere in the storm, but he didn’t think she’d made it. He had a cousin somewhere, but couldn’t remember where, or what their last name was. I gave him a hug and tried to squeeze Jesus into him with my arms, and then I walked away.

I walked to the donations building, and got a little lost. I couldn’t find it, and I was so tired, so I stopped to ask a Red Cross man. Of course, he couldn’t provide much insight. I stood there for a moment resting before heading out into the hot sun, and an evacuee tried to walk past the man into the airconditioned room. He explained to her that she had to go around, and she looked like this might be the end of her, so I asked if she was okay.

She was getting married this week; in the Astrodome, in the least romantic setting in the world, with thousands of dirty strangers around. She and her boyfriend had decided, at age 53, after a Hurricane had destroyed any hope for a picturesque wedding, that this was the moment.

She had found a volunteer who was doing hair for people. Her name was Joanne and she had never been to a hairdresser. She was so excited, but couldn’t find any hair products. She had been walking around for hours trying to find someone who had some to no avail, and she told me she was just praying for the Lord to bring her someone to help.

I don’t know. I don’t know if the Lord really cares about helping us in that situation, but I believe He does. I believe He cares about making us smile. And I believe He cares about glorifying His name.

I believe He cared that I felt useless, and so He made me feel like the answer to someone’s prayer because that’s the most meaningful thing I could ever ever be.

I sent her back to her cot, and went in search of hair care. People were unbelievably helpful in the donation section. Other volunteers were moved by her story because it’s good. It’s so good to hear of a moment of joy in such devastation. Especially a moment of joy that people understand. Soon, I was overloaded with hair products, and then make-up, and then nail stuff, and I bagged it all up and headed off to find the excited and nervous Joanne.

She was located in the bleachers above the lost and found signs. Thousands and thousands of multi-colored fliers posted the walls and gates in the lost and found, each one a written prayer, a plea for some sort of God.

I walked up to the stands and looked around but couldn’t see Joanne. I took a moment and prayed, because I needed her to be there. I knew the reality was that if I had the wrong place, or couldn’t see her in that moment, it was likely that I never would.

I passed an elderly man, sitting, reading his Bible.

I asked if he wanted me to read with him or anything. He said he was okay, but as I started to walk away, he called out ‘thank you for asking’. I asked him if he’d seen Joanne, but he hadn’t.

I walked down the bleachers, and then I saw Joanne. She freaked out when she saw me. She kept telling me I was an angel. I showed her all the stuff I had, and she almost started crying. We went downstairs together to find the hair dresser and the woman said she couldn’t do it today, but tomorrow she was going to make her hair so beautiful.

I walked back up with Joanne, who told me a little bit about her husband-to-be. She invited me to come to the wedding. I explained that I didn’t live here, but told her I’d be praying for her. I hope that wasn’t a lie.

It’s amazing. Here in white suburbia, where I live, there is such a divide. This disaster made that clear. But there, in the midst of the disaster, the divide was gone. Here, we walk around and pretend there is no racism, and there, it was made clear, but it was there where racism disappeared. People were stripped of their reactions that would make them reject me, and I was stripped of even an awareness of it. By the end of Sunday, I saw these people the way I would want to be seen, without pity because pity would imply that I could comprehend what they were going through. I didn’t know enough to have pity. It was just one human trying to hold up another in a moment. That was amazing.

After Joanne, I went to the donation center, and spent some time just sorting shoes. It was mindless work and it felt good. It felt great to see the new, fresh-faced volunteers at the door, asking me what they could do to help.

I went to meet up with my boys, who had come to Houston with me, around eight, and we sat in a group, waiting for my mom to come meet us, so that we could head home.

A woman came over. She was upset because she couldn’t find her kids. We explained that we were going to find them for her and the three boys split off, and I went with the women.

We were walking and talking and she was freaking out. Hysteria was barely below the surface as she explained that she hadn’t taken her eyes of them all week, and now she must have blinked. She started telling me how her fifteen year-old thinks she’s all grown up; she started telling me that she was just a kid, and then we saw them. Sitting there, harmless as can be, on her cots.

She started yelling and shaking and I thought for a minute she was going to hit me or them. I averted my gaze, but didn’t leave. That’s what I would have done on Saturday I think. I would have felt awkward, and that would have caused me to leave. The anger and rage would have confused me and disturbed me, but now it didn’t. It came from such a place of love, and despair and fear that I can’t really comprehend. This woman loved her children in a distorted image of God. She loved them enough to punish them and hurt them because she wanted to protect them, even if she pushed them away from her in the process. And this woman had sought my help, and I wanted to remind her that it was okay. So I waited and then she turned to me and hugged me, and said thank you and God bless.

I walked away.

I met my friends, and we sat for a moment watching the room. It made me tense and sick just to be there; I can’t imagine what it must be like to live there.

On Monday, we were on our way home to Austin when Irene’s husband, Tyrone, called my mom’s cell phone. He and her four children were passing through Texarkana and they were on their way to pick her up. We swung by the center again, and I ran in to tell Irene the news. She already knew. She had tried to contact us to let us know, but she couldn’t remember out names. She was happy. Really happy.

It didn’t seem like much, though. It wasn’t like a movie with the soundtrack going, and these two people finding each other in a mess of life. It was more like saying, “One more person isn’t gonna drop off the edge today.”

I don’t know why God asked me to be a part of this, because I could have been anyone and I didn’t do anything unique or amazing. But God did ask me to be a part of this. Regardless of how I feel or what I get or how I gain, I am asked to stand beside my fellow man and fight with them. So I will.

When the lights of the news cameras die down, and this disaster falls in shadow again, I pray that I will still stand beside these people. I pray that I will be able to carry with me the knowledge that part of this disaster exists in my city, too.

The tragedy extends beyond what Katrina did, and lies in what she revealed - the devastation that already exists in this country. People are barely getting by, and the hurricane is just one more thing on a plate that is already too full.

And I, I am getting by. I am just fine. I have a million and one things in my life, but the truth is none of these things stop me from being broken at one point or another. So, in that way, these people and I have everything in common. We have both been broken and we will both be broken again. I will stand by them and they will stand by me in our brokeness.

I want to work now to help these people. I want to work now to integrate this society, to live side-by-side with fellow humans regardless of our differences in culture or color.

I don’t want to forget that.

Fabienne Harford has been living in Austin, Texas since she graduated from the University of York, where she studied English. She has lived in Texas since the age of seven, but was born in England. Since graduating from college in 2003, she has been working for the Austin Film Festival, but left in December to become a case worker for Hurricane Evacuees. In her words, the move was “totally unexpected, totally unplanned, totally not me and totally glorious.”

Posted on March 15, 2006 12:00 AM