Features » December 22, 2005

Christmas in New Orleans

By Fatima Shaik

Picture Santa’s sled with a rolling kitchenette attached and you have some idea about the size of a FEMA trailer. I came across a yard of them when I got lost on the highway near Baton Rouge, where most of my family evacuated out of New Orleans.

The trailers are not the double-wides I imagined—but some are festooned with lights and an artificial Christmas tree outside the door as in a Bobbie Ann Mason short story. A FEMA trailer is more like a camper that you’d attach with a hitch to your four-wheeler when you want to get out of the city for the weekend. Tiny, but nonetheless a gift.

As the rest of the country, children and adults alike, envision Christmas with piles of presents from their favorite electronic and clothing stores, the people of the Katrina diaspora are waking up daily with thoughts of clean underwear, one comfortable chair and not being home for the holidays. But they are trying to make it.

In the town of Baker, the trailers sit row after incalculable row on a dusty field isolated from the sleepy community. Baker is a town where Main Street sits along the railroad tracks and leads from the interstate past the chemical plant and the playground to the church and two roads named Magnolia. An estimated 1,700 people live on the Baker plain. It is a good mile from any shopping or familiar community life. The FEMA park is named Renaissance Village, for the RVs as much as the hopes of their occupants.

Other evacuees stay in temporary apartments and pile into houses around Baton Rouge. One of my cousins hosted 70 people in her home in the days after the hurricane.

Now, life means close quarters, small irritations and long hugs with too many memories of home. Evacuees send e-mails to each other with Christmas poetry wistful for beignets, king cakes and burgers at Port of Call. People who lived for their front porches and pecan trees are getting used to seeing a clear, cold night sky.

Like children making their wish lists to Santa, the evacuees are hoping hard and wondering if they will ever regain shelter, sanity and a decent future.

The Christmas commerce that exists in the welcoming malls of the North is a harsh contrast to the stores and hotels of New Orleans, that were boarded up for protection and to keep out Katrina’s homeless. People joke about spending food stamps on Christmas candy or presents or seafood for gumbo, and the reasons not to hoard instant noodles and canned goods. The suddenly indigent now recognize the delicate balance between entitlement and nutrition.

The jokes these days are edgy. Once voting for governor was a choice between the Klansman and the Crook. (Vote for the Crook, my folks advised everyone.) Now, the joke is “Where’s Waldo?,” with bank officers and city and government officials hard to find.

Best friends and neighbors whose family connections extend for generations now meet fleetingly before traveling to jobs in one city or another. Relatives lose precious phone numbers and castigate themselves for doing everything wrong. Those who escaped Katrina have not escaped worry and longing.

Going home for the holidays are mostly the elderly and infirm. Their homecomings take place in downtown New Orleans at one of the three St. Louis cemeteries, which hold some of the city’s most permanent residents.

Still, the survivors talk openly to strangers in crowded meeting halls. People with dedication and sympathetic hearts are working and planning. As in New Orleans’ early days, crooks and futurists are finding commonalities in notions of a new frontier. Individuals are washing their houses by cup and spoon. They are teaching their children that kindness is sharing a bottle of water and self-sufficiency is keeping some.

When the nation emerges from its pile of gifts on Christmas morning and picks up the newspaper or moves to the television, will Americans still attend to the people of New Orleans? Or will Katrina’s poor folk move back toward the invisibility where they existed for so many years? The people of south Louisiana may accept their lot or maybe disappointments will fester. Let us hope that they bear no bitterness if America moves on.

In poor Louisiana, the community of Katrina survivors is looking for miracles. At this time of the year, they are finding a parallel to their tragedy and hardship from long ago: There was no room at the inn for the first Christmas and few places to rest their heads now for the people of New Orleans.

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• Reader Comments

  Thank you for keeping us aware of the Post-Katrina realities, even if these realities make us ashamed to be Americans.

  We are having a Post-Katrina Christmas dinner tomorrow and I have printed your article to share at the dinner where we will also be collecting money for New Orleans survivors.

  Posted by RebeccaAnn on Dec 24, 2005 at 3:44 PM

  Ashamed to be an American .... Is that what you think RebeccaAnn?  Ya, America is terrible, we are mean horrible people. 

  Well lets looks at some figures and see if your still ashamed.  But before I do that, I’ll offer this to you:  If America is so bad, then leave .. move to Canada. 

  These Katrina donation amounts are from SEPTEMBER 9TH, only 9 days after Katrina ... so you imagine how much more money has been given.  Also, these are just a few funds that are from a USAToday article on Sept 9.

  http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2005-09-09-katrinacharities_x.htm

  * Private gifts have soared to nearly $700 million (as of Sept 9)

  * The American Red Cross alone had received $503 million (as of Sept 9)

  * Bush-Clinton Katrina Fund collected $80 million (as of Sept 9)

  * Salvation Army has received $65 million (as of Sept 9)

  * America’s Second Harvest raised nearly $12 million (as of Sept 9)

  * Catholic Charities USA raised $7 million (as of Sept 9)

  Also, which states are the most charitable—RED or BLUE?

  The top 25 most charitable states are Red, that’s right ... Bush states. 

  This really doesn’t surprise me, liberals do a lot of yapping, whinning and complaining, but don’t take any action.

  Liberals are all talk.
  http://michellemalkin.com/archives/000839.htm

  So you can look at America as bad, evil and continue to look at the glass half emtpy ... And I will continue to look at the glass half full. 

  I use to hate liberals, but now I just feel sorry liberals ... and this is why.  What a horrible way to live, I can’t imagine being so bitter and angry everyday like a liberal.  Living in the best country in the world and being ashamed to be an American.

  I’ll keep you liberals in my prayers and hopefully someday you won’t be so bitter, angry and resentful.

  Posted by tina1 on Dec 26, 2005 at 4:50 PM

  tina 1;

  Welcome to the ITT online commentary universe. It’s good to hear such a sweet and innocent right-wing-nut perspective.  Our resident trolls are getting quite tame.

  I wonder if you could find a moment to consider this;

  http://blueworksbetter.com/CharitableGiving

  An admittedly ‘liberal’ comparison of the
  Catalog for Philanthropy Generosity Index touted by Ms. Malkin and a 48 page Boston College study available as a pdf file.  Don’t take my word for it.  Read both reports and make up your own mind which is the more credible. 

  Perhaps it is of some value to talk and think about things before acting without knowing what you’re doing or where you’re going or what you’re gonna do when you get there.

  Posted by luminous beauty on Dec 26, 2005 at 9:25 PM

  And tina,

  Thanx for your generous prayers.

  Namaste.

  Posted by luminous beauty on Dec 26, 2005 at 9:27 PM

  Lum,

  I really like that website ... blueworksbetter.  Nothing like a good anti-Bush, anti-GOP, anti-Corporation website.  Is that website funded by George Soros?  lol

  Now back to reality .... My main point is addressing the comment from RA, “ashamed to be an American” because New Orleans isn’t back to normal yet.  When you have a city in which 80% was underwater ... I don’t think all would be well in 4 months.

  And let me remind you of this, New Orleans survived the hurricane, the city seemed to dodge a bullet.  Then the levees broke a day after the hurricane and flooded the city, which caused the problem.  New Orleans was not ruined by the hurricane, New Orleans was ruined by the levees breaking after the hurricane.

  I like how the media and the liberals jumped on the bandwagon saying “it’s Bush’s fault” that the levees broke.  Bush has been in office 5 years, and New Orleans has been around 300 years.  5 years ... 300 years.  Also, you will see from my other post that the State of Louisiana and the City of New Orleans has been completely controlled by Democrats since the beginning of time.  After all, it was the French that started Louisiana ... no wonder the state is a disaster.  A receipt for disaster right from the beginning.  You would think that the Democratic/French leadership (or lack of) would of built better levees.  Maybe they would of thought this out little longer ... they only had 300 years. 

  Below are some excerpts to read.  The entire commentary can be found here: 

  http://new.neworleans.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2 201&Itemid=98

  ((  Most observers thought that Katrina’s destruction would cause legislators and the Blanco administration to offer sweeping changes in our political system, our government, our tax code, our business climate. Well, most observers were wrong because they didn’t realize the power of “politics as usual.” In Louisiana, old habits die hard, especially when you consider that we have been operating this way for 80+ years.  ))

  ((  Why is the state so gripped by this type of political mentality? For decades, many voters made rather careless decisions about elections and in some cases were downright lackadaisical. In fact, our state elected a known con man, Edwin Edwards, as Governor four times. We entrusted a crook to the highest office in the state, but we didn’t stop there. Louisiana has placed into office more politicians who have been investigated, indicted, and convicted than any state in the union.  ))

  ** Now why didn’t we hear any of this from the media?

  I have lived in New Orleans before so none of this was a suprise to me.  What was a suprise was see the media avoid this and focus on the FEMA and Bush. 

  Once again let me remind you of this ... New Orleans wasn’t ruined by the Hurricane itself, but by the levees breaking a day after the hurricane. 

  And which party has had complete control of the City of New Orleans and the State of Louisiana for the past 100 years?  THE DEMOCRATS !!!

  PS - How much Kool-Aid would someone have to drink to make them think that it’s Bush’s fault?

  Posted by tina1 on Dec 27, 2005 at 5:17 AM

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