Learning Experience in NOLA

Hello world!

I’m back from the Big Easy, the Crescent City, the Bowl….NEW ORLEANS! After spending a week in Louisiana, I was R-E-A-D-Y to get back to Texas. If you’ve never been to Louisiana, you should know that it is humid and sticky. (ew.) I was born and raised in Lubbock, TX, and haven’t left very often, so going to such a humid place was a little (a lot) difficult at first. But if you don’t mind humidity and want to experience a place like no other, New Orleans is the place for you.

Although we did get to visit the French Quarter, eat beignets at Café Du Monde, and learn about the New Orleanian culture and history, the most influential place we went (in my opinion) was the Lower 9th Ward. The Lower 9th Ward was one of the first regions affected by Hurricane Katrina and the area is still recovering, 14 years later. Because the levee wall is so close, when the levee broke during the hurricane, the neighborhood was instantly flooded and ruined several homes. We were lucky enough to get to work with an organization called Youth Rebuilding New Orleans (YRNO for short).

YRNO was founded by local high schoolers who wanted to help others in a time of crisis. Katrina had damaged so many homes, these high schoolers joined together to begin fixing homes and rebuilding the city, house by house. Today, the rebuilding continues and the organization relies on the youth of New Orleans and college students from everywhere to volunteer and help out.

Under the direction of John Coyle, the construction manager of YRNO, and two student volunteers, Jeremy and Ray, we framed the house and got to install windows on our last day of work. Krysta and I helped Jeremy make window headers and door headers. For those of you who are not familiar with that construction term (don’t worry, I wasn’t either), headers are the hidden support systems that go on top of the window. A header is made of two 2x4’s and two 2x8’s and nailed together, then placed in its location. (I’ll add a visual representation later.) The first header that Krysta and I made didn’t fit in the space it was supposed to go, so we had to cut it and try again. Despite messing up the first header, we soon became header experts and finished making the other headers for all the windows and doors in the house. So next time you walk through a door or open your window, just know that someone, somewhere, worked hard to make the header that is holding everything in place.

Working in construction was something that I had never done before, and never really thought about. I really learned a lot about teamwork, and I know that sounds so cliché, but it’s true. If one person doesn’t get the correct measurements, then the wood is cut wrong, and the piece gets assembled, but won’t fit anywhere. Then you have to start the process all over again. It was very frustrating when our first attempt to make a header failed, but after analyzing what went wrong, we were able to make sure that nothing got messed up during the process when we tried again. Making sure that everyone does their part is essential to making anything worth lasting, especially a house.

One particular day that stood out to me was our third day there. John was kind enough to take us on a mini tour of houses that were completed by YRNO, and even let us take a tour of his home to see the architecture and water management systems they use. Water management is something that I have never really had to think about. Growing up in Texas, we’ve pretty much been in a drought for my whole life, so we try to work on water conservation. So when I heard “water management” I had thought that John was going to start talking about water conservation. NOPE! Not the same thing at all. They are actually complete opposites. New Orleans is a city that is below sea level, so the city is constantly having to get RID of water. The government has installed water pumps all around the city to pump water out of the ground and over the levee wall to keep it out of the city. Although that seems like it would work well enough, over a long period of time, it actually damages the city. After the water is pumped out of the ground, the soil is able to condense, and therefore sinks even further. As NOLA continues to sink further below sea level, civilians have begun to invent their own ways to manage the water.

Many people have invested in water barrels and have them sitting in their lawns. A water barrel is exactly what it sounds like-it’s a barrel that is connected to a rain gutter to collect up to 50 gallons of water. In addition to water barrels, several communities have started to plant trees in their yards. Planting a tree can help beautify the neighborhood, soak up hundreds of gallons of water, and produce oxygen. SOUL (Sustaining Our Urban Landscape) is an organization that offers a free tree for willing homeowners to participate in this movement. Another movement going on around several NOLA communities is the No Pavement Movement. This is basically just a call to action to get rid of concrete sidewalks and patios and to replace them with a permeable substance that the water can seep into and then be pumped out later. Water management is such an important aspect of life in New Orleans because if they don’t take care of the issue now, then they will literally be submerged into water.

After working with a team of people I had never met before and learning how to do things I’d never done before, I can confidently say that this trip is definitely something everyone should sign up for. I learned so much about the New Orleans culture and history that I didn’t know before, I learned how to work with individuals with very different backgrounds, and I learned how to really just go with the flow. I’m not the most flexible person when it comes to something not going according to plan, but this trip really showed me that sometimes, you just have to go with it. Weather, sickness, overcrowding-these are all things that we encountered and affected our plans during the trip and we just had to make adjustments to our day and make the best of it. After learning so much about water management, team spirit, and the importance of a home, I hope to help out my own community. Although there aren’t any homes in need of rebuilding in my neighborhood, I could reach out to friends and family when they are in times of need. I may not be able to give much, but I know I can offer my time to them to talk, to babysit, or to just be there with them if they need me to be.

Going on trips like these are so important because they teach you about the place you’re at, history, and most importantly, they teach you about yourself. Then, you can take that knowledge and apply it to your own life and see where you can make a difference in someone else’s life. I am so grateful to have been able to go on this trip, and I’m already planning my next RSB trip. If you want an experience that will take you somewhere you’ve never been before and teach you something about yourself that you never knew, RSB is the way to go.

- Bayliss