Personal OpinionA young girl patiently sits on the Stopher Gym floor as a Thibodaux High student paints her nails with glittery red polish. A grateful man walks to his cot with a donated blanket, pillow and Spiderman comic book tucked under his arm. A National Guard officer gives a laughing child a piggyback ride through the shelter. An evacuee walks her chihuahua around campus, looking for a shady spot to rest. A 9-year-old boy stands, not in the food line with those who accompanied him to the evacuation center, but behind the counter, serving as a volunteer instead.
These are the scenes at the shelters on the Nicholls campus. No looting or shooting. No carjacking, raping or gang activity. Just people who cannot return home. People who are in search of a place to sleep, water to drink and something to eat.
Many of my friends have told me they fear coming back to a campus where evacuees can roam free. And who can blame them if all they’ve seen or heard about are the desperate and dangerous conditions in areas of New Orleans and rumors about shootings and hostage situations in Lafourche Parish? To those who have concerns, five minutes inside a Nicholls shelter will transform those fears into compassion.
Until Friday, Hurricane Katrina was not real to me. I stayed in my little town of Mathews, slept through most of the wind and rain and tried to form words containing the letter “X” in Scrabble games with family members. The physical signs of Katrina were long lines at grocery stores and gas stations, no air-conditioning, a dead cellular phone and no access to Facebook. Of course, I watched the news coverage on a battery-operated television and worried about friends from the devastated areas, but it was as if it just as well could have happened in another state.
It hadn’t occurred to me that Saints fans wouldn’t be filing out of the Superdome on Sundays, complaining about another loss. Or that the Mega Zeph at Six Flags would take passengers underwater if it were working. Or that my anticipation for the opening of the Hard Rock Casino in Biloxi would fade.
It hadn’t occurred to me that things would never be the same whether your home was damaged or not.
Then Friday I visited the evacuation center at Nicholls. My parents, being protective as all parents tend to be and knowing my level of determination to chase a story, were concerned about me coming to the center alone. So my dad and I set out not knowing what conditions to expect, and I never expected conditions to be like I saw them.
The outpouring of kindness from the volunteers and of appreciation from the evacuees was at a level I’ve never seen. To see the sparkle in a toddler’s eyes match the shiny tones of a Mardi Gras bead my father handed him, I cannot adequately describe. Just for a simple Mardi Gras bead-something people step on and drive over without thinking twice.
I returned Saturday and assisted in the call bank, where evacuees can try to contact family members and friends to let them know they are alive or find out where their loved ones are. It was heartbreaking to watch someone call number after number trying to find out if her grandbabies survived or to hear a dad explain to his son that he had lost all his DVDs and Playstation games. I called shelter after shelter in Terrebonne Parish looking for the mother and five children of an evacuee staying at Nicholls. They were not listed at any.
Every evacuee was as appreciative as one can imagine. They even made it a point to return my ink pen they used to take down phone numbers of where to reach their families. They would not even take an ink pen-something I don’t even think twice about stealing off of someone’s desk and forgetting to return.
Before I left, the woman got in touch with a relative who had her five children and mother I had tried to locate; they were all safe. Just one of many amazing stories that have come from these shelters on campus.
“But, I can’t understand why so many people didn’t evacuate from New Orleans,” a friend said to me. “They didn’t want to leave even though they were warned.” Well, I didn’t evacuate even though the parish I live in was under a mandatory evacuation and neither did several friends of mine. What if the storm would have come more towards Lafourche Parish? Where would I be? Would I have been able to save anything from my home? Would I know where my family and friends were?
The more telling questions for us as a Nicholls community are: How would we want to be treated if we had no other place to go but a shelter? What would bring a positive side to that horrible situation? What would bring a smile to our faces?
Volunteer whenever possible in whatever way possible. Read a book to some children or toss the football with them on one of your breaks. Play bingo or card games with a group of evacuees. Clean out your closets and donate what you haven’t worn in months.
Treat the evacuees as you would any other member of the Nicholls community, because now they are members of our community. Spend a couple of minutes talking to one of them and see for yourself that the rumors about violence among them in Thibodaux is false.
Another question creeps into my mind. If I had lost everything and were in a shelter, would I be as well-mannered as the majority of the evacuees at Nicholls? Would I be as calm? Would I be as patient? Would I be as appreciative?
I can only hope so.
