the big easy

You can see the effects of Katrina everywhere here. Everywhere. You'd have an easier time finding a needle in a haystack than finding a telephone pole that isn't crooked. Turn 360 degrees and you'll see destruction every second of the way. Whole lines of trees and signs literally snapped in half like so many matchsticks; houses missing roofs or entire sides; buildings with miscellaneous debris flung into their sides. The scale of the destruction is just unbelievable. But that isn't the scariest bit. That hpnour is reserved for the fact that this place is almost totally deserted. It's almost totally devoid of human life. The highways are empty and the streets have nobody on them.

There's nobody trying to rebuild their lives except for a few hardy individuals and evn then they're living in tiny trailers parked outside what used to be their homes. Even the place we're staying at right now is a gutted building that used to be some sort of plaza. You can see the line where the water used to be and its hard to imagine this place was once waist deep in water. According to the people here, the water was so toxic if you put your bare hands into them they'd come out bleached.

The second we entered the city, the entire bus was simnply shocked into silence. There is a gloom in New Orleans thats simply pervades everything. I'm not sure what the city was like before but I'm pretty darend sure it wasn't anything like this. Hard to believe this once was, or supposedly still is, a hustling bustling city. Driving through the suburbs actually reminded me of driving through Malaysia, except with fewer people and far far more damage. Its hard to put into words what it looks like. All I can say is that what they show on tv and in the newsies just doesn't do justice. The sight of workers trying to repair a gaping hole in the Superdome is made even more humbling when you realise that that hole was punched through several layers of solid metal and who knows what else, by nothing more than wind and rain, and of course any available debris.

I was finishing up Job when we first entered the city and thats when this guy Elihu was describing the sheer power of God and asking Job if he thought himself worthy of challending Him. Couldn't help but feel exactly that when we were driving in. Unworthy of challening Him I mean.

Its so hard to believe its been almost a year since Katrina. This place looks like it happened the day before yesterday. They're spending hundreds of millions of dollars on bullets and bombs for Iraq and leave the work of restoring New Orleans to whoever can be bothered. Most of the people who used to live here are probably not going to be coming back.