Where have the days gone?

Monday work

nobody@vox.com(SandyU) — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 23:00:00 -0500

Nikki & I started in on finishing painting in eggshell some interior doors that were laying in the bedroom; last week's group had painted all the trimwork in that room, and the bi-fold closet doors, but there were 2 wooden doors that still needed done (which Mister Bob bragged he'd gotten for $20 each at a clearance sale - meaning we had to scrape off stickers & gunk, and paint over scrapes and scuffs).

But as soon as Bob 1 arrived with the exterior paint, we all started working on that, since the weather was calling for rain tomorrow, so we wanted to get as much done outside as possible today. Some of the new siding had already been installed on the front porch area, so that needed to be painted in situ. Then we started getting out strips of siding and pre-painting them, laying them out on the grass to dry as we went. We figured that way once our "siding crew" was ready to start putting it up, even if it was raining the rest of the week, it would be painted.

Removing old siding

The siding crew got to work removing some of the old siding and trim around the bow window, which had some strange angles to it, and needed some remedial structural work as well, before they could think about re-siding it.

Bruce mudding

Remedial mudding work continued in the living room...

Unloading tile

Around noon, a delivery truck arrived from Lowe's, with Miss Janie's new kitchen cabinets which we carried up into the living room (though Mister Bob only accepted some of them because he said they got the order wrong), a big stack of Pergo flooring (unsure where that goes, so we just carried it upstairs), and two pallets full of a beautiful cream-colored ceramic floor tile for the bathroom, bedroom, and kitchen, which we stacked under the house (no more room up in the house till we're ready for it).

Lunchtime... there's a cool little boathouse where we stored our coolers and ate lunch. Half of it was a dock, with a sling and winch system for lifting a boat out of the water, though we didn't hear whether she had a boat and lost it, or what. Attached to it was a screened-in patio with a tile floor and some tables & chairs, and one of those outdoor fireplace things. The screens needed some work, but otherwise it was a really nice little outdoor living space. From what we could gather, these structures had been damaged by the storm, but were rebuilt by a crew of Mexicans (perhaps the group that initially fixed the house?), until they were frightened away by alligators, which Mister Bob seemed to find hilarious.

Painting porch trim

After lunch, we started to paint white exterior trimwork, while continuing to paint siding strips.

Working on bow window

The siding crew continued to struggle with how to work with the bow window, but they also started to cut trim for the other (more normal) windows on that side of the house.

Al, Alex, Bruce and Mike continued to work on patching up the living room walls & ceilings, and the "entry crew" worked on figuring out what materials they needed to get that part of the project going. I think I heard that part of their afternoon was spent dealing with a nest of fire ants they discovered under the front steps.

The 2nd van arrived around 4:00, so we cleaned up our things and put them away for tomorrow, mostly under the house.

Dinner back at camp was a variety of quiches, which were really pretty good. I had Mexican, with salsa & sour cream on top, mmm. After dinner, we met Gregg from PA, and learned (because we asked) about the complete history of the Moravian Church, which we had known nothing about. It was very interesting - they're a relatively very small denomination, but disaster relief is apparently a major focus for them. We attended the little service at 7:00 (really just some singing with guitars), and then dispersed to get showers, etc. They played the BCS Champsionship game on the projector at 8:00 - LSU was pretty much the home team, though there were plenty of Yankees rooting for OSU, for what good it did... I found that I could access the wireless network from the dining hall (which I couldn't last year), so I sat up and checked emails and posted about the bus trip.

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Breakfast and gathering supplies

nobody@vox.com(SandyU) — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 09:00:00 -0500

Since I signed up to help cook breakfast, I had to report to Sid in the kitchen by 5:00, along with the 3 others who had signed up. Sid is a former Navy cook (in fact, he reminds me a lot of Uncle Charlie on My Three Sons - he was a Navy cook, wasn't he?), so our breakfast menu was S.O.S., although in this case it was to be on biscuits rather than on toast. One of the women was set to work heating up a huge pot of creamed chipped beef (from cans, so I don't know what all was in it). Another woman and I arranged 200 frozen biscuits on large baking sheets and started them baking. I was also shown how to brew tea in the tea machine, since they always have 2 dispensers of iced tea sitting out - one sweet and one not. I also made sure the plasticware, napkins, sugar, etc, were refilled. We had to count out plates before beginning to serve, so we would know how many were served - they have to keep close count at each meal, I think for the various reporting the camp has to do for its funding sources.

The biscuits took a little longer than planned, but breakfast was still ready shortly after 6. (Lights come on at 6:00 every morning; some people wait till then to wake up and stumble in to breakfast, and some set their alarms earlier and get ready in the dark.) Then I helped serve by splitting and placing a biscuit on each plate, while one of the other women glopped the S. on top. Sid hadn't wanted to put out any alternative breakfast items, but I noticed that it didn't take long for the dry cereal and milk to appear on the tables - as I suspected, there were a fair number of people who weren't very interested in creamed chipped beef. There were also apples and oranges set out to pack in lunches, so people had a lot of those for breakfast too. And there's always coffee, tea, and juices available 24/7 in the dining hall.

After the line died down, I served myself, and went out to join my group for breakfast. Alex seemed a good bit better this morning, sick-wise, so that's good. Pastor Sandy and some of the youth from Greensburg (I think) had decided to make up a variety of sandwiches for lunch for our SWPA group, so all we had to do was choose a bag with the sandwich we wanted in it, and then add our own fruit and snacks. Each morning, each work crew makes up a cooler to take to the jobsite with drinks (the camp had huge bottles of water and sourmelon PowerAde, which I imagine was donated because no one liked the flavor, heh), and with a lunch for each person. Since our crew was so big, we used 2 coolers.

Then after going back to the dorm to finish changing into work clothes (i.e. boots rather than sneakers), we all made our way to the warehouse at the back of the camp to select our tools and supplies. It was all rearranged since last year, but the aisles were well labelled, so it didn't take us long to find what we needed... exterior primer for the siding, interior primer for the walls that weren't done yet, a tile cutter because the paper said the floor tile was to arrive today, paint brushes, rollers, trays, drywalling tools and tape. All tools and supplies have to be checked out in the warehouse office, and then we loaded everything into one of the two 15-passenger vans that the synod rented for the week. Then we loaded into the van, too, though we could only fit 12 since we took out the back seat to fit in the gear. So the rest of our group went in the other van, which also was carrying a small crew of 4 to another job out in the same general direction. There was a GPS in each van, so we used that to get us to the jobsite ("Turn left. Turn left." OK - OK)

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Orientation and work assignments

nobody@vox.com(SandyU) — Sun, 06 Jan 2008 22:00:00 -0500

New mural

After our walk, we had time to freshen up finally from our bus ride, take showers and a little nap time. Bruce took a photo of the new mural on the front of the building (new since last year, that is. You can see all the other murals here).

Dinner was served at 6:00, as it is every evening. Tonight was a pretty bland (I'm afraid) linguini/cheese dish, cooked carrots, and boston baked beans. Oh, and King Cake, because today is the beginning of Mardi Gras season. No prizes though.

At 7:30 everyone was asked to come back to the dining hall for the general camp orientation. Various staff members spoke to us about different aspects of our week to come, camp rules, and such. I learned later that the one guy - I'm not sure what his position is, but he seems to be in charge of a lot of the general volunteer living coordination - is not on staff but has been a volunteer since September 2005, having left his home and job in Michigan or somewhere to pretty much permanently help with this relief effort (!). Suzie again told her starfish story. A representative from each group stood up to say who they were and where they were from. Our group (Southwestern PA Lutheran Synod) was the largest, with 75, but there was also a large group of Moravians from northeastern PA, a group from Wisconsin, a pretty large college group from Shenandoah University (I think it was) in Virginia, and many others I don't recall.

We learned that the current estimate is that the 3 counties which make up the 80 miles of Mississippi Gulf Coast are approximately only 20% rebuilt at this point, 28 months after the hurricane. About 13,000 families are still in temporary housing in those 3 counties. Many of the relief organizations have closed their volunteer camps at this point, and moved on to other disasters, of which there are always plenty, but Camp Victor plans to remain in operation for at least 5 more years they say. They did say though, that numbers of volunteers and donations have been decreasing, as many people don't realize the level of need that still exists there. But this week they had a pretty full house, about 200 volunteers, I think partly because it was close enough to the holidays that a lot of college kids could come - there were 2 groups I think that were only college kids, and a number of other college / high school kids who came with other groups (like ours). Also still a lot of retirees there as well, and a number of people in our age range who were taking time off of work to do this. A nice variety! One elderly woman was near the beginning of a 3-month stay at camp - she's unable to work on houses, so she stays at camp and helps with cleaning, cooking, and laundry - so there are opportunities for everyone to help in their own way.

We also learned that Fema the cat now has her own site on MySpace - LOL

Relaxing after dinner

They showed us the Chore Board (you can see it in the background), where they were looking for volunteers to help cook breakfasts and dinners each day, clean bathrooms, mop floors, etc. That is, they just needed people to sign up to do that one time during the week. We hadn't done that at all last year, so I decided to sign up to help cook breakfast on Monday - I figured that would be the best day to have to get up early, and then I'd feel good about having a chore out of the way for the week.

Pastors at work

After that, our whole Synod group stayed to get our work assignments for the next day, which Pastor Mort & Pastor Sandy had been working on trying to coodinate at least somewhat with our various skill sets. Our little group from Trinity was asked to work together with the group from New Hope (Freedom PA) to work on a house in Gautier which sounded like it needed work in almost every area. So there were 19 on our work crew, way more than last year. We chose Dave from New Hope to be our work crew leader, and based on the paperwork, we decided to sort of split into a painting crew (headed by Eddie, which Nikki, Bruce, Denise, and I volunteered for, along with Janis, who was actually on our crew last year!), a siding crew, and a drywall/mudding crew (which Al & Alex joined).

Assigning work crews

The way it works is that each house has a set of papers that goes with it from week to week, and each crew that works on it is to update what's been done that week, and what's the next thing to do after they're done with it at the end of their week. In theory, that should work pretty well, but we did find last year that it really depended a lot on the point of view of the previous work crew leader, as far as what's "done" and ready for the next step. Anyway, according to the papers on this house, the siding needed primed and painted before being installed, but it sounded like the paint color hadn't been chosen yet, so we figured we'd just get some primer from the warehouse in the morning for that - I spent some time looking up online about priming siding, to see if there was anything we should know, like for example that if we used latex primer, we would have to tell them not to buy oil-based paint. Also, the papers said that the living room and one bedroom were primed and ready to paint, and the paint was at the house, so we figured we just needed rollers, trays and brushes for that. Meanwhile, all the others worked out lists of what tools they thought we'd need based on what the paper said, so that in the morning we could get started right away.

Then to bed, to rest up from our long trip, and to get rested for the hard work ahead... Lights go out at camp at 10:00, ready or not, and all conversations must stop, so people can get the sleep they need. (the dining hall stays open though, for late night conversations, card games or whatnot)

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Camp Victor tour

nobody@vox.com(SandyU) — Sun, 06 Jan 2008 10:00:00 -0500

Getting name tags

As soon as we arrived at camp and unloaded our bags and stuff from the bus and into our new bunkbed "homes", we were given our name tags and wristbands, and then we were led on a tour of the camp building.

Distribution Center

Food distribution

We saw the Distribution Center, where food and other essentials are still gathered in, packed up, and distributed to needy clients of the Camp. [Later Sunday night, we heard a story about a woman who told someone she thought Katrina was the best thing that ever happened, because the millionaire who lived down the street from her little shanty had lost his home just like she had, and was in line for food just like she was, and now they talk to each other as equals. I thought that was a really interesting perspective.]

Tshirts in hallway

Here is a small sampling of the T-shirts that hang in the hallways and dining hall at camp. We had heard about this before coming last year, but hadn't quite understood till we got here. So this year we did bring a shirt with the name of our church on it (from the Atlanta youth gathering), and at the end of the week, all six of us will sign it and hang it up for posterity.

Fema

Here's Fema the cat, staring at us with her one eye - see my post from last year here to see why they named her Fema...

Womens bunk room

And here's our home-away-from-home for the next week... well, that is, the guys are in one of the Men's bunk rooms.

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Mississippi Redux

nobody@vox.com(SandyU) — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 21:59:04 -0400

Mural 5

We've signed up to go back to Mississippi this winter! I guess we must've done a good job of expressing our passion about the work we did last year, because both of the kids are joining us on the trip this time, as are some people from our congregation.

It's been over 2 years since Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast, and I read that there are still 29,000 households living in FEMA trailers - 25% of the Mississippi Gulf Coast population!

Over 200 people each and every week are still coming to Camp Victor to help rebuild this area. The camp intends to operate continuously for the next 8-10 years, which is the timeframe estimated for recovery.

Click here to find out how you can help...

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Art at Camp Victor

nobody@vox.com(SandyU) — Fri, 09 Feb 2007 17:00:00 -0500

Friday afternoon, since we got done a little early, I took some time to photograph the murals all over the front of Camp Victor. Enjoy!

First, the interior artwork: many (probably most) of the groups who have passed through Camp Victor since it opened last summer have left their mark on the walls by way of some sort of artwork/signatures/quotations. This is only one of 3 fully painted hallways. Hanging from the ceilings in all the hallways and in the mess hall are T-shirts which the groups have brought, decorated and signed. (Note to self for next trip: we should bring one from Trinity.)

Now, the exterior artwork, which is really wonderful! Ocean Springs is in large part an artist's community, and several local artists were commissioned to decorate the outside of the block wall building housing Camp Victor. It's truly a beautiful landmark building in the town now!

Here are all the murals in the order they're displayed, so you can (sort of) get an idea of how the building looks from the street:

Mouse-over or click on each photo to see the artist's name. Unfortunately I couldn't find the names of the artists who did the mural around the front entrance and the one with the "Kat5" in the middle...

Here are some details from the various murals, the parts I especially liked:

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A symphony every night ...

nobody@vox.com(SandyU) — Tue, 06 Feb 2007 06:00:00 -0500

After the teams were organized and we made arrangements to meet in the morning, it was almost 10:00, which is bedtime at Camp Victor. All dorm room and hallway lights are turned out at 10:00 on the dot, and no noise or conversations are allowed except in the dining hall, where the lights are left on all night. The reason for this is that the daily work is so exhausting, and breakfast is served at 6:00 am, so people who need 8 hours of sleep must be allowed to get it. Also, the outside doors are locked at 10:00, so we were warned that if we stayed out after that, we would need to make arrangements for someone to let us in.

Damascus

I had chosen a top bunk in Damascus Room, which was a "cat-free zone" (meaning it had bifold doors instead of curtains, to keep the cats out for those who are allergic, which I'm not, just trying not to get cat-ness on my stuff for Al's sake). There wasn't a men's "cat-free zone", but luckily Al's allergies didn't seem to kick up too much, even though I saw cats coming out of Antioch Room where he was staying.

Snore Symphony

I wish I had gotten an audio recording of the snoring at night... with 6 rooms of about 36 adults each, and all of them open at the top of each wall, the sound was truly astonishing! There was every type of snore you can imagine, from simple heavy breathing, to large intermittent snorts, to whistling, and on and on. I mixed a little audio file of stock snores to at least give you a sense of the cacophony. It had been recommended to us before we came that we bring ear plugs for sleeping, and I think most people used them ;-)

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FEMA

nobody@vox.com(SandyU) — Mon, 05 Feb 2007 22:00:00 -0500

FEMA

Camp Victor is home to 3 cats (for keeping away mice) and 2 dogs (for keeping away miscreants). Here's a picture of the cat named FEMA. She had been found injured near the camp (she lost an eye), and the camp staff nursed her back to health. They told us they had named her FEMA because ...

She's half blind and easily confused
When they first approached her, she ran away
She was bailed out by a faith-based organization

And who says Lutherans don't have a sense of humor?!?

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Camp Victor

nobody@vox.com(SandyU) — Mon, 05 Feb 2007 21:30:00 -0500

On Monday evening after spaghetti dinner in the mess hall, there was a mandatory orientation session for anyone whose first day it was (i.e. us). There they told us how Camp Victor came to be.

Christus Victor Lutheran Church is a church on Rt 90 in Ocean Springs. When Katrina hit, the church staff was at the church, and waited out the storm. Only afterward did they realize how bad it had really been. People from the community started coming to the church for help and a place to stay, because this church had always been known as a place of help and refuge in the area. There was no power or telephone service, but one of the staff members' DSL connection was still working somehow (the only one they knew of, and luckily right near the church). So for 15 minutes every 4 hours, he would run his generator to power his modem, and they would send emails out to call for food and help. Meanwhile, the church had become a de facto Red Cross shelter, and in fact this was one of the first times the Red Cross had used a private structure as a shelter. They were able to house several hundred people in the church.

Within a day or two, Lutheran Disaster Response had arrived on the scene, and began bringing in volunteers and food and other aid for the hurricane victims. After the crisis period had ended, LDR stayed and set up a work camp at the church, with 200 volunteers per week coming in from all over the world to donate their time to the clean-up effort. Our Synod sent 3 groups for a week each last February, and they stayed at the church. The church was also running a distribution center to distribute food and supplies to the people, and a medical clinic to treat those who were not injured seriously enough for the hospital to see them (the hospital was having to turn people away).

Us in the dining hall

At some point last Spring, the church purchased a warehouse building in downtown Ocean Springs, and volunteer workers converted it into Camp Victor, with a distribution center, staff offices, 6 dormitory rooms, a mess hall, showers and restrooms, a medical clinic, and a large area for construction tools and supplies. The emphasis now is on reconstruction rather than demolition and cleanup, though as we're finding, there are still houses that need to be "mucked out" after 17 months! Work is being done in Ocean Springs and a number of neighboring towns. About 100 families are assisted by the distribution center each week. LDR is still the agency running the operation, and they believe they will be needed here for another 3-6 years. Lutheran Disaster Response is well-known for being among the first to arrive at a disaster area, and among the last to leave.

Camp Victor signs

Over 8,000 volunteers have served at Camp Victor since September 2005; approximately 150-200 people still are coming to help every single week. Over 1400 homes have been worked on, with another 400 on the waiting list. Anyone can call to request cleanup assistance; from what I can gather, in most cases the homeowner pays for the materials, but in some cases not, and in any case the labor is all free. Priority is given to the handicapped and the elderly, since they are the least likely to be able to rebuild their homes by themselves.

People from all walks of life are here helping: many are in home construction by trade, but most are just willing hands. This week I would say that about 2/3 of the volunteers are men, and I imagine that's typical. Many are retired, but there are also many who clearly are taking a week's vacation to help others. Besides our group of 75 from Southwestern PA, there are large-ish groups from Wisconsin and the Dakotas here this week, as well as small groups or individuals from about a dozen other states. It's truly inspirational to see so many people so willing to give of themselves to help their "neighbors".

If you'd like to help by donating time, money or material, please see the Camp's website. We can attest to the fact that all donations are very welcome, and definitely put to good use.

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