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One year later

Today marks a year since the storm, the event that most people outside of this area call Hurricane Katrina. As Governor Blanco said earlier this evening, at an interfaith prayer service I attended, it's been the longest year of our lives. I think there's a truth to that. Even though I visited just a couple of weeks before the storm, it's hard to remember when life didn't revolve around the storm and its effects. Time is measured in terms of before the storm and after the storm.

Last week, I stepped out on the porch in the morning. For a brief moment, there was no storm. Things were normal. I couldn't see the nearby houses that are abandoned or being renovated. No bus, many of which were donated by other cities, was passing by. The neutral ground was tidy. Then, I turned just so, and my eye fell on something - I don't even know what - and I remembered that this is life post-storm. That things are not normal. It reminded me of when I was pregnant and would wake up in the morning and would forget that I was pregnant. Until I tried to move.

There are days when I wonder at how much progress has taken place in this year - that so many people have moved back and are in their own homes with lights and water, that we have public transportation, that we have so many intersections with functioning traffic lights, that we can buy things and eat out, that we can go through the day with a semblance of normalcy. There are other days when I wonder at how much is left to be done - that so many people are living in other cities or in trailers or in limbo, that there are areas of the city where the water is still not potable, that our pipes are hemorrhaging more water than we are consuming, that power outages are not a rare occurence since we have no backup, that our buses display destinations to which they are not actually going, that traffic signs and signals are still missing or not functioning in some neighborhoods, that some of my favorite shops and restaurants are not open - yet we still can go through the day with a semblance of normalcy. This is the power of human adaptation, of our resilience.

I think part of what gets us through is knowing that we're all in this together. No matter how bad we have it, we all know someone who's had it worse. We have to believe that it will work out, that the city will rebound, because it's the only way to keep going. Recently, I watched a few short videos looking at our city after the storm. The words of one guy really stuck with me:
"New Orleans is fine. She just got a bad haircut. It's gonna grow back out."

Six months after the storm:

One year after the storm:

Posted by Shokufeh at August 29, 2006 10:58 PM