Alot Can Happen in Four Years... Reflections on a Hurricane

Sometimes four years seems like a lifetime. Four years ago this week, El 3atal, the Beans, and I huddled in an interior area waiting to hear what was happening with Hurricane Katrina. Would it hit New Orleans? Wouldn't it? When it passed East of us, we all breathed a sigh of relief. The refugees would be able to return home. Once again disaster was narrowly averted. And then the other shoe dropped. The hurricane may have missed New Orleans, but the storm surge overtopped the levees, wiped out lake view homes, and flood wide swathes of land. In the coming days, the tragedy would become much worse...

In the four years since then, the Bean family sold a house, moved to Jordan, started school (all 3 Beans and MommaBean), started a company, whew. It's been a busy and exhausting four years. Time has moved on. No longer do I rush home in fear at the sound of airplanes and helicopters thinking something big must be going on... No more do I think about how well New Orleans is doing at rebuilding. And yet, for many of those who evacuated, life just can't go on. The debacle that was the Federal response to Hurricane Katrina saddens me even to this day. The incompetence of the FEMA response is a federal embarrassment. When we left Louisiana bound for Alabama and eventually Jordan, we passed a field FULL of FEMA trailers. In Mississippi. Empty and rotting out in the elements. Now, keep in mind this is SEVEN MONTHS after the disaster struck. I read an article today about these little "cottages" that were intended as substitutes for the trailers. They are on track (finally) to be delivered later this year. Wait, did you get that? Emergency housing post-storm will be delivered FOUR YEARS too late. How anyone can get on with their lives, I don't really know...

For the Bean family, I doubt El 3atal and I will ever forget the experience but the Beans already have. The beauty of the Palestinian culture has never been more apparent to me than when a lovely couple that Teta and JiddoBean met at the vegetable market and we saw once or twice a year invited us to bring the Beans and stay in one of their bedrooms (kicking out one of their kids) when they heard we didn't have power. We were grateful and agreed, staying for 3 nights in one of their rooms, with another family in each of their other three bedrooms.

So, four years on, add the folks still unable to recover from the devastation of Hurricane Katrina to your prayers. El 3atal was astonished that the American news didn't give it a mention, but he heard about the anniversary on Al Jazeera... Ironic that those unaffected directly still remember while those in the middle of it seem to want to forget. I, for one, won't forget New Orleans. Big Easy, you're in my prayers...

Happy Jazz!