What do you do?

“What do you do?”

 That question is my least favorite part of mind-numbing small talk.

 “What do I do?”

I walk my dog. I write. I go to the beach with my mom. I go boating with my friends. I read. I sail with my dad. I watch the Giant’s play baseball. I run. I watch movies. I travel. I do a lot of things.

I realize that the question is really “What do you do to earn money?”

But, I’m still never sure how to answer. Yes, I’m a grant writer. I work at a non-profit. But, I also tutor at another non-profit. I also Chair a Board of yet another non-profit- I don’t get paid- but it’s definitely a lot of work. I know I’m not the only one who suffers from chronic volunteerism. I was at a social event for non-profit staff and at one point someone asked me the dreaded “What do you do?” For a moment, I couldn’t remember whether I was there for my main job or one of the other non-profits I’m involved with. So, I told her just that. She smiled knowingly, “Oh, you work the non-profit double shift.”

I’m happy to be working, “What do you do?” is much worse when you are unemployed. I can still hear the voice of the careers director at my master’s program, “Take advantage of all of your networking opportunities.” But, when I was searching for a job- I really didn’t want to tell some stranger at a cocktail party how I split my time between submitting resumes, conducting “informational interviews”, and watching NCIS marathons. Instead I usually mumbled something like, “just finished school”, “still looking”, or, my personal favorite, “I’m in-between opportunities.”

One day I was volunteering at an event. The volunteer manager gathered everyone together to introduce themselves. She must have known that “What do you do?” is an awful question, because she asked everyone to share “What are you passionate about?” At first I thought that her question was really enlightened- I could chose whatever I wanted to define myself. Then it was my turn to answer and I realized I wasn’t sure what one thing I wanted to define me. “I’m a grant writer,” I mumbled.

A couple of years ago I was traveling through South America. At one point I realized that out of all the people I met, no one asked me “What do you do?” In fact, I traveled with some people for a couple of weeks and I didn’t even know what they did. There wasn’t a need to ask. Travel is what we did.

 Instead travelers ask “Where have you been?” followed up by “Where are you going next?” Unlike “What do you do?” “Where have you been?” and “Where are you going?” have a purpose. Once a traveler starts listing places, they inevitably get to a place where the other traveler has been or is going to, which gives a chance to share advice, trade stories, and find common ground.

 So, next time I’m asked “What do you do?” I may just respond with places I’ve been.

Sacramento

A couple of weeks after I returned home from the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women conference I went to Sacramento, California. Sacramento could not be more different than New York City. I stayed in a hotel near the capital. To get from the hotel to the capital building, I passed under an overpass where homeless people slept, through a mall that was not much more than a food court, and rows of empty storefronts. On the other side of the hotel was Old Town Sacramento. California still has ghost towns leftover from the gold rush. When I was a child, my parents dragged me to every last one. Now they are mostly tourist traps, places for children to pan for gold, take pictures in costumes, and eat penny candy. Walking through OldTown means maneuvering over a crooked wood plank floor and around groups of second graders eating ice cream. At one of the Old Town pubs they served corned beef tacos, a concoction I concluded must had been devised by an intoxicated patron. Compared to New York’s shiny sky scrapers, bright lights, well-dressed residents, and constant noise, Sacramento is almost eerily quiet—a town where the past is enjoyed and the present ignored.

I was in Sacramento for a readers’ conference for the California Department of Education (CDE). At a readers’ conference “experts” read grant proposals and determine which ones should receive funding. In a grant proposal a problem is presented, a plan for a program to solve the problem is explained, the goals and objectives listed, and the worked planned out.

I love grant proposals. Out of all the proposals that were submitted to the CDE there was probably only funding for less than a tenth. But each proposal represented so much hope. In a proposal there is a solution to every problem. As I read over the dozens of proposals I imagined each community, each school, each program, each child- learning something new, having fun, being inspired. Each proposal made the problems caused by poverty, failing schools, and inequity seem solvable, the solutions doable.

I left the conference knowing that only a few of the programs would be funded, and even the ones that did would struggle to survive. But, I also left feeling hopeful, because all over California people had big plans, ideas, hopes for the future—and I was lucky enough to read a few of them.

On Friday after the conference was over I drove back to the Bay Area on Interstate 80. As I drove down the long, flat freeway the wind picked up. A tumble weed blew in front of my car, colliding with my front bumper. I closed my eyes for a moment and then I continued to drive.

Girls Are the Solution

The United Nations Commission on the Status of Women Conference is concluding, but I’m already back in California. When I envisioned writing this post I thought that I would be overwhelmed with best practices, inspirational stories, and motivational words. Everyone keeps asking me how it went. I’m not sure how to answer. Every session at the Conference was filled with depressing stories of horrific violence: rape, child brides, sex trafficking, teen dating violence, domestic violence, female genital mutilation, slavery, femicide, infanticide, honor killing. But, I know that is not what people are asking me about. They want to know what the United Nations is doing, what different ngos are doing- they want to know what is the solution.

The inspirational stories were not the stories that each speaker told, but they were there- hidden under the tragedies. There was the story of the City of San Francisco. In San Francisco activists successfully lobbied the City to form a Department on the Status of Women, which gathered government agencies and community-based organizations together to combat domestic violence and sex trafficking. There were the women in Cuba, who during the 1960s went out in the countryside to teach the campesinos to read. There were the women working for Kids In Need of Defense, who provided unaccompanied immigrant minors with pro-bono legal defense. Or there was the Take Back the Tech Campaign, which spread awareness to youth about protecting themselves from technology being used against them. There were the women campaigning to bring women all over the world together, to share their stories at a Fifth World Conference on Women.

 The stories of the girls and youth participants were the most inspiring. There were the college students from North Carolina, who researched issues of violence against women to present to the United Nations and their classmates. There was the Children’s Parliament in India, where children gathered to discuss the issues that impacted their lives and advocate for children in the adult Parliaments. There was also the many, many Girl Scouts and Girl Guides from all over the world. They argued that “girls were the solution” and proved it, by telling their stories about how they planted trees in their village in Africa to provide fruit and firewood for their families, or how they led teen dating violence workshops with pre-adolescents in Scotland to encourage their younger sisters to think critically about media messages.

 Gaynel Curry from the Office of the High Commission on Human Rights told delegates that “violence against women is a global challenge and everyone needs to be part of the solution.” The girls attending the UN CSW Conference answered with their solutions. In a letter to the United Nations they urged UN funding of education worldwide, arguing that “knowledge, not violence, should be the international currency of power.”

 While I don’t know what the United Nations is going to do, I do know that there are many ngos trying to make a difference. But I believe that the way change will happen is when we stop focusing on the tragedies and start looking to the solutions. Zainab Salbi the founder of Women for Women International argued, “We need to own our story. We each have a story and it has to start from within. It is about us telling a new story of us.” 

Stories

On my way into New York I shared a shuttle with a bunch of people from Italy. One woman kept taking pictures of all of the garbage- a broken window in the back of taxi, a mattress on the side of the road, a boarded up building covered in graffiti. She ignored the New York City skyline, Times Square all lit up, the Empire State Building- only pulling her camera out for the grittier side of the city. I imagined she was planning to go home and try to convince her friends that New York City was destroyed in apocalyptic event.

She got me thinking about how we frame stories we tell, what pictures we choose to show. When Consultation Day (an event for representatives from NGOs worldwide) at the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women Conference began it was filled with tragic information. Michelle Bachelet, the Under-Secretary General and the Executive Director of UN Women told the crowd, “Violence against women is undermining all development efforts.” We heard statistics on sex trafficking, domestic violence, and prostitution. When Dr. Helga Konrad, the Former Austrian Minister for Women, argued “the main problem is that we are dealing with effects of human trafficking not prevention. We are managing human trafficking not combating it,” the woman next to me, who worked in Iraq, told me about the Syrian refugees being trafficked in Iraq. She asked “how can we possibly prevent human trafficking?” I didn’t have a response, so I just shrugged.

Ambassador Gunnarsdottir of Iceland said “we often describe all the problems and we do not get any further than that.” She was right, but the problems seem so overwhelming. I struggled to reframe- to focus on possibilities instead of problems, when Sean Southey, the Executive Director of PCI Media Impact, got up and said “victims, advocates, victims and advocates. What stories do we tell? We have to be sure we are telling the right stories.”

I thought about the young women from GIRL Be Heard, who kicked off the event with their amazing monologues. They reminded me of our teen girls at Girls Inc., who celebrate G-Day (Girls-Day) every February, sharing their own stories about what it means to be a girl in the world. The teens always leave me feeling empowered by their bold voices. I am going to stay focused on those stories this week- the bold, powerful voices of girls and women.

“One good story can change the world and together we can change the world one story at a time.” – Sean Southey.

Feminism

I never considered myself a feminist. My mother was a feminist. The oldest daughter in an immigrant family, she fought to go to college, to marry who she wanted, to dress how she wanted. But I didn’t need to fight. I always knew I would go to college, my parents never questioned what I wore, and while they may have questioned who I dated, they respected my right to choose. Feminism seemed outdated, a fight that had already been won. In graduate school I attended an amazing session on gender mainstreaming in development work. Led by a Cornell Law professor and hosted by the Cornell Institute for Public Affairs Women in Public Policy group, I enjoyed a day of engaging dialogue about the role that gender plays in international development. Here, it seemed, there was still work to be done, progress to make. After the amazing workshop, I signed up for a follow-up session. The day of the session I caught a ride with a friend to the professor’s house, where the event was held. The car smelled of fast food French fries, an effect of the biodiesel that fueled the car. Five of us were crammed in there, all talking at once about the prior week’s workshop. We were excited to find out what the focus would be for the follow-up session. All we knew was it would be about women’s rights in India.

We arrived at a huge house on the lake, and trudged through the snow to get to the front door. When we arrived there was a woman in her late fifties sitting on the floor, her legs wrapped around a small drum. While she was a white woman, she wore loose fitted clothing that resembled clothing that a man in India might wear. We sat down on the colorful pillows strewn about nearby. As we sat the woman began to lightly thump on the drum in her lap. She told us about how she had gone to India in the 1970s to learn to play the drum. She told us how she challenged the locals’ views on women by becoming the first woman to be trained to use the drum, which was traditionally a man’s instrument. I looked at my friends, only to see the same puzzled expressions on their faces that I had. What did one American woman traveling in India, learning to play a drum, have to do with women’s rights in India? One of my friends began to fidget as she listened to the woman’s story. My friend, who was born and raised in India, had spent several years as a journalist before coming to Cornell, often interviewing women who had experienced all sorts of challenges. Finally, my friend couldn’t take it anymore, she interrupted the woman. The drum stopped. “Did you actually spend time with any women while in India?” The woman seemed confused by the question. “No, only men played the drum, so I spent my time with them,” she replied.

After that day I was hesitant to get involved with anything that focused on women’s rights. Yet, when I graduated from Cornell, I went work at Girls Inc. I wanted to work there because Girls Inc. had a good reputation as a strong youth development organization in my community. I worked in youth development programs since I was a teenager, but prior to Girls Inc., the organizations were always co-ed. My first role at Girls Inc. was coordinating an afterschool program in Oakland’s Fruitvale neighborhood. The Fruitvale is an international neighborhood; most of its residents are recent immigrants from Mexico, Central America, and Vietnam. My girls reflected the neighborhood. For the first time since I started working with youth, I began to hear the girls’ voices. In a co-ed setting, only a few girls are able to make themselves heard over their often noisier and more rambunctious male peers. But, now I was able to hear all of the girls- from Naomi* who always wanted to be in charge to Beatrice who moved through life at her own very….slow….pace. There was Lisa, who was always quiet in class, but played every sport to win. She once stole a ball from another group of girls. When I asked her why she took something that wasn’t hers she looked at me as if I was stupid. “Because I wanted it,” she replied. Then there was Anya, who after meeting one of the guest engineers that we brought in told me, “I’m going to be an engineer too. You know why? Because I’m smart!”

Girls Inc.’s mission is to inspire all girls to be strong, smart and bold. But, this group of nine and ten year old girls inspired me instead. They made me realize that we still need to fight, to make sure their voices, and all girls’ voices are heard. They inspired me to call myself a feminist and they are the reason I am where I am today, on a plane on my way to the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women Conference to learn more about what I can do to support girls and women worldwide.

* All names were changed for privacy.

Favelas

In a few days Rio de Janiero will be erupting with Carnival. While I can’t be there, I was fortunate enough to visit the amazing city in the past. A few weeks before I left for Rio the news was filled with armed battles between the Brazilian police and the drug lords that ruled the favelas. Every night I saw images of buses on fires, criminals shooting at police, frightened bystanders trying to escape the chaos, and crying children. My friends and family questioned my decision to visit Rio. “I’m sure I will be fine.” I replied.

 I used to live in Oakland, California. While Oakland was swept up in the Occupy Protests I would get worried calls from friends around the country. In the news they had seen images of protesters with bandannas hiding their face, breaking windows, lines of heavily armed police officers, and tear gas and smoke filling the sky. My home was only a few miles from the protests and on a quiet night you could hear them, but it really didn’t impact my neighborhood. The protests, which often disintegrated into riots, weren’t the first riots I’d seen in Oakland, and I’m sure they won’t be the last.

Once, when speaking of his home city of Rio de Janiero, one of my Brazilian friends told me “Rio, it’s not really like that. I mean, yes, what you see on the news is really happening. But, that it is not Rio, not really.”

“I understand” I replied.

In Rio you can go on a tour the favelas. When I first heard about it I thought it was a weird tourist gimmick and I was sure I wouldn’t go. But anywhere you go in Rio, you can see the rainbow of bright colored homes on the hills that make up the favelas. Their beauty called to me. Where I live, million-dollar homes have the million-dollar views. But, in Rio it is the poor who live on the hills. Without reliable transportation, the homes on the hills are the most difficult to access. So the poorest live up highest, enjoying the views of one of the world’s most beautiful bay. I couldn’t resist, I wanted to see the rainbow of homes up close, so I signed up for a tour.

The group picked us up in an old white tourist van, filled with travelers from Australia and the United States. As we climbed up the hill we passed a family of three on a motorcycle, the man driving the bike, while the women clutched a toddler and him. The couple both wore sandals and didn’t wear helmets. My heart leapt as we made a tight turn next to them. I was sure she would drop the baby, but she didn’t, and they sped off ahead of us. The van dropped us off at the entrance to the favela.

The smell of chicken barbecuing on the radiator of an old truck filled the air. We stopped and ordered capahrina’s from a street vendor, trying to cool down from the sticky heat. I took a sip of my capahrina, slightly puckering from the sour taste. I licked a drop of sugar off of my lip as I glanced over at the tattoo shop. “We could get ink there,” said the girl sitting next to me. A bubbly Australian surfer girl with tight curly blonde hair, she had stopped for tattoos twice already on our trip through South America. I made a non-committal grunt thinking about the possibility. Getting a tattoo in a favela in Rio didn’t seem like the safest idea.

Years before on a trip to Australia my friend and I decided to commemorate our trip with tattoos. We went to a tattoo parlor in St. Kilda, Melbourne that was recommended by an Aussie we were staying with. We both got tattoos of the Southern Cross, a constellation only seen in the southern hemisphere, which emblazons the Australian flag. Much smaller than my other tattoos, this small cross on my hip didn’t hurt much when they tattooed it. After getting the tattoos we jumped on a bus to Sydney. With the fresh ink on my hip I couldn’t get comfortable on the bus as the bumpy road caused my clothes to rub against the healing flesh.

Rio was the end of my short trip in South America, so there would be no bus rides to contend with, but I decided to pass on the tattoo in favela anyways. We finished our tour at a community center next to a small school. The school wasn’t in session but there were a couple of children playing on the computer, while others kicked a soccer ball around the yard. It reminded me of the schools I worked at.

Our guide gave us his closing remarks. “In Brazil, the locals don’t enter the favelas. That’s why we started the tours. We wanted people to know, what they hear, what they see about the favelas. That is not the truth. The favelas are more, they are my home.”

A (Short) Tale of (Voting in) Two Cities

White House at Night

In 2008 I lived in Washington, D.C. In D.C. people breathe, eat, drink, sleep, and spend every waking minute consuming politics. Living there during a presidential election year was intense. Working for the Organization of American States, one of the world’s oldest international organizations, my days were not focused on the domestic race. But every night I walked home, crossing in front of the House on Pennsylvania Avenue, and I was reminded of the significance of the race.

A D.C. Afternoon

The Tuesday of the election was grey and drizzly. I waited, bundled in my puffy fall coat, in the long line that stretched down the block. I shivered from the cold as it took over an hour until it was my turn to vote. I’ve always voted in person. I like checking the boxes, feeding my ballot into the machine, and, of course, getting a sticker that proudly announces that I voted. But, I never waited as long to cast my vote as I did that bitterly cold fall day. When it was finally my turn I walked in the door of crumbling brownstone office building to cast my vote. I left my gloves on to stay warm as I filled out my ballot.

That night after work I came home to watch the election results with my housemates. It was only my second fall on the East Coast and I didn’t realize how late the election results come in there. As the results slowly trickled in over the hours, we celebrated by taking shots and chugging our beers. Washington D.C. overwhelming voted for President Barack Obama. When he finally won around midnight the excitement exploded into the streets. Within moments everyone walked outside, cheering, hugging their neighbors, as the city vibrated with excitement.

Enjoying My Neighborhood

Yesterday I voted for the president again. Now I live in the San Francisco Bay Area. To get to the polling place I walked towards the beach, enjoying the sunny weather. There was no puffy coat needed this year, no this time I was wearing a sundress. At the polling place, my neighbor’s driveway, I needed to put on my sunglasses to read the ballot in the bright sunlight. Within moments of arriving, I completed my ballot and left to work.

By the time I got off of work, the polls had closed in most states and results were pouring in. I watched the results while bouncing my goddaughter on my knee. I celebrated the night’s victories by splitting a beer with my friends. After, I went home and crawled into bed well before midnight.

California Voter

Hawaii is not a state of mind, but a state of grace– Paul Theroux

When I arrived in Kauai, I felt like I was returning to a dream I’ve had many times. When I was younger my whole family would take a big trip to the islands every other year. Everyone- grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins- all piled into a couple of condos. As my family grew older and bigger, our lives grew busier and the trips grew less frequent, eventually stopping all together. This trip with my parents and my brother to Kauai was the first in nearly a decade.

Arrival in Kauai

We arrived at the Lihue airport in the morning. The airport hadn’t changed much in the previous ten years; it probably hadn’t changed much in the ten years prior. Lihue airport reminds me of my father. When I was young he was larger than life. He had a big rosy face and a laugh that could be heard for miles. One time we caught an inter-island flight from the Big Island. My dad bought a rack of ribs in Hawaii and we hadn’t finished them. So he brought them in his carry-on cooler along with a bottle of rum he hadn’t finished. With his rib and rum filled cooler, a guitar slung over his back, and a bright Hawaiian shirt on, he loudly herded our family through the airport. Other passengers watched as our boisterous family passed by. Today, with his UC Berkeley hat and his ever-present glasses, my father looks more like a befuddled professor as I herd our small, quiet group through the airport.

Old Koloa Town

After landing we headed to the farmer’s market to get fresh fruit for the week. The farmer’s market is held in a little league baseball field outside of Old Koloa Town. We waded through the crowd of pale-skinned tourists, slowly shuffling from one booth to the next. When I came here as a child my nonno picked fresh mangoes, guavas, and coconuts from the trees growing all over the resort. He couldn’t stand the idea of the fruit going to waste, so he shimmied up the trees and picked the ripest fruits. Neither my parents nor I know how to select a ripe mango or guava, so my father asks an older vendor what we should select. The old man points to a mango, “this one, you eat today.” We bought it along with a couple of guavas.

Traveling Kauai

Run, pool, beach, ice cream, beach, sunset, mango, pool, rinse, repeat.  Life in paradise.

Sunset in Poipu

Everyone seemed tired. The restaurant staff, the dive boat captain, they were all helpful- with a constant smile on their faces- but they were just going through the motions, tired of the hordes of tourists walking through their doors. Maybe it was just because it was September and they were recovering from the summer rush.

Secret Beach

A few days into the trip we went to our secret beach. It probably was never much of a secret, but we were excited to find the hidden gem years ago. The white-sand beach had a lagoon and coral-free entry to the ocean. It also was a hike from the dirt road past a homeless encampment, but that only added to the feeling that we were finding a beach that no one knew about. Now Secret Beach is listed on the map they pass out at the airport. The dirt road was paved over and the homeless encampment replaced with million-dollar homes. But, the lagoon, the shady white sand beach, and the coral-free entry to the sparkling blue ocean is still there.

Island Evening

When I was a child this island was overrun with frogs- slimy, croaking, green carpets of frogs. My brother named them all “stupid” after watching one jump into a window. After dinner our nonno would take us all frog hunting. Nonno carried a white Styrofoam cooler he had rummaged from the condo. “How many frogs are we going to hunt for?” my brother asked, his eyes widened, as he imagined filling the cooler with frogs.

“Enough,” responded my nonno.

“Enough for what?” I questioned.

“Enough to race,” was the response. “Be quiet so we can hear them.”

We stopped by a neatly manicured hedge. My nonno put the cooler down. The sound of the frogs bellowing filled the night. Suddenly my nonno bent down and his hand shot out. When he stood up he was clutching a fat green frog. My brother studied how nonno caught the frog and watched him move it into the cooler. Walking a few feet away he mimicked nonno’s actions and grabbed his own fat green frog.

I wanted to catch one too. I walked around the bush until I noticed a little frog in the corner. I reached down, grabbing it as fast as I could. Then I had a fat green frog of my own. I tried to hold it firmly but not crush it. “I’ve got one,” I said as I walked back to the cooler. A bright yellow stream came from the frog. “Gross,” I shrieked, dropping the frog, which quickly escaped.

“It was frightened,” my mom explained, wiping my hands with the tissues she always carried. I didn’t care if it was frightened; it was gross. From then on I just pointed the frogs out to nonno and my brother.

Eventually nonno determined that we had enough frogs to race. He gathered us close and spoke solemnly into the cooler. “Hop fast, little frogs, because we are eating whichever one of you loses,” he warned the frogs. I groaned at the thought of eating the little creatures and he winked at me. We each picked up a frog and lined them up, holding them back on an invisible line. “Ready, set, go,” nonno shouted and we released the frogs. All the frogs hopped off in different directions, making their escape into the bushes.

The last time we went to Hawaii with the whole family, I was seventeen. My nonno could no longer take us frog hunting after dinner, as his knee slowed him down. At night after soup and barbecue, my brother and I went over to our five-year-old cousin, David. “Come on,” my brother said, “we are going frog hunting.”

“What’s that?” David asked.

“It’s when we go catch frogs to race,” my brother explained, as I pulled a white Styrofoam cooler out of the closet.

“What do we do after we race them?” David asked.

I looked over at my nonno, who was watching us, and I winked. “We eat the loser,” I replied.

Kauai Style

There are still a few frogs but now the island is overrun with chickens. Every morning at 6:30am the constant crowing of a rooster woke me up. I miss the frogs.

Too many chickens!

The road to Waimea is covered by red dirt, which flows across the asphalt after it rains. Between the chickens, the dirt, and the desert-like terrain, the road should be in a Spaghetti Western, except for the endless groves of palm trees and golf courses that pop up out of nowhere. The roads wind to the top of the mountain. From there we stood above the helicopters, looking down at the sparkling waters, waterfalls, and rain forests.

Waimea Overlook

The road to Hanalei is lusher. It starts with the same red dirt covered roads. As we drove from Poipu to Hanalei we passed abandoned sugar mills, green valleys, and rusty bridges over glassy rivers. We passed the Coco Palms Resort in Wailuā. The resort made famous by Elvis Presley in the movie Blue Hawaii has been abandoned since Hurricane Iniki in 1992. Now it sits hollowed out and empty rotting back into the land, a ghost of its glory days in the 1970s.

Coco Palms Resort

Drive, view, ice cream, hike, beach, sunset, hot tub, snorkel, beach, rinse, repeat. Paradise continued.

Paradise Continued

On the second to last day I went snorkeling at Poipu Beach. It was amazing- sea turtles, moray eels, needlefish, and butterfly fish- all right off the beach. A monk seal decided to sun itself on the spit. The lifeguards roped off the area to protect the endangered animal. In the water the monk seals are actually quite pretty, graceful swimmers. This one looked dead. As it lay on the beach, it steadily ignored the throngs of tourists photographing it from just beyond the rope. I wasn’t sure if it was enjoying the sun or just to tired to do anything else. After checking out the monk seal I went and sprawled out on my beach chair. Drinking a Kona ale to wash the salt water taste out of my mouth from snorkeling, I watched the sun lazily sink on the horizon.

Monk Seal

Goodbye Kauai, mahalo for the memories.

Aloha

Rebuild the Parish or Leave: Creating CIPA-NOLA

Beautiful New Orleans

When I returned to Ithaca I started to forget what I had experienced in New Orleans. I was busy studying for finals, securing a summer internship, and preparing for a move to Washington, D.C. But Justin and Sara would not let me forget. One afternoon Sara and I sat in the graduate student office of the Cornell Institute for Public Affairs (CIPA) and we started talking about the trip. We decided to go again. We wanted more graduate fellows to have the same experience. We spoke with Justin and he agreed- we needed to plan another trip- but this time it was going to be bigger.

Flush with the excitement of a new project, we had to do it right- New Orleans had enough broken promises- we needed to do something that would be sustainable after we graduated. That summer Justin, Sara and I all had internships in Washington, D.C. After work we would meet when and where we could, sometimes having our meetings on the steps of the National Portrait Gallery. There we planned the Cornell Institute for Public Affairs- New Orleans Professional Partnership, what we would call CIPA-NOLA. Whenever Sara and I got distracted, Justin was there to bring us back- his passion for the work re-igniting ours. Or whenever Justin and I couldn’t figure out how to do something, or explain something, Sara had a creative solution. Together we came up with new partners to work with, both in Ithaca and New Orleans, new ways to engage fellows, and potential consulting projects.

As the fall semester came around Sara and Justin returned to Ithaca and started a brown bag discussion series. They brought in exciting guest speakers and led discussions with new and returning fellows. I stayed in Washington, D.C. as I finished a consulting project I was working on. I received updates from Sara and Justin, but it all began to feel so far away. When the spring semester started I returned to Ithaca and refocused on CIPA-NOLA by signing up for the nonprofit class that housed our New Orleans consulting projects. I selected a project for the Community Center of St. Bernard. The Community Center was suffering from what the locals referred to as “Katrina fatigue.” Right after the storm many people donated money to the area, but after time passed, people forgot. The Community Center wanted support with a fund development plan. As I learned about fund development I discovered a career that I would grow to love.

Fundraising with a Mardi Gras Party

Working on the project for the Community Center, discussing New Orleans with Sara and Justin, and being back in the snowy weather revived my interest in the service trip. A month before we left, we hosted a fundraiser event during Mardi Gras. We dressed in costumes, made heaping platefuls of jambalaya, and brewed some sweet tea. We even served King Cake. King Cake is multi-colored pastry with a small plastic baby (it is supposed to represent Baby Jesus) inside. Whoever gets the piece of cake with the baby has to host the next Mardi Gras party. I ended up with the plastic baby, but after slaving all day in the kitchen to make jambalaya it did not feel like the privilege it was supposed to be.

Jambalaya at our Mardi Gras Party

Finally the day came when it was time for us to go to New Orleans again. Seventeen fellows were going. We were excited that so many people were as interested in the trip. Over half of the participants were international students, most having never been to New Orleans or the South. I couldn’t wait to share the city I had discovered the year before. With so many people we could no longer stay at Live St. Bernard, instead we stayed at the Volunteer House, another home in the parish, which was set up hostel-style with rows of bunk beds in every room. The House had less character than Live St. Bernard, but filled with the entire trip’s participants, it was overflowing with excitement.

Once again we volunteered with the St. Bernard Project, where they split us into two groups. I decided to work on mudding—which (as it turns out) is the tedious process of filling in the seams of the drywall with gunk, and then sanding it. What made the project was not the exciting, repetitive process of mudding and sanding. What made the project was what is always special about New Orleans—the people. Across the street lived the father of the woman whose house we were rebuilding. The older man had moved back into his home about a year prior. He was retired and he decided to spend his days making lunch for all of the volunteers in the neighborhood. Every day for lunch we ate the most amazing southern barbecue- short ribs that fell of the bone, chilies, and stews on a big picnic table in his front yard. I talked and laughed with the other volunteers, and was always rejuvenated to finish the day’s work.

The Musicians Clinic

After work both groups would head back to the house. As we relaxed, taking turns to shower off the day’s grime before dinner, we talked about our experiences. Listening to the other students share their frustration over the lack of recovery and their excitement about New Orleans and their projects reminded me why I was there. Together we were creating a group that was dedicated to support New Orleans and make a change. Some nights we visited other nonprofits. At the Community Center of St. Bernard we ate dinner with the local participants and heard their stories. At the New Orleans Musicians Clinic we sat in the home that inspired Tennessee Williams as he wrote “The Glass Menagerie” as we learned about the health challenges that New Orleans famous performers faced. One night we stopped by a tapping of “Anderson Cooper 360” that was filming an update of post-Katrina New Orleans, before we headed to the French Quarter to dance.

Anderson Cooper

One late night after dancing, a few of us were not ready to return to the house. Sara, Sam, Sergio, and I went to an all-night diner. Even through it was March and the middle of the night, the diner was still warm and humid, and I stuck to the plastic seats in the faded booth. The fan offered a bit of relief as we waited for our orders. We were all quiet, waiting, subdued by the florescent lights and quiet diner patrons, a major contrast from the wild Bourbon Street crowd we had just left.

“I see why you all love New Orleans so much” Sam said. Sam was from Ghana, at Cornell to study development policy. He had come on the trip to see more of the US before he returned home. He, like the other international students on the trip, were shocked to see the devastation of the New Orleans area, a major contrast from their expectations of the US and the affluent Northeast cities that they had seen.

I looked around the table at Sergio. Sergio, raised in Los Angeles, born in Guatemala, had a smile on his face. I looked at Sara, a serious New Yorker, who had been so passionate about making this trip happen. I thought about how we had all come from very different places, had different dreams and aspirations, but here we were in a small diner, enjoying a sinfully delicious late night snack before getting some rest before work the next day. I smiled at Sam’s comment- yeah, New Orleans was easy to love.

 

Seven years later, New Orleans is still struggling with recovering from the storm. To find out more about any of the nonprofits in this blog, check them out online at:

St. Bernard Project

www.stbernardproject.org

Community Center of St. Bernard

www.ccstb.org

New Orleans Musicians Clinic

www.neworleansmusiciansclinic.org

 

Or find out more about CIPA-NOLA at:

http://www.cipa.cornell.edu/engagement/neworleans/index.cfm

Restore, Rebuild, Renew

I’m pretty sure that it snows 300 days a year in Ithaca, New York. When I decided to attend graduate school at Cornell University, I knew it would be cold and snowy, a major change for someone born and raised in sunny California. But, I thought- I’ve been on ski trips to Lake Tahoe, I like the snow. I had no idea what I was getting myself into. Months later I was sitting in my attic bedroom in January, my hands were so cold that I wore gloves as tried to type a paper. The heater in the room that I was renting in the hundred-year old farmhouse didn’t make a dent in the cold as wind blew in through cracks in the window frame. I exhaled and I was certain I saw my breath. It was time to head south.

Spring Break was coming up and I wanted to go somewhere that would leave me feeling refreshed and ready to finish the semester, not somewhere that would leave me with a hangover and sunburn. I only had a week off, so I wanted to stay in the US. I could go back to California, but I wanted to see somewhere new, and somewhere that was as far south as I could get. I had seen Texas and Florida before, so I was running out of choices. Then it hit me– New Orleans. Yes, this was the perfect choice- warm weather, good food, amazing music- a trip to New Orleans would be perfect to revive me for the rest of the semester.

Like most Americans I had watched the destruction of Hurricane Katrina on television. Horrified by the images I saw, I diligently sent some money after the storm and then forgot about New Orleans. When Cornell’s Women in Public Policy group announced that they were planning a Spring Break service trip to rebuild homes I signed up. Exactly where I wanted to go, and now I could go with a group of friends. But part of me wondered why I should go on a service trip. It was 2008, three years after the storm. Was there really anything left to rebuild?

My friend Justin took the lead in arranging the trip. Justin spent a year volunteering through AmeriCorps NCCC program. He told stories of New Orleans shortly after the storm. With teams of AmeriCorps volunteers he gutted homes, which is the dirty and exhausting job of pulling out the waterlogged wreckage that was once peoples’ prized possessions and piling it up outside to go to the dumps so that they could begin to rebuild. He spoke of how people were not able to save anything that might bring the mold back into their homes, which meant photo albums, artwork, and other memories had to be thrown away. Justin looked like the kind of guy you expected to see rock-climbing Half Dome or skiing in Breckenridge, not the kind of guy that would be gutting homes in a crowded city. But when Justin spoke about New Orleans his eyes sparkled with such passion. He was inspiring as he made his plea to get people to join us on the trip, extolling the importance of the work that still needed to be done. Still, I couldn’t quite believe that there was that much more to do.

We decided to focus our service project on St. Bernard Parish, one of the areas hardest hit by Katrina. The storm damaged virtually every structure, and when it destroyed the levees, the entire parish flooded. We decided to volunteer with the St. Bernard Project, a nonprofit that had a good reputation for getting homes rebuilt. Two of Justin’s AmeriCorps friends had returned to New Orleans after their service year and started a nonprofit, Live St. Bernard. A local resident had donated his grandmother’s vacant home to Live St. Bernard, and Justin’s friends renovated it to use as an inexpensive lodging for volunteers. We were to be the first guests to stay in the volunteer house. With lodging and a rebuilding project secured, we were on our way to New Orleans.

When we stepped out of the airport in New Orleans we were hit by a wall of sticky heat. After leaving the brutal stormy New York March weather, I was thrilled by the humidity. Justin and I arrived first and headed to Canal Street to have lunch with one of his AmeriCorps friends. As we drove into the city, I was taken by its classic beauty. Seeing the Superdome, “the shelter of last resort” for 9,000 residents was a little bit chilling, but the damage had long since been repaired and it looked just like any other big stadium.

After a delicious dinner of barbecue, Justin and I walked around town, through parts of the Garden District and the French Quarter. The city was beautiful, with its dropping oak trees, sultry jazz music filtering out of every building, and sweet smells of Cajun cooking filling the air. But, where was the destruction?

Beautiful New Orleans

We got back into the big van that we had rented for the week and drove through New Orleans, past the French Quarter, towards the river. “Look there,” Justin pointed to some graffiti adorning a small shotgun home. The area was more run down, but it just looked like any other bad neighborhood, where there was graffiti on the walls.

“What am I looking at?” I asked.

“That X graffiti on the wall was put there by rescue crews after the house was searched. Rescues crews would write down what they found to let others know. If they found bodies, they wrote it at the bottom of the X.” Justin explained.

Grafitti from the rescue crews

I shivered, the graffiti looked so much more ominous then it had only moments before. As we turned to get on the overpass to cross over the river, Justin pointed again. “Do you see that area?” he asked.

I looked over at what appeared to be a homeless encampment under the overpass. “That is where they put the bodies until they could be cleared out.”

We crossed over the river and entered the Lower Ninth Ward. There was nothing there. Or so it seemed. As we drove closer I saw the foundations of what had once been hundreds of homes. Now it was just a bunch of concrete slabs.

Every now and then we’d see a house amongst the concrete slabs. Most of the homes were dark, vacant, with signs on them that said “no copper inside.” One empty home  was missing the front door; boards covered the windows and the door. Someone had placed a sign in front that said “roots run deep here.”

Our roots run deep

At the end of Lower Ninth Ward we turned onto a muddy road. The rain began to fall. Eventually we got to a house with a light on. It was the Live St. Bernard house. On one side was vacant lot; on the other was a pile of garbage from a recently gutted house. But, across the street there was another house with a light on, a neighbor who had restored his house and moved home. The rain stopped as we got out of the van.

I felt drained when we reached the house. All of the destruction, three years had passed since the storm and it looked like only a few months had passed. Was I really in the US? How was this even possible?

When we arrived at the house Justin’s AmeriCorps friends were waiting. They were excited to finally have guests in the house they had spent so much time renovating. They showed off the work they had done in each room. They had decorated each room with a different flavor of New Orleans. Their enthusiasm was contagious, and before long I was excited to be there again. They showed us the mark in front of the house. There were no graffiti numbers, but there was a high water mark several feet above my head.

As it began to get dark we picked up the rest of our friends that would be joining us for the week. Over the next couple of days we took part in as many tourist activities as we could. We danced at the clubs on Frenchman Street, ate beignets at Café Du Monde, toured the Voodoo Museum, walked along the above ground tombs in the famous cemeteries, ate étouffée in the French Quarter and jambalaya at Mothers, walked along AudubonPark, trudged through the chaos on Bourbon Street, and saw the famous Street Cars.

The Lower Ninth Ward

We also decided to get a closer look at Hurricane Katrina’s destruction. When we returned to the Lower Ninth Ward it was sunny, but it still looked desolate. We got out of the van and walked down the empty streets. At the end of one street, next to the levees we saw a bunch of pink tents and a crowd of people. We walked closer to see what was going on. It was former President Clinton and Brad Pitt. They were there to break ground on a rebuilding project that Pitt was leading. The pair joked with volunteers, former President Clinton even playing the sax along with the Jazz Band that was there for the ceremony, before taking off in the dark black sedans. Before long we headed out as well, knowing we needed to get some rest before starting the rebuilding project the next day.

Clinton and the Jazz Band

Other than Justin none of us had ever done any home construction. The St. Bernard Project broke us up into teams. I was teamed up with Sergio and Sara and we went to a house that needed gutting. Our AmeriCorps volunteer leader explained the projects. We needed to tear down everything except for the frame. When we finished, we would reinstall wiring. She handed me a crowbar and a sledge hammer. I had never used either tool before. “Tear down everything?” I asked. “Everything” she replied with a smile.

Ready to Work

I began to tear the house apart, having a blast with the sledge hammer and crowbar. After months of being coped up indoors, studying, discussing the theory behind social change work, I was finally out doing something- making an impact in a community. Tearing out the old wiring and broken metal was calming, brining me to peaceful state I hadn’t felt in months. Sara and Sergio seemed to feel the same way as they climbed over the roof, into the attic tearing out items along the way.

During the week we ate our lunches sitting on the driveway where we could admire the work we had done. One day a group of men came by and started pulling pieces of scrap metal they could find in our garbage piles. Our AmeriCorps volunteer explained that an entire industry had sprung up of people foraging for scrap metal; some of them stole the metal, but most scavenged it from the piles.

Another time the young woman whose house we were working on came by with her children. She brought us pastries and sugary drinks which were perfect in the sticky heat. Her young son was excited to meet Sergio because he was from Los Angeles. The little boy’s big brown eyes shined as he excitedly showed us which room would be his. With only frames and no walls I couldn’t envision it. I told him it was a very cool room.

On another day as we were finishing lunch a yellow school bus drove down the street. A woman came out from the bus and walked over to us as we were starting to re-enter the house. “Hold on” she said, “I’ve got some pictures for you to see.” She ran into a house down the street and we waited, not sure what was happening. Moments later she emerged with a photo album in her hand. “I thought y’all might want to see what this house looked like after the storm.” She showed us pictures of the street were standing on; it was unrecognizable as the flood waters reached the rooftops. “I live down the street.” I looked over at the house she gestured at. It was small but it looked cozy with the big American flag flying in front. “If ya’ll need anything, you let me know,” she said with a big grin on her face. She continued to speak telling us about the destruction that her family had faced, how they rebuilt their home, and how they were excited to see other homes being rebuilt so that her neighbors could return home. I was surprised at her friendliness, not that it was different than anyone else I met in New Orleans. Everyone was very friendly and willing to talk about the storm, before even being asked. But I wondered how they could be so friendly. Seeing the vacant homes, the concrete slabs, the ubiquitous FEMA trailers- I was mad. This was three years later- what could be so wrong- that in our country, a country I had always been proud of, that these homes couldn’t be rebuilt already. Why couldn’t the little boy already have his bedroom back? Why couldn’t this nice woman with the happy smile have her neighborhood back, her community? How could she stand there smiling and joking with strangers? Wasn’t she as angry as I was? I asked her, “I notice a lot of American flags flying around here, but why? Aren’t you angry? Don’t you feel deserted?”

She gave me the look that you give to a small child when you are trying to explain something simple that you know they don’t understand. “The flag is for you. It is for all of people like you that have come here every day since Katrina to help with the rescues, to serve food, to rebuild homes. One day we will have our community back.” I smiled back at her. I was still angry, but what she said filled me with such hope. I knew that even after my week volunteering was over, I would not be done with New Orleans.

Coming soon “The Return to New Orleans.”