ERV experience

Today I was determined to get on an ERV. I thus ditched Paul and Catherine (a young recent-graduate from Temple), my two main friends, and hopped on an early shuttle from the base to the kitchen, which is a good half hour away in Bay St. Louis, MS. I felt bad immediately afterwards, since they both wanted to do the same as me. But I quickly forgot about it when Atul uncle (the only other Indian guy in Mississippi), who was in Don's crew, led me to Chrissy at ERV 3059. They needed a third for their morning run through Kiln, MS. I was fired up. I helped load the food on and was soon strapped into the back seat as we sped out of the kitchen.

Chrissy is a veteran volunteer from San Diego. She's been around the world doing service, and is interestingly married to an Arab-American (she's white). Very nice lady. While Chris drives, I'm on serving duty in the back with Phyllis, an exhausted-looking black lady from Michigan. Both have been on this route for a couple weeks. Our lunch menu was hotdogs, chilli, and pears, with various snacks like Clifbars as well as fresh apples and juice drinks. In general not bad at all. The route is performed as follows: drive through the neighborhood slowly, occasionally sounding the horn. By now most people are used to the signal, and so they stand waiting out in their driveway. We ask how many meals they need, and make them up on the spot, scooping straight out of the campbros. We are never to question whether they are taking more than they need, etc. I think these people take that trust very seriously. From all the stories I've heard about victims in this area so far, I think the poor people with nothing to start out with are far more responsible than the more well-off people. They understand what being in need means, and thus have that compassion that makes them think of others in addition to themselves.

Kiln is litterally in the backwoods. The homes are surrounded by trees, deep in a foresty area. Paul, who I gave my spot to in the afternoon, later called the people "hillbillies," but he felt bad that he couldn't think of a better description. They were clearly very poor. All but one family on the route was white, and there were a lot of elderly. I saw at least 3 seperate confederate flags, although Catherine and I are still debating about what it symbolizes to the people flying them (I argued that it's just the symbol of the South, but she took the other position). Serving the people felt good, and I got a lot of friendly waves and smiles. Yet something was still on my mind....

One thing I noticed was that many of the houses didn't look too damaged from the outside, and only a few tents were up, meaning the houses were in livable condition. Do these people still need relief from Katrina, or just relief from poverty? I couldn't help but let this question enter my mind. I posed it indirectly to Phyllis, who seemed to think that it was pointless driving way out to Kiln to serve these relatively stable communities when there were other areas like Waveland with large minority populations that were getting little aid and were in desperate need. She also seemed to think that while we were going way out serving all these elderly people in very remote areas, there were kids in trailer parks not far from the kitchen who were going hungry. I was determined to see if Phyllis was right about all this.

I ran into K.C. at dinner and she began giving me her latest story of Red Cross inefficiencies. Apparently she and a group of 20 other financial service workers were ordered to relocate to Houston. There was an issue of transportation, but one volunteer in the group offered to take the team in a huge van he had access to. It would be the quickest way to get there. Instead, Red Cross insisted that they all book flights, which came to about $10K in expenses and almost 2 days of lost time. They made some lame excuse about needing to get the van back to MS, which would have been taken care of anyway. She also was talking about how she's now dealing with a lot of fraud claims, where "young 18-year-old black men" are coming in claiming 4 or 5 kids. All of a sudden they are model fathers, she said.

I realize that so far my portrait of the Red Cross has been decidedly negative on this blog. That's a problem to me because I think the organization is doing really good things here. Our kitchen delivers close to 7000 meals a day. Those are real people in need being served. I saw it in their eyes during my run, they are truly greatful. And people are working hard. Some have rough personalities, but it's perfectly clear that everyone's heart is in the right place. When I look at any volunteer, I see someone who left their own lives simply to serve, just like me. That's a pretty unique bond. I would say 7 out of 10 volunteers I meet are first timers. And people have literally come from all over the country. New York, Penn, Maryland, Oregon, Alaska, Ohio, Kentucky, Georgia, Florida, New Mexico to name a few off the top of my head.