Making Connections

Today I felt more comfortable in my daily routine. I had a route to drive, and I was going to go out on my own for the first time. I wasn't too worried about being able to handle it, and in the end it went off without a hitch. A few highlights from the run:

• I made my first real connection with a client. An old lady on Camelia St. takes meals from us regularly. She gave me this real warm greeting and came over to the driver's side to squeeze my hand. She was all warmth. She asked me my name and where I am from. She was hard of hearing, and said she was 86. I doubt she was going to remember me every day, but I hoped she would.
• There are a bunch of kids on my route. They are mostly nice, but the teenagers give me weird looks from time to time. Although I try to fight it, I can't help but think they are looking at my color. I haven't felt that way about the adults or young children, but I feel it with the teens. One of them took interest in the fact that I was from California. "Do you surf?" He asked. I had a feeling I was going to get that question sooner or later.
• A lot of the houses we hit are more like compounds. There seems to be like 20 people living at one residence, though they don't necessarily seem to be families. For example, one house has like 15 people, with about an even mix of blacks and whites. Wierd. Anyway, one compound is inhabited by the "Good ol' Boys" as Chris calls them. The first time she drove the route, she didn't notice that they were flagging her down and instead drove by. The next thing she knows a car comes peeling out down the road and skids out in front of her. They were not happy. But anyway, the Good ol' Boys aren't bad. Today, Good ol' Mom even baked us an apple pie! I guessed they couldn't figure out what to do with the 3 apples/person we'd been pushing them over the last couple days (the kitchen had a glut of them, and we were instructed to get rid of them before they went bad). It was so nice of her. We'd never heard of such a thing happening to any ERV from our kitchen.
• I discovered that there are black people on our route after all. The mixed compound mentioned above, and one other family of three (one young girl) that lives further down Carnation St.

Again, I got a healthy dose of warm smiles, waves, and looks. My heart really took a turn today. I am starting to feel a responsibility to these people, and I am eager to connect with more of them personally. I noticed that some of them, especially the younger people, have trouble making eye contact. I think it's a huge shot in their pride to have to accept this charity. When I asked my dad about it tonight over the phone, he said he wouldn't bring himself to do it, and I wonder if I could either. It's tough.

In pursuit of questions about fair coverage, I found out that there is indeed an ERV that goes into Waveland, but the area is mostly deserted already anyway. That's true, because Chris and I checked the area out yesterday. But compared to Kiln, that area was way harder hit. I'm trying to find out where all those people went. At dinner I got into a conversation with a volunteer working as a building assessor. Basically, Red Cross has shut down all the service centers in this area like the one K.C. worked in that people can go to and get a check. Now, they have to call an 800 number, leave an address, and someone from Red Cross will come out and assess your need in person. The system is being used because the volume of requests is overwhelming the centers and also to curb fraud. This guy worked on behalf of FEMA to assess need. He went to residences with a set of questions that FEMA needs answered, and uploads the report. A few days later, FEMA sends a check, trailer, or whatever they feel is necessary to aid them. All this assistance is in addition to any insurance the family may have. But I'm hearing that insurers have already found a loophole to get out of processing claims in MS. It turns out that there are seperate coverages for water damage and wind damage. Most people only have wind damage. Which means that if your house was lost because it got flooded, then you can't claim the house. Now the subtlety they are trying to determine is in regards to water-induced wind damage, which would be covered under wind damage. I've talked to a few people who know about this stuff and they say that the re-insurers (companies that insure the insurance companies like AIG, State Farm, etc.) will all go under trying to pay off claims, but the mutli-billion dollar insurance companies will be just fine. Their assets are huge, and a disaster like this apparently costs them percentage points of their total worth.

Today my highlight was in the library. The lady next to me was confused about contacting some contractors for her house, and needed to contact them by email. I set her up with an email address (yahoo, because their interface is outlook-like and I thought GMail is a little more confusing for simple users) and taught her simple login/logout and composition. A computer scientist's dream. She was really greatful, but I doubt she'll be surfing the web anytime soon. A lot of people are unsure about who to go to for basic needs, like finances or services like construction. Red Cross tries, but I don't think there is a clear enough channel of information to people around here, especially those that aren't technologically savvy.

Quote-of-the-day:

"If it was Georgia that got hit, you'd be there to help us too."

-James, the Souther Baptist volunteer who rode with us on our run today, to a client in Kiln.