SOUTHERN HOSPITALITY

Four Tales of Voluntourism below the Mason-Dixon Line

By Patrick Connolly, Alexandra Dednah, Alexis Hauk and Isis Madrid

del.ico.us | digg it! | reddit!

print | email | 0 Comments

You could spend your upcoming spring break at some beach resort, enjoying the typical booze, bros and bikinis. Sure, you could (yawn) do that, but why wander aimlessly in an MTV stupor when you could travel with a purpose?

COMMUNITY COLLABORATIONS, WAVELAND, MISSISSIPPI

Two years ago, I embarked with a few dozen complete strangers to spend spring break in the wreckage left by Hurricane Katrina. On March 13, 2006, we headed to Waveland, Mississippi. Once a beach town, Waveland had been leveled by the Category four water and winds. All the trees along the highway bowed eerily in unison to the murky bogs below, and the town itself was ghostly quiet, most buildings empty. Our only source for supplies, Wal-Mart, reminded me of those cockroaches that survive nuclear annihilation.

The encampment, run by Community Collaborations, mimicked its neighbors along the shoreline, with dead trees, sand and tents. Local churches had been set up with makeshift camping gear. A sign read, "The hurricane was strong, but God is stronger."

Up at 8 am the first day, I jumped at the chance to go work at the Waveland Animal Shelter, instead of hauling logs out of ditches. When I got there, I was given a pit-bull to walk around the block. A pit-bull that wanted to kill every creature it saw. So much for not straining the arm muscles. When I got back, my eye landed on a cage full of little puppies. "Yeah, those ones have SCABIES," one of the shelter technicians said. "Want to wash them?" Out in the cage-filled back room, I found a few healthy puppies whose only defects were poop-related filthiness. Sudsing them up and wrapping them with a big yellow towel was strangely therapeutic.

At night, the wind picked up, and our tent flaps rebelled furiously against their flimsy stakes. One night, as the whole thing threatened to collapse, making noise that sounded like a giant bat engulfing us, I deliriously hoisted myself off the army cot, ripped the laces out of my shoes and tried to tie the doors together.

The next two days, we gutted houses, reducing the crusty mold-ridden walls to piles of dusty plaster. We piled now-toxic armfuls of insulation, toilets, washers and beds onto the side of the street until all that was left was a skeletal house frame—and a few strange reminders of the lives once housed there, like a Reba McIntyre biography, or a journal kept by an aspiring priest.

Working inside was tough, because of the choking affects of mold. But working outside was tough, too. Not only was I dodging encounters with nails and snakes, but since the majority of trees had been swept away, there were no birds to keep pests at bay, so working meant simultaneously eating and breathing in gnats, who scoffed at the seven layers of OFF! caking my knobby, sunburned flesh every morning. Sunglasses kept them out of your eyes at least, but eventually, you just got used to whole mouth-and-nosefuls. As a token of appreciation that night, the Waveland police brought out some speakers and "DJ'd" a party for us on the beach, with buckets of Miller and PBR.

Amid the landscape were landlocked motorboats, houses with spray-painted numbers on them to indicate survivors and the infamous FEMA trailers. We were told upon arrival that the organization had expected 100 volunteers that week, but 500 had shown up.

[Alexis Hauk]

NATIONAL SEASHORE, GEORGIA

When traveling is involved, I'm pretty easily convinced, so when my friend Michelle asked me to go camping with her on an exotic island off the coast of Georgia for a few hours a day of community service, one of several Boston University Alternative Spring Break choices, I was in. A month before break, I found myself huddled among hundreds of students outside BU's Sargent gym on an icy winter evening to secure our first choice trip. Over eight hours spent shivering to the point of convulsing and a $280 check sealed the deal.

A week into March, I packed up my camping gear and jumped into one of the two Georgia-bound vans, each packed with seven people I'd met only once before, for a 24-hour drive. After miles of barbecues, sweet tea, grits, blessings, and 45-minute ferry ride from coastal St. Mary's, Ga., our group of 12 arrived at Cumberland Island, a National Sea Shore once home to wealthy industrialists, now solely inhabited by animals (like armadillos, wart hogs, alligators and feral horses), several park rangers and the usual slew of tourists and volunteers.

Morning yoga on the nearby dock overlooking a river (with occasional dolphin sightings) and a dose of Folgers instant coffee prepped us to tackle our mission: Tearing up a five-mile rusted wire fence that had been hurting the wild horses, most descendants of domestic ones brought to the island by the Carnegie family. It's pretty hard to complain about work when you get to ride on the back of a pickup truck through tropical forest each day. Fueled by a daily diet of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, we strapped on thick gloves to cut and rip away weeds, roots and rusty barbed wire from the unrelenting earth for a little less than eight hours each day.

I questioned our purpose until one night, after a long day of wire chopping, we trekked two miles through mud, puddles and overgrown branches, to find a pristine, white, sandy beach ... with wild horses! Responding to our squeals of excitement, they lifted their tails and pooped. Breathtaking!

By the week's end, we'd completed our task. With our promised free day, we rented bikes and traipsed the island, stopping at the vacant mansion once owned by the Carnegie's for a tour led by an eccentric park ranger, who included a brief concert on one of the mansion's antique piano. We also dropped by GoGo Ferguson's jewelry shop, where the Carnegie descendant sells jewelry she makes from animal parts, like penis bones.

I left the island marred by a few rusty wire scratches (somehow tetanus-free!), a farmers' tan and several tick scares, but completely detoxed from a week devoid of normal spring break debauchery. I had no regrets, though one more week of campfire songs and games of "Never have I ever" might have driven me to jump in with the alligators.

[Alexandra Dednah]

INTERNATIONAL RESCUE COMMITTEE, ATLANTA GA

The International Rescue Committee (IRC) opened its regional resettlement office in Atlanta in 1979 and now works with refugees from all over the world aiding them with the transition into American culture. I connected with the organization through a program at Boston University called Alternative Spring Breaks, currently the largest student-run community service spring break program in all of the United States.

While the IRC doesn't provide housing for volunteers, a local church was generous enough to house our group. One could also try local universities with empty dorms or meet new people and do a little couch surfing. I didn't mind that my back ached from lying on a linoleum floor or that I slept next to a friend who moaned in his sleep. The volunteer experience at the IRC was worth it.

Volunteers at the organization help out with computer skills, ESL sessions, family mentoring and literacy, fundraising and development, organizing the resettlement shop and work as youth tutors. We also did some painting and a couple volunteers were even sent with a family fresh from Afghanistan to show them the ropes of Atlanta's public transportation (which these Bostonians knew nothing about). There's a lot to do but the volunteer coordinators want you to see their city and therefore let you structure your schedule as you wish.

When we weren't playing with babies, explaining verb tenses to warm-hearted Burundians, helping Liberians write down their life stories in English or mediating scuffles between sari-draped teenaged mean girls who needed help with their algebra, we'd hit the town for some tourist-y adventures. Hotlanta is a grooving melting pot with something for everyone. With the boho-hipster scene in Little Five Points (Make sure you hit up The Vortex for a damn good burger), the Martin Luther King Museum, the famous Varsity Diner, CNN headquarters, the Coca Cola Museum, and a gorgeous and enormous aquarium, your free time will be well spent.

Also, make sure ya´ll load up your iPod with a little Ray Charles, the entire Outkast library, Usher and of course, "The Devil Went Down to Georgia" for a sweet road trip play list. Suggested road trip game: count the Waffle Houses.

[Isis Madrid]

A CAUTIONARY TALE

In 2006, I boarded the bus in Olean, NY on a blustery March morning, packing a backpack of essentials and three envelopes of roll-your-own tobacco. I didn't smoke, but the trip was non-alcoholic (as dry as Margaret Thatcher's dumpledoodle), and I thought I'd need a little something to help me relax. Over the past year, the memory of flood waters rushing between buildings, corpse-lined streets and desperate survivors looting dilapidated cities faded from the public consciousness. Although media coverage dwindled, some Southerners still lived in FEMA trailers and needed help, my help, Jesus' help.

After a 20-hour bus ride, we arrived at a Lutheran camp run by Christian crusaders. The strict ordinance of quiet, timeliness and religious piety didn't mesh well with apathetic boozehounds hungry for ruckus.

Each day, I'd wake up, smoke, pray, eat, smoke, then work. I'd travel to disaster sites, pile debris, shovel sludge out of houses, sheetrock walls and ceilings and listen to people eager to share their experiences. I'd come home to a tent with sore feet and an aching back. I'd pray more, eat, then smoke, smoke, smoke until quiet hours at 11pm.

After a few days, I ducked out of prayer. I'd lie in the tent and listen to the televangelist wannabes in the distance praising hallelujah. I smoked as many cigarettes as the amens I heard. Some students planned a coup, but found out the maintenance man sold shwag bud from his RV and calmed down.

Despite the proselytizing of the preachers, we boarded the bus back unscathed and still worshiping the devil. The trip was not wholly without merit. I realized there, in the South, in that religious camp, that the will of America is strong, and if we can endure the rule of an unintelligible president named after a shrub, we can do anything ... like quit smoking.

[Patrick Connolly]