Tuesday, September 20, 2005

I miss Kristen and Keith. The new shelter manager... well, I miss Kristen and Keith. But it doesn't matter now. The clients who wanted to go, and that was most of them, have been moved onto cruise ships by FEMA. Cruise ships! They were so excited. Nobody expects midnight lobster buffets, but still. The father of the family with some of the kids is a quiet, serious man, or he has been in this situation. He's slow to talk (not slow, just slow to talk) and the burden of worry about his family has been obvious on him. But his face was so bright and his affect so animated when he talked about privacy, and showers, and privacy that my eyes tightened up again. The new shelter manager worries - loudly and often - that "these people are not equipped to deal with the level of luxury they will encounter on the ship."

What does that even mean, equipped? Oh, the comments about fumigation, the comments about the state of the ship when they leave, the comments about the smell. There were times when I had to walk away to keep myself from getting in her face and yelling, "Shut up! Just shut up!" I'm not going to lie. There was an odor in that gym. But it was mainly coming from one or two folks. One of them was in a wheelchair. He needed a motorized wheelchair but lost it in the flood, so he was stuck struggling with a manual chair that was too small for him. He was in pain all the time and needed help before, during and after a shower. Yes, he smelled at times, but when he had a craving for a certain food, he bought enough to feed the whole shelter, clients and staff.

Even for those without special circumstances, a shower involved signing up in advance for a time between 5:00 pm and 7:00 pm and then going across the parking lot and across the street to the police station and taking a five minute shower while the line behind you grew. But they did their best. Look, sixty people with no laundry facilities sleeping in a standard sized gym under used, donated blankets are not going to smell like Snuggle and Tide and Febreeze.

So pretty much everyone went to the cruise ship. They went in big blue busses that will probably worm their way into the children's minds in weird ways. The whole situation of Katrina is huge. It will be these people's Kennedy assassination, or September 11. "Where were you when..." and I wouldn't be surprised if somewhere in that conversation came, "Remember those blue busses?"

We were left with about seven clients. Some couldn't go because they were working, some just didn't like the idea of a boat, and then there was the man in the wheelchair, who wasn't allowed to leave because FEMA wasn't taking anyone on the ship who couldn't walk on their own. Finally he was persuaded to go to a nursing home, where he could have the care and facilities that he should have had all along. Michael was very close to him, and I liked him as well. He complained a lot, and he was kind of racist, but he was in pain all the time and he didn't have what he needed. Underneath, he really was a sweetheart. Kristin's church got together and bought him a new motorized chair, and he'll have a hospital bed where he is now, and won't have to sleep in a recliner all night.

So that night we had to tell the few remaining people that we'd be closing some of the shelters and moving people into other shelters. Then I had another one of "those" conversations, but this time I was more prepared. They wanted to know why they had to move to other shelters, why the shelter couldn't just stay open with just a few people in in. Why the staff had to go back home eventually. And they didn't understand for a while that we don't get paid.

"You get paid for this, right?"

"No, we do not get paid, we're volunteers."

"Oh. But you get paid a little bit, don't you?"

"No, we don't get anything. They fly us down and we stay and eat at the shelter for free so we don't have to pay for anything, but we don't actually get paid."

"So you don't get a check at all?"

"No."

I felt a little moment of community with my vegetarian friends. ("Oh, you don't eat meat? Well what if I cut it into smaller pieces?")

So we closed the facility at Moss Point, but it may reopen. People keep saying that FEMA is still condemning houses and at any moment there could be an influx of new people needing shelter. This hasn't happened yet where I am, but it might. In the mean time, Moss Point is closed. Clients are moving to Gautier Civic Center and staff is being split up. I'm going to Gautier. I'm happy about that, because that's where Michael sleeps, since they moved him from mass care to logistics.

 

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Michael and me with Keith, asst. Shelter Mgr. and Kristen, Shelter Mgr., Moss Point.

FEMA's blue busses.