Spent all day yesterday doing research: reading blogs, websites, personal stories. I feel exhausted…like I felt on my first visit back to NOLA after Katrina. It was all we talked about for the two weeks while we were visiting my mom. Just trying to pick out bits and pieces of the stories. Trying to find the truth and leave the cheese behind.
I asked Dominique to write about some of her experiences as an evacuee, refugee, temporary diaspora (all of the words are highly charged). She’s agreed and convinced her friend Brittany to do so as well. They are both 14 (12 at the time) and evacuated before the hurricane thinking they were going to be away from home for a few days. They were displaced for a year and a half. Imagine spending your most awkward teenaged year as a “hurricane girl.”
Mr. Clio
If you want a wrenching account of the tedium of trying to re-establish one’s life after Katrina and the levee failures, keep up with Tim’s Nameless Blog. Great (stress-inducing) stuff. Hope all is well, ma’am.