New Orleans, Louisiana June18-24th, 2007
Deven Sisler and Mindy Ferraraccio
Mindy's Journal is below all of Deven's,
please
scroll down or
click here.
Deven's Journal
DAY 1
Monday, June 18th, 2007
Afternoon: Emergency Communities- Lower 9th Ward 60-30
St. Claude Ave 70117
Performance & Circus Skills Workshop for 20 kids, 10
adults.
Description of Facility: Emergency Communities (E.C.)
is a volunteer run food shelter & community center.
We performed in the main cafeteria/meeting
room/children’s center. E.C. was initiated by Mark
Weiner to provide communal public space after Katrina
because this essential part of communities was wiped
away with everything else.
E.C. was providing it’s daily free community lunch
when we arrived. We were greeted by a guard and a few
men as we walked into the library/computer room/living
room area. The kids were in the main cafeteria style
room in their partitioned off play area watching the
afternoon movie of Inspector Gadget. The Summer Camp
Coordinator was excited to see us and asked if we
could help keep the adults away from the movie area,
as they sometimes try to “teach” the kids
inappropriate lessons.
It’s funny, people frequently ask what children are
like in these kind of areas of hardship... Upon
reflecting in my journal, I realize I wrote about the
conditions in which they survive more than the
children themselves because they are always playful,
curious, energetic and wanting to play.
DAY 2
Tuesday, June 19th, 2007 Morning
Pearlington Library- Hancock Library System, Hancock
Mississippi
Performance & Scarf Juggling
There were about ten-twelve kids by the end of the
workshop, we performed the beginning of the show and
then taught scarf juggling. As a warm-up a couple of
the kids got onstage and told jokes. It is really
exciting to see them glow with the attention, and to
do our thing, but then bring it back to them, teaching
them a new way to play. As always, it is frustrating
to keep them in the audience, and not back stage. But
their enthusiasm is incredible, as was their
excitement while juggling.
The difference upon entering a Pearlington is nothing
less than drastic. Houses are being built 10-12 feet
in the air due to revised flood restrictions... and
the houses are almost completed. The volunteer
centers are crisp, white and well stocked with coffee,
water, sweet tea, juice... I don’t know how the
funding is specifically different, it seems from the
banners that there is a strong religious influence in
housing the volunteers. Whatever it is, there is a
very slow, but very steady rebuilding effort.
Tuesday afternoon Eisenhower Elementary 30-40 kids
Description of the Facility: A huge school, in
particular we are working in the room that serves as
the cafeteria (with immovable tables, yes!) stage &
meeting area between classes.
We met with the Circus class teacher and decided we
would best be utilized by simply assisting her 30+
student class, and we will perform part of our show
Thursday.
The Circus teacher counters the discipline theory of
the rest of the school by refusing to yell at the
students Usually she teaches this on her own, I can’t
imagine. They were truly a handful with three
teachers in the room, but we were able to do the work
and she seems grateful that we will return.
DAY 3
Wednesday, June 20th S
The Freedom School/7th Ward
Performance & Mini Circus Warm-Up
Description of the Facility: There is a lot of love
going into this program & facility. It is a beautiful,
huge church, but they have partitioned off sections
for different activities and the kids can move
wherever they would like: girley, fluffy reading area,
library with couches, pool table, computer area, art
area, with a great center and stage. They are working
hard to make opportunities for the kids to decorate so
it really feels like their own space.
Deven’s Journal July 1st, 2007
I lived in Louisiana until
I was five years old. On
my way to the private preschool I attended, I remember
passing a public school, and asking my mother, “why
don’t I go to that school?” She replied because
they
don’t have toilet paper in the bathrooms and they do
have cockroaches. Last week, when Mindy & I were
getting ready to do a show in one of the public
after-school programs; I couldn’t find any toilet
paper in any of the six bathrooms stalls... I did find
cockroaches, dead & alive. These two things in and of
themselves could be mere inconveniences, but are
symptoms of a larger systemic issue with New Orleans
public schools.
Mindy & I spent an afternoon assistant teaching
Circus Arts, a little girl came into our classroom (a
cafeteria/hallway/meeting area) from the playground
holding her left hand and sobbing, she had just fallen
off the jungle gym and most likely broken her wrist or
arm. There had been no supervision on the playground.
When Mindy took her to the main office, no less than
ten teachers were talking and hanging around. Why
and how had she been able to be alone outside?
The discipline theory of this particular school is to
yell/humiliate the students into submission. The
number of children enrolled vastly outnumber the
teachers available. It was a jarring rough
environment, not emotionally or physically safe.
Oddly, the kids are sometimes unsupervised and the
first chance the students get to run/rough house they
absolutely take over. Then they are verbally beaten
down again. Fifteen minutes before our Circus Arts
class was over, doors opened from the hallway and
classes of unsupervised kids rushed into the cafeteria
meeting area. Not one group was accompanied by a
teacher or adult, as they ran into our class yelling,
fighting, playing tag, roughhousing. We were working
hard with three different groups of students; the head
Circus Arts teacher was with the stilt walkers, Mindy
with the hat dancers and I was with the tumbling kids.
The unsupervised students became climbing/walking
over the mats, playing with the equipment and causing
chaos. Usually the Circus Arts teacher teaches this
class by herself, I can’t imagine, these students were
a handful with three teachers in the room.
The problems that New Orleans is suffering existed
before the Hurricanes and exist in every American city
to some lesser or greater extent, but the tragedy of
New Orleans, in particular is the process of
reconstruction, or lack thereof in many places. The
post-Hurricane landscape is a magnifying glass of the
stark realities between wealth & poverty,
socio-political agendas, corruption and that the race
issues of the pre Civil Rights era that still exist
with a slightly different personalities.
A tourist, and even a resident of New Orleans, could
easily exist in the area, visiting the French Quarter,
Downtown & some areas of Uptown New Orleans and see a
vibrant, energetic city that has overcome a crisis.
Sadly, as there are probably many who visit who never
see the reality of New Orleans. Travel ten to fifteen
minutes down St.Claude and another reality exists.
Signs on several schools still read August 2005,
dilapidated closed down hospitals, unpaved roads,
abandoned houses, gas stations & stores line the road.
One in ten houses, seems to be inhabited, and it is
not necessarily because they were able to remodel
their homes. The innards of gutted houses lines the
streets. This is the 9th ward and twenty-two months
later it still looks like a war zone. The residents
who have stayed are primarily black & low income.
Most of the people who have been “relocated” to
temporary FEMA housing in Baker were renters here
before the Hurricanes.
The lack of reconstruction is not solely a race
factor though. Five minutes further down the road
where St.Claude turns into St.Bernard Highway is
Chalmette. There are still very few street signs, so
it is a little hard to find your way around. The
storms ravaged New Orleans on Monday, but Chalmette
didn’t receive any federal assistance until Friday.
What kind of emergency response is that? It is a
lower income, primarily white, working class town with
more landowners than in the 9th ward, so more
residents have stayed and put up trailers in the front
yard while they try to rebuild. It also has one of
the largest high schools in the country that serves
4,000 students.
Andrew Jackson high school brings us to one of the
positives of the recent months. We performed five
shows for PlayPower, a new youth program. When I
visited Louisiana last year, we had extensive trouble
finding children’s groups to play for within the city.
The mayor’s office denied that there was any FEMA
housing within the city limits (there was, either they
didn’t know, or didn’t want us to go there). This
is
the first summer for many new programs: PlayPower in
Chalmette, The Freedom School in the 7th Ward, and
Emergency Communities in the 9th Ward. The people who
are working hard to make programming for children that
is empowering, stimulating & interesting, are either
completely volunteer or paid very little. Many of
them are struggling to get back on their feet
themselves, continuing to live in trailers or
temporary housing.
There was a natural disaster, but the way in which
education, rebuilding streets & homes & businesses
is
the heartbreaking tragedy. Especially, since the eye
of the media has already swung away to the far-off
Middle East and the 2008 elections, and it is the
children who are being left behind. The concerned
citizens of the region have recently been forced to
work twice as hard for their long-term goals because
funding is starting to be cut. It is not logical to
think that an entire city, with roughly half its
population, will be brought back to life in under two
years... but that is what the funding statistics must
presume. This is a long journey, ten to twenty
years, and we can’t forget about the struggle of our
own American refugees.
Deven Sisler
Mindy's Journal June 18, 2007
Flight was at 6am. We left at 4:30 am for LGA. The flight
seemed to go by rather quickly. We arrive and I find myself
lost for words. It is hard to explain what it is like down
here. The first glimpses are surreal. Images my imagination
could not have conjured up. I don’t know what my expectations
were, but I am incredulous at the seemingly stopped time that
has occurred. Signs on abandoned schools still read, “registration
begins August 11, 2005” Houses are gutted and you see
visible water lines. There are few signs of life. As we get
closer to the Emergency Community where we plan to stay for
the week, life begins to emerge. We are greeted by questions
and requests for us to bring a plate of food out with us. I
am in awe and feel my eyes wide open. We are taken on a tour
of the center and meet several children who we are told have
been waiting anxiously for the clowns to arrive. We quickly
prepare for our first show. Which goes somewhat like an experiment.
Deven and I are jumping in and finding our clown legs. The
children, we realize, will be in the show whether we planned
for it or not! They jump up, jump in, and ask to help, shout
out, and call for our attention. It is an unreal, exciting
adventure. The subsequent workshop is organized chaos. The
kids are wild over the different “toys” Devil sticks,
spinning plates, juggling. We are hoping to work with them
several times this week.
Staying in a tent in an abandoned church to keep out the termites
that live in the connected lumberyard. I have a small clip
light on my keychain. I use it to pen these thoughts.
The school was boarded up. Sign read “registration 8/11/2005”
Deven said, “frozen in time”
I say lost.
Lost in time
Forgotten.
I wonder how the children would tell the story.
Children who say, “Real clowns have noses that squeak”
Reminding us that imagination still works!
I guess I could be a real clown if I only had a nose that “squeaked”.
We’ll work with the kids again at this emergency community.
They are teaching me to be patient while they learn to juggle.
As the adults become patience as all of us re-learn how to
play.
6/19/07
Awoke on a flattened air mattress that must have found a hole
during the night or somewhere in between on our travels. Neck
cramp from the hardness of the cement floor. Surprisingly I
just have one bug bite that doesn’t much bother me yet.
Mike the carpenter and volunteer here found us another air
mattress and will blow it up for us later. He has been here
for two months. He told us parts of his story. His best pal
is a pit bull who thinks of bugs as playmates and won’t
harm them, was rescued as a helpless pup drowning in the aftermath
of Katrina. He told us how he had to leave for ten months to
get away from it all for a while. The stench of rot, death,
and sickness became too much to carry. He had no electricity
for one month and the streets were lined with refrigerators
filled with decay. Mold and rot from the heat and the decay
of what was left behind. I cannot fathom. I can listen, I can
hold, but I can never really know.
6/20/07
We enter a school in Chalmette void of common “creature
comforts and necessities” like toilet paper and general
cleanliness. I wonder how a child can learn to have respect
for their place of learning when it does not offer them a feeling
of safety and openness. I am appalled at the way the children
are shamed and talked down to. Amazed that “communication” is
attempted through a microphone, speakers, and a broom handle
pounded threateningly on a cafeteria table. I feel threatened.
I feel stilted. I cannot image how the children experience
this. Yet they are some of the most talented, driven students
I have had the pleasure of working with. Today we assisted
Meret, an amazing circus arts teacher, in a summer camp program
in Chalmette. Under “normal” daily circumstances
Meret teaches these classes by herself. 30 kids in this chaotic
environment by herself, she is amazing, but no one is equipped
to do more than manage the chaos in such an environment. Our
presence allowed Merret to give the kids more personalized
attention. Several students were even up on stilts. And to
there own amazement took off. One young lady at the end of
the second day was walking the halls of the school unassisted
on her stilts. She brought her mother back after class and
begged us “tell her what I did” She broke into
a huge grin as Merret complimented her ability and most importantly
her courage and as she walked out she said to her mother “I
walked on stilts”. Her mother replied, “I know,
I am so proud of you”. It was a moment I will treasure.
Meret reminds us that to them this chaotic environment is actually
a calm refuge and that is a big reason to continue this work.
To create a place for trial and error, for failure and success,
and especially for play. That and a hug from a little girl
in a parking lot outside of a mobile library in Mississippi
where we had just performed. She arrived after our performance,
as we were packing up. We were total strangers to her, but
she reached out anyway running to Deven with a hug before continuing
on into the library to do some artwork.
6/21/07
Beauty and terror. I am always reminded how one doesn’t
exist, cannot exist without the other. Here that paradox is
so visible. These children are courageous and resilient. Which
begs the question how can resiliency be maintained? Or even
developed? Meret runs this circus arts class. She used to have
a school that was lost. Destroyed. As was her home. For two
years she has lived in a trailer on her property with her husband.
Everyone here has been touched. Yet, there is so much faith
here in continuing. Unafraid of the leaps that have been made,
the decisions to be here in the moment. Alive with whatever
comes next. We ran tonight in a glorious city park. Swans gathered
on the water and these magnificent draping trees greeted us
at every turn. It feels far away from the Emergency Community
in which we have been staying. It reminds me that tourists
that will come to visit New Orleans will likely only see the
French Quarter. Bourbon Street. They might not even see this
lovely park let alone the destruction in the 9th ward. When
we return it will be important to share all of it. |
