My Katrina
Posted posted by Kath, Becca, and Ellie @ 8:47 PM
When the swirling August climate brought hurricane winds crashing down onto New Orleans and her people the world was watching- but I was not. I was attending the Missionary Training Center in Provo, Utah, and therefore separated from the outside world and its current events.
I still have not seen a single photo of the damage caused, or heard news coverage regarding the storm. I was unaware of a hurricane titled “Katrina” until almost a year later, when I met her victims face to face.
Halfway through my missionary service for the LDS church I was sent to Wichita Falls, Texas. It was in Wichita Falls where I discovered the affects of Katrina.
Hundreds of refugees from New Orleans fled to the southern part of Wichita Falls where the government subsidized their housing, but left them without food, clothing, or money. The area where many of them live is a series of green and tan apartment buildings on a street called Professional Drive.
I think of Rita, a two-thin mother who called me often for Kool-Aid to feed her “chillins”. I think of Anna, a widowed woman who lost her husband in the storm and who cried every day for her adult children who still lived in a trailer in her hometown. I hear in my mind the countless stories they told me while I was seated on their tattered couches.
It is true that I never have seen pictures of the storm, but I have met the people that were in her path. They aren’t refugees; they are Rita and Anna and the countless others that I grew to love. They are my version of Katrina.
