Saint Darren of the Lower Nine

They say that if you do the same thing over and over and expect a different result, you are crazy. What if you do the same thing over and over and expect nothing in return? Does it make you a saint?

On a trip to New Orleans last week, we took some time out from Jazzfest to visit the Lower Ninth Ward, where our daughter Callison has worked in the post-Katrina rebuilding effort.

While the French Quarter and the fairground that houses Jazzfest are in full swing, the Lower Ninth and other sections of the city still languish in post-apocalyptic rubble.

Even near the fairground, tidy homes with new roofs and fresh paint sit cheek by jowl with abandoned hulks with inverted roofs and waist-high weeds. What kind of faith does it take to invest everything you have in a home that sits between a wreck and a hard place?

Entering the Lower Ninth Ward, you cross a bridge and immediately sense the divide between everyday life and the twilight zone of deep poverty. It was not always so. Before Katrina, the Lower Ninth was not a privileged community but it had neighborhood stores, a supermarket, gas stations, laundromats. Now, even those simple amenities are gone.

Organizations like LowerNine.Org that have stayed and continue to rebuild flood-damaged homes with volunteer labor and supplies are fighting extraordinary odds. The government, both federal and state, abandoned the black residents of the Lower Ninth Ward long before Katrina. Now, developers wait to make the whole area a giant casino.

Our daughter had told us to “look for the pink church that looks like a warehouse” as a landmark. It was where she lived while working there. We saw it, and the parking lot she called home that summer.

LowerNine’s headquarters was not as obvious as the pink church. Tucked away on a tiny street, it is more like a shack than a house. Inside, brightly colored walls provide the sense of optimism that is needed to continue the daunting, seemingly endless work that springs from this endeavor.

We asked for Darren, our daughter’s friend and the job boss for all of LowerNine’s efforts. When we introduced ourselves as Callison’s parents to Joe, the office manager, he immediately remembered her. “Pretty voice, good singer” he said.

Darren, we were told, was “over on Forstall.” I wondered how we would find him, but it was easy once we found Forstall Street—the block was empty except for Darren’s battered pick-up truck and a Jeep from Texas with missing plates.

Darren was directing a small group of volunteers. They were replacing the floor of a small house. The inside had been gutted. Dressed in a dark red T-shirt and denim jeans, there was nothing about Darren that placed him in the 21st century. He could have been living in 1951 as easily as 2009.

There is no deadline for his work, but there is a sense of urgency. I think the only way he keeps going is to look at one house at a time. A person with a whole world perspective could not keep faith with this task. He is patient as he explains the need to remove the old bathroom tiles. The mold must not have a chance to linger and grow, he says.

He does this work seven days a week, no vacation. Where would he go? “Maybe New York,” he says, just for a visit. He lives nearby, in a trailer, without family or human companionship. He doesn’t talk about the ones he lost in the flood. A stuffed animal sits on the dash of his pickup. His accent is a thick Louisiana patois.

We came to thank him for his work and to bring him a small present from Callison, for his birthday. He asked if we wanted to work but we demurred. My husband was wearing his good shirt and I, my sandals—no match for rusty nails. “You know what I’ll tell Callison,” he teased, “her parents came down and didn’t do ____.” This last word he doesn’t utter. Saints don’t curse.