Iceland, December, 2007

On December 26th I set off on a 11 day excursion through Western Europe. Icelandic Air allows free stopovers in Iceland, so I landed in Reyjkavik with only 48 hours to see and learn about Iceland. The four things very visitor must do: 1) See the Northern Lights 2) swim in the geothermal pools 3) tour the Golden Circle and 4) experience the Runtur. I did it all.

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Get your own

Iceland Travel Tips:
1) Be Prepared: Iceland is *expensive* by backpacker standards. A slice of pizza? $8.00. A beer? $15.00. Dorm bed: $40. The airport shuttle? $25. Gallon of gas? $8.There are no cheap-eats, no place cheaper to sleep. Just prepared yourself, mentally and financially.
2) The hostel is on the outskirts of town, a far distance from the active downtown area. There are few things nearby.
3) This is Iceland's Friday-night version of Mardi Gras. The Icelandic youth head to friends' houses for a pre-party drinking celebration, then totter down to the locals bars around midnight. The party continues well into the morning, possibly 6 or 7am or so, when the drunken youth head home. The streets are packed as hundreds of individuals drunkenly stumbled from the bars. Then runtur was in full force as I stood, bleery-eyed, in front of my hotel at 5AM Saturday, awaiting my airport shuttle. And this goes on every single Friday, making Iceland one of the hottest party spots in Europe.

Travel Tips: Nicaragua

Part of the reason I started this blog was to provide travel advice on countries I have visited. Part 1: Nicaragua

Nicaragua: TRAVEL TIPS


Backpackers and tourists are just beginning to explore Nicaragua. Last year (2006) , for the time in country's history, tourism was the highest producing economic sector. Here are a few travel tips:


Best Guide Book: Moon Handbooks Nicaragua (2005) by Randall Wood and Joshua Berman. Both are former Peace Corps volunteers who have extensive knowledge of the country . Lonely Planet El Salvador/Nicaragua gleams over valuable information and offers mediocre travel itineraries. Take the good travel book with you!

Budget for backpackers:
Hostel/Hotel: $7 to $10 a night
Food: $3/meal
Bus tickets: $2 for a 3 trip

Suggested Itineraries/Highlights (3 weeks):

• Granada! Beautiful colonial city. Allow two days. Food? Check out Telepizza (calzones are only $2.25). Hostel? Try Monkey Hut
• Isla de Ometepe: two active volcanoes to hike.
• San Juan del Sur: southern Pacific beach town
• Leon: Granada's colonial rival and located in the northwestern corner of Nicaragua
• Esteli: the third-largest city, located in the northern highlands, has a progressive feel and is a great hopping off point for the Nicaraguan mountains
• Selva Negra, the ecotourism farm in Nicaragua rainforest
• Corn Island, located off the Atlantic coast, has a British/Creole influence. It's like a mini-Jamaica in Nicaragua.

Managua: A quick word of advice. There is a great deal to see and do in Nicaragua and would advise leaving Nicaragua's capital as soon as possible. Managua makes up for its' few tourist sites by offering massive amounts of urban sprawl and crime. From the airport, it is possible to take taxis directly to bus stations. Avoid Managua, if at all possible.

Buses: The bus system is cheap and relatively efficient. Express buses are usually charter buses; second class buses are usually discontinued American school buses. Bus schedules are not posted; just ask the locals.

Border Crossings: Unless you are extremely versed in immigration procedures or hold a high degree of Spanish, I highly recommend taking the TicaBus between countries. Its employees cross borders daily and are familiar with border-crossing procedures; this allows for an efficient and speedy exit and entrance. The TicaBus runs daily between Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama.

Volcan Masaya

Volcan Masaya is a dormant volcano on the outskirts of Manuaga. It towers over the countryside and can be seen for miles. The volcan spews out massive amounts of sulfuric gas which can be seen for miles.

Chontales, Nicaragua

Recently I traveled to the department of Chontales for a five day visit to a current Peace Corps Environmental Education volunteer. Chontales is a beautiful, mountainous region that is known for cows and cowboys, and ouijada cheese A few photos from my trip.

Juigapla is the capital of the department of Chontales; it is roughly three and a half hours from Managua. The journey bus ride costs rougly $2.

The Rock of Cuapa is a rare tourist destination in Chontales; be prepared for a long, hot, rolling walk across the Nicaraguan countryside. This is a remote area of the country with beautiful hills and mountains.

Women´s Rights

The roles of women in Nicaragua

Nicaraguan women face a number of difficulties. Gender roles and stereotypes are very prevalent in this country, and women are often treated as second-class citizens in this society. Machismo rules and women often lose.

Men are the breadwinners of the family, while women´s roles tend to be inside the home. the daily lives of amas de casa )housewives) consist of cleaning, hand-washing clothes, cooking, helping children with homework and tending to the needs of their husbands. Sons are encouraged to participate in activities outside the home while daughters are expected to be take a family position similar to their mother´s role. For these daughters, when they attempt to move beyond their assigned gender roles, they are chastised with a ¨You can´t do that.¨ This passive rearing discourages many girls from attending school and exploring the greater world.

In addition, 75 percent of Nicaraguan women are single mothers. Many men are farm-laborers who spend many months away from home. Other men seek work in nearby Costa Rica or attempt to illegally immigrate to the United States in hopes of finding a well-paying job. Over a 1 million Nicaraguans work in Costa Rica and the United States. These forces the separation of many families in Nicaragua and women are left raising children on their on. In addition, it is not unusual for men to have children with a number of women. A man may take a wife and have a family but also maintains a number of girlfriends and mistresses. This family structure is often acceptable by women and encouraged by men.

Also, few economic opportunities outside the home exist for women. Many are wholly dependent on men for their economic livelihood. Those that do work often run pulperias...mini-convenience stores, baking or vending items. All decisions concerning money are made by men. It is not unusual for a father to head to a bar after work and leave his family home alone. Alcohol abuse is rampant in Nicaragua. In addition, social norms dictate women are not permitted to drink.

As a Peace Corps volunteer, I find myself challenged every day by these gender roles. to a degree, as a outsider, I am expected from a number of these roles but as a volunteer, I also need to respect the traditions of a country. This is a fine line to tread and a difficult situation that all volunteers experience.

Photos from a nicaragua public school

a typical classroom in Nicaragua. I volunteer in this school twice a week. notice the gaping holes in the paint and open windows. there is no air'conditioning in the schools and on hot days, students carry their desks into the courtyard to work. and there is no electricity from 8 am to 2pm, and that means no running water. The school only has latrines. and no cafeteria. students in grades 1 through 3 attend from 8am to 1pm and then go home. students in grades 4 through 6 go to school from 1PM to 530PM...in the same classrooms as the younger kids. There are no textbooks and teachers must copy everything onto the classroom board. These teachers earn roughly $100 a month for their work, or roughly $5 a day. Students are required to wear uniforms, but many wear dirty, torn uniforms that are held together by safety pins. Parental involvement in students' lives is virtually nonexistent.

recess at the school where i volunteer. there is no playground, just a concrete courtyard. During recess, the students simply flood this courtyard to talk. A few boys try to play games with a deflated, old basketball.









student desk






the teachers "desk" and file cabinet. This is nothing more than a table and a plastic chair









the classroom. there are two fifth grade classes at the school. my class has 38 students. Yes, 38..in one classroom. The idea of doing participatory education is almost absurd; how can one find an activity for 38 students?! Moving 38 students around a classroom is chaotic. I can understand why teachers lecture for hours on end; it makes for easier classroom management.

dia de la independecia

september 14th is independence day in nicaragua. here are a few photos from the celebration in my town of Masetepe. The day started with a parade of children through the streets and conclude with ballet folkorico at the town square (where two Peace Corps trainnes and I retained VIP seating were introduced to the crowd as the official representatives from the organization...hopefully, no one will find out this is only training!(










the children performing a native dance





native dance























drummers in native dress










Night in Nicaragua.

Daily Routine

Mass at the local Catholic church

Life in Nicaragua:

Now that training is in Week 2, a daily routine has developed for me. I wake up at 5AM when the buses to Manuaga begin to roar through town (with the drivers yelling MANUAGAMANUAGAMANUGA!!!). At 6:30AM I finally roll out of bed and take a cold shower. There is no such thing as hot showers in Nicaragua, but who wants one when it is 80 degrees and humid (and this is the winter!). I eat breakfast with my host mother (usually rice and beans, sometimes pan dulce) and head to the classroom, which is currently my patio. Language classes begin at 8AM (with three other students) and lasts until 12PM. We break for lunch, and I usually eat with my host mother and father (again, rice and beans). Classes begin again at 1PM and we spend the afternoon practicing Spanish. Sometimes we visit the schools and talk with the children or visit the mayór´s office. Classes usually concludes at 4PM. After 7 hours of Spanish lessons, I am throughly exhausted (and, as one person described, wanting to cut my tongue out!) I crash in the family´s hammock for an hour or more and head off for a quick walk (or, in today´s cahse, to the local Cybercafe). Dinner is 7PM and is usually gallo pinto (fried rice and beans...how did you guess?). After that, my host family and I crowd around the big screen television for an hour of the hottest telenovelas. By 8PM, exhaustion wins and I head to bed.

photos de nicaragua

Poverty is a way of life here.

Taxis

Rain from Hurricane Felix

Sunset in Manuaga

Peace Corps Nicaragua

On August 29th, I arrived in Managua, Nicaragua with the Peace Corps. After a two day orientation at a hotel in Managua, I packed my bags and headed to Masatepe, a town near Masaya, to meet my host family and begin training. This process will last for 11 weeks, and then I will move to the community where in which I will volunteer for two years. Three days a week I will have language training; two and a half days I will have technical training on environmental issues and classroom teaching.

In my host family, I have a host father, mother, and grandmother. We definitely life well compared to other Nicaragua families. I have my own room and bathroom, and the house has satellite television on a big screen TV. Due to an nationwide energy crisis, the electricity regularly winks out. At my house, there is no power between 8AM and 2PM on Monday and Wednesday and Saturday. That also means there is no phone service. In addition, the water goes out. On most days, we have water from 4am to 7am and 2pm to 8am. On good days, we have water, phone and electricity and the same time. if we are lucky. buena suerte!!

Katrina Anniversary

As the two-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina approaches, Time examines why New Orleans still is not safe and why another disaster could sink the city. The article turns fault to the shoddy planning US Army Corps of Engineers and coastal erosion. Louisiana is losing its' precious wetlands, which absorb hurricane storm surges, at the rate of a football field every 8 minutes. In addition the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet (MrGo) channel, which was built by the Army Corps to provide a direct, deep shipping route from the Gulf to New Orleans, allowed flood waters to speed towards the city. Finally, the mass media understands what New Orleans citizens have known for years.

"The most important thing to remember about the drowning of New Orleans is that it wasn't a natural disaster. It was a man-made disaster, created by lousy engineering, misplaced priorities and pork-barrel politics. Katrina was not the Category 5 killer the Big Easy had always feared; it was a Category 3 storm that missed New Orleans, where it was at worst a weak 2. The city's defenses should have withstood its surges, and if they had we never would have seen the squalor in the Superdome, the desperation on the rooftops, the shocking tableau of the Mardi Gras city underwater for weeks. We never would have heard the comment "Heckuva job, Brownie." The Federal Emergency Management Agency (fema) was the scapegoat, but the real culprit was the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which bungled the levees that formed the city's man-made defenses and ravaged the wetlands that once formed its natural defenses. Americans were outraged by the government's response, but they still haven't come to grips with the government's responsibility for the catastrophe."

More here:

http://www.time.com/time/specials/2007/article/0,28804,1646611_1646683_1648904,00.html

T-minus 8-days to staging

The post-Peace Corps invitation paperwork is in; it's now time to pack. With only 8 days left to departure, it is crunch time. There is a growing pile of "must-pack" items in the corner of my room; each day it grows larger with new additions. A few of the more interesting items: 10 passport photos, silica gel packs (to ward off moisture), rechargeable AA and AAA batteries, an inflatable globe, duct tape, a few favorite spices and a box of Oolong tea. There are still a dozen items to pick up, such as Nalgene water bottles, headlamp, a 4MB flash drive and a pocket knife. Only 8 more shopping days left!!


Staging
Peace Corps Nicaragua's Staging begins on August 27th in Washington, DC. Staging is a two-day event in which all Nica 45 volunteers must attend in order to be familiarized with Peace Corps policies and regulations. In addition, volunteers receive their first round of shots and malaria vaccinations during staging. There should be about 35 members of Nica 45, all Agricultural or Environmental Education volunteers.

(By the way, the name "Nica 45" is the moniker given to my fellow trainees because we are the 45th class in Nicaragua. Clever, no?)

What's Up Next?
On August 29th, the Nica 45 volunteers fly to Managua, where they will be greeted by the Peace Corps in-country staff. After another two days of orientation, volunteers are placed with local families in Jinotepe and three months of language and occupational training begins. When training is complete PCVs (Peace Corps Volunteers) are placed then placed at the sites where they will volunteer for 24 months. My Internet access should be fairly regular so expect updates every one to two weeks for the next few months.

Visiting
I welcome all of you to visit! Peace Corps volunteers get a month of vacation time each year, so any time you wish to travel you will have a free place to stay and a free tour guide in Nicaragua!

"How I Spent My Summer Vacation"

8 interesting things I did this summer:
1. Met the Iraqi UN Ambassador outside of UN Conference Room 4.
2. Learned to drive like a Bostonian
3. Found Nemo in the Great Barrier Reef.
4. Killed a kangaroo with a tour bus.
5. Had my luggage lost three times by three different airlines (Delta, JetBlue and USAirways).
6. Got 300 students sitting inside the World Bank to admit the institution was corrupt.
7. Won the GYLC National Delegations Rally! Go South Africa!!!
8. Won $5 in Vegas.

In short, I spent 15 days in Australia, 3 in Las Vegas, 15 in Boston, 7 in DC and 7 in NYC.

Summer is now over--It's time to turn towards fall and Peace Corps Nicaragua.

Australia, June 2007!

15 days on the East Coast of Australia. What more could one ask want?!

Sunset at Bondi Beach, Sydney's most famous oceanfront property.

Cuddling with the kangaroos

Snorkeling in the Great Barrier Reef
There's opera in this building.

The Southern Ocean

Daintree Rainforest beach

A short list of my favorite Aussie terms:
"that's mint"== good, great, fine
"No worries"
"G'day!"

On June 18th I flew to Australia for a 15 day adventure and took in three cities: Sydney, Adelaide and Cairns, with a side trip to Kangaroo Island. A few travel tips: traveling in Australia is relatively easy. Flying between cities is highly recommended; while Quantas is a relatively expensive airline, the service is top-notch. Dream of holding koalas; the practice is illegal in most of Australia's states (studies show koalas that are passed and held by tourists suffer health problems). Cairns is a beautiful, yet touristy, jumping off spot for Great Barrier Reef activities.

Peace Corps Nicaragua: It's Official!

Country: Nicaragua
Program: Community Environmental Education, Nica 45
Job Title: Environmental Education Promoter
Dates of Service: November 17th, 2007-November 17th, 2009
Orientation Dates: August 27th-August 29th, 2007
Pre-Service Training: September 1-November 16th, 2007


To quote the Peace Corps literature, the project of this assignment is "To facilitate the sustainable management of communities' natural resources through education and community action in order to conserve the local environment and improve people's livelihoods." The focus of this project is elementary schools and local youth groups to help communities "identify and understand local environmental issues, and to empower them to take action to help protect and/or improve their local environment." In such, volunteers are assigned to three elementary schools in a community and teach environmental issues to students while helping teachers infuse environmental education into their curriculum. Volunteers also aid in planting tree nurseries near school grounds and work with NGOs to provide environment focused activities based on community needs. The Peace Corps focuses its efforts on the 5 states on the Pacific side of the country and most environmental education volunteers live in small towns of 500 to 2,000 pepole

A bit of a switch from the Agricultural placement, but interesting nonetheless.

Next up: calling PC to accept this assignment and then completing a new passport application (PCVs receive diplomatic passports), aspiration statement and a revamped resume.

Peace Corps Status Report

There have been a number of questions via email/phone/carrier pigeons about my current location and status in the world. For the curious, I am in North Carolina and waiting Peace Corps assignment. My departure date is August 2007 and will head to Latin/South America

For the average Peace Corps applicant, the average wait from nomination to departure is 9 months. For me, it will be 18 months.

Here is the timeline:
January 06: Application submitted.
February 06: Nominated to Peace Corps service. Legal clearance obtained
March 06: Medical clearance begins. A minor medical snag slows down my clearance
June 06: Medical clearance!!
July 06: An academic snag, this time with my thesis, delays my grad school graduation and delays my departure date from September 06 to February 07.
October 06: With much reservation, I accept a Peace Corps placement to an Early Elementary Education program in Paraguay. There, teachers have few educational resources and the goal of the assignment was to increase didactic teaching methods.
December 06: After heavily thinking, I asked to be removed from the placement. Lacking a teaching degree, credentials or any experience with small children, I felt Early Elementary Education was not the best use of my talents. In addition, Paraguay is a bilingual society with most people relying upon Guarani as their primary language and Spanish as the second. Peace Corps bolded the line "If learning Spanish is your reason for joining Peace Corps, you should reconsider this assignment" three times. Since that is one of my goals, I realized it would be very difficult to master Spanish in Paraguay. I asked for a transfer to an placement on an agricultural program in Latin/South America, but not in Paraguay, but it would not depart for seven months.
August 07: Tenative Peace Corps departure


The request to move to an agricultural assignment surprised a few people, including me. But agriculture is the backbone of many developing economies and, as such, holds an invaluable place in the world. In Peace Corps, agricultural volunteers traditionally serve in the most rural and remote areas (and, it is rumored, have the best language skills). So this should be an interesting learning experience.

Three Cups of Tea

Three Cups of Tea

In 1993 Greg Mortensen attempted to climb K2in Pakistan, which he failed to summit. Weary and exhausted, two of Mortensen's porters took him to their home village to nurse him back to health. As he recovered, he asked to see the village school. Embarrassed, they showed him an open field where students scratched their lessons in dirt. Mortensen vowed to bring them a school--and he did. And then 55 more. Today's Mortensen's schools have educated more than 24,000 students (14,000 of which are girls) in an areas where few children had opportunities for education.

Sometimes, you find yourself and your purpose in the unlikeliest of places.

Greg Mortensen book signing at Leavenworth, Washington on April 14th, 2007.

"There's a fine line between adventurous and dangerous!"

Snoqualmie Fall, Seattle!

Spring Break, 2007. Five lovely, lovely days in beautiful Seattle, Washington. Great sushi and Vietnamese food, Mariners game, roadtrip through the Stevens pass, hiking, Belletown and coffee. What more could one want?! My new favorite US city--DC folks, it beats out Washington! More photos available here: http://picasaweb.google.com/misti.mcdaniel/Seattle2007

Crazy Dash to the Airport!

I did have a bit of excitement on my way to the airport when someone stole my license plate a mere two and a half hours before my flight. The cops had to be called and a police report filed. After frantically explaining I had a flight in less than two hours, they gasped "OH, GOSH!" One policeman filled out the report while the other drew me a map to the nearest DMV office. Then they followed me on a mad drive through the streets of Concord, NC to ensure I found the DMV. After hearing my story, the office immediately issued me a plate with a "Throw it in your back window and just GO!" Two hours after the chaos started, I safely made to the airport with time to spare. Disaster adverted! Though,

Countries left to visit!

Countries I have visited (http://douweosinga.com/projects/visitedcountries)

14 down, 178 to go.
So much earth, so little time!

The Right to Return to New Orleans

As everyone knows that reads this blog, I lived in Louisiana from August 2004 to May 2006. Rebuilding New Orleans is a passionate cause of mine--please help!

Sign the petition at www.levees.org to hold the Army Corps of Engineers responsible for this disaster!

The Right to Return to New Orleans http://www.counterpunch.com/quigley02262007.html
By BILL QUIGLEY
Each morning, Debra South Jones drives 120 miles into New Orleans to cook and serve over 300 hot free meals each day to people in New Orleans East, where she lived until Katrina took her home. Ms. Jones and several volunteers also distribute groceries to 18,000 families a month through their group, Just the Right Attitude. Who comes for food? "Most of the people are working on their own houses because they can't afford contractors," Ms. Jones said. "They are living in their gutted-out houses with no electricity."

Why do thousands of people need food and why are people living in gutted-out houses with no electricity? Look at New Orleans eighteen months after Katrina and you will realize why it is so difficult for people to exercise the human right to return to their homes.

Half the homes in New Orleans still do not have electricity. Eighteen months after Katrina, a third of a million people in the New Orleans metro area have not returned.

FEMA told Congress that 60,000 families in Louisiana still live in 240 square foot trailers usually at least 3 to a trailer. The Louisiana Hurricane Task Force estimated in December 2006 that there was an "urgent need" for 30,000 affordable rental apartments in New Orleans alone and another 15,000 around the rest of the state.

Eighteen months after Katrina, over 80 percent of the 5100 New Orleans occupied public housing apartments remained closed by order of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) which controlled the Housing Authority of New Orleans (HANO) since 2002. HUD pressed ahead even though internal HANO documents revealed the cost for repair and renovation was significantly less than for demolition and redevelopment. A professor from MIT inspected the buildings and declared them structurally sound. Architecture critics applaud the current garden-style buildings. Yet HUD plows ahead planning to spend tens of millions of Katrina dollars to tear down millions of dollars of habitable housing and end up with far fewer affordable apartments a clear loss for the community.

Over $100 billion was approved by Congress to rebuild the Gulf Coast. Over $50 billion of that money was allocated to temporary and long-term housing. Just under $30 billion was for emergency response and Department of Defense spending. Over $18 billion was for State and local response and the rebuilding of infrastructure. $3.6 billion was for health, social services and job training and $3.2 for non-housing cash assistance. $1.9 billion was allocated for education and $1.2 billion for agriculture.

Louisiana received $10 billion to fix up housing. Over 109,000 homeowners applied for federal funds to fix up their homes. Eighteen months later, less than 700 families have received this federal assistance. Renters, who comprised a majority of New Orleans, are worse off they get nothing at all. Some money is scheduled to go to some landlords and apartment developers for some apartments at some time.

There were uncountable generous and courageous and heroic acts of people and communities who stretched themselves to assist people displaced by the hurricane. Many of these continue. However, there are several notable exceptions.


Obstacles to public funding of affordable housing came from within New Orleans and in neighboring parishes. Many in New Orleans do not want the poor who lived in public housing to return.

St. Bernard Parish, a 93 percent white suburb adjoining New Orleans, enacted a post-Katrina ordinance which restricted home owners from renting out single-family homes "unless the renter is a blood relative" without securing a permit from the government.

Jefferson Parish, another adjoining majority-white suburb, unanimously passed a resolution opposing all low-income tax credit multi-family housing in the areas closest to New Orleans effectively stopping the construction of a 200 unit apartment building on vacant land for people over the age of 62 and any further assisted housing.

Across Lake Ponchartrain from New Orleans, the chief law enforcement officer of St. Tammany Parish, Sheriff Jack Strain, complained openly about the post-Katrina presence of "thugs and trash" from "New Orleans public housing" and announced that people with dreadlocks or "chee wee hairstyles" could "expect to be getting a visit from a sheriff,s deputy."

With rebuilding starting up and the previous work force still displaced, tens of thousands of migrant workers have come to the Gulf Coast to work in the recovery. Many were recruited. Most workers tell of being promised good wages and working conditions and plenty of work. Some paid money up front for the chance to come to the area to work. Most of these promises were broken. A tour of the area reveals many Latino workers live in houses without electricity, other live out of cars. At various places in the city whole families are living in tents.

Many former residents of New Orleans are not welcome back. Race is certainly a factor. So is class. As New Orleans native and professor Adolph Reed notes: "With each passing day, a crucially significant political distinction in New Orleans gets clearer and clearer: Property owners are able to assert their interests in the polity, while non-owners are nearly as invisible in civic life now as in the early eighteenth century."

New Orleans is now the charter capital of the U.S. All the public schools on the side of the Mississippi which did not flood were turned into charters within weeks of Katrina. The schools with strongest parental support and high test scores were flipped into charters. The charters have little connection to each other and to state or local supervision. Those in the top half of the pre-Katrina population may be getting a better education. Kids without high scores, with disabilities, with little parental involvement who are not in charters are certainly not getting a good education and are shuttled into the bottom half - a makeshift system of state and local schools.

John McDonogh, a public high school created to take the place of five pre-Katrina high schools, illustrates the challenges facing non-charter public education in New Orleans. Opened by the State school district in the fall, as of November, 2006, there were 775 students but teachers, textbooks and supplies remained in short order months after school opened. Many teens, as many as one-fifth, were living in New Orleans without their parents. Fights were frequent despite the presence of metal detectors, twenty-give security guards and an additional eight police officers. In fact several security guards, who were not much older than the students were injured in fights with students. Students described the school as having a "prison atmosphere." There were no hot lunches and few working water fountains. The girls, bathrooms did not have doors on them. The library had no books at all, not even shelves for books in early November. One 15 year old student caught the 5am bus from Baton Rouge to attend the high school. "Our school has 39 security guards and three cops on staff and only 27 teachers," one McDonogh teacher reported.

It took two federal civil rights actions in January 2007 to force the state to abolish a waiting list for entry into public school that stranded hundreds of kids out of school for weeks.

Healthcare is in crisis. The main public healthcare provider, Charity Hospital, which saw 350,000 patient visits a year, remains closed, as do half the hospitals in the city. It is not clear it will reopen. Plans are being debated which will shift indigent care and its state and federal compensation to private hospitals. Much of the uncompensated care provided by Charity has shifted to other LSU hospitals with people traveling as far as 85 miles to the Earl K. Long Hospital in Baton Rouge which reports a 50 percent increase in uncompensated care. Waiting lines are long in emergency rooms for those who have insurance. When hundreds of thousands lost their jobs after Katrina, they lost healthcare as well. A recent free medical treatment fair opened their doors at 6 am and stopped signing people up at 8 am because they had already filled the 700 available slots for the day.

Mental health is worse. A report by the World Health organization estimates that serious and mild to moderate mental illness doubled in the year after Hurricane Katrina among survivors. Despite a suicide rate triple what it was a year ago, the New York Times reported ten months after the storm New Orleans had still lost half of its psychiatrists, social workers, psychologists and other mental health care workers.

In the months after Katrina, the 534 psychiatric beds that were in metro New Orleans shrank to less than 80. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention surveyed the area and found 45 percent of residents were experiencing "significant stress or dysfunction" and another 25 percent were worse.

By default, the lack of mental health treatment facilities has forced more of these crises towards law enforcement. "The lack of mental health options forced the New Orleans Police Department to incarcerate mentally ill people who normally would have been taken to Charity," said James Arey, commander of the NOPD crisis negotiation team. "The only other option is to admit them into emergency rooms ill-equipped to handle psychotics who may have to wait days for care. This is past the point of being unsafe," Arey said. "It's just a matter of time before a mental patient goes berserk in one of the ERs and hurts some people."

With day care scarce down 70 percent, and public transportation down 83 percent of pre-Katrina busses, there is little chance for single moms with kids.

It is impossible to begin to understand the continued impact of Katrina without viewing through the lenses of race, gender and poverty. Katrina exposed the region,s deep-rooted inequalities of gender, race, and class. Katrina did not create the inequalities; it provided a window to see them more clearly. But the aftermath of Katrina has aggravated these inequalities.In fact if you plot race, class and gender you can likely tell who has returned to New Orleans. The Institute of Women,s Policy Research pointed out "The hurricanes uncovered America,s longstanding structural inequalities based on race, gender, and class and laid bare the consequences of ignoring these underlying inequalities.

"The pre-Katrina population of 454,000 people in the city of New Orleans dropped to 187,000. The African-American population of New Orleans shrank by 61 percent or 213,000 people, from a pre-Katrina number of 302,000 down to 89,000. New Orleans now has a much smaller, older, whiter and more affluent population.

Crime plagues parts of the city and every spoke of the criminal justice wheel is broken. Hundreds of police left the force and several were just indicted for first degree murder of an unarmed mentally retarded man during Katrina. When the accused police reported to jail, they were accompanied by hundreds of fellow officers holding up signs calling them heroes. The DA and the police are openly feuding and pointing fingers at each other. The judges are fighting with the new public defender system. Victims and witnesses are still displaced. People accused of serious crime walk out of jail because of incompetence and the fear of witnesses to cooperate with police.

Others are kept in jail too long because they are lost in the system. For example, Pedro Parra-Sanchez was arrested six days after he arrived in New Orleans to find work in October 2005. He got in a fight and allegedly stabbed a man with a beer bottle. He went through the local temporary jail in a bus station and two other Louisiana prisons. Under Louisiana law he was supposed to be charged within 60 days or released. However, he never went to court or saw a lawyer. When he did not show up for his original arraignment date last May, a warrant was put out for his arrest, but he was already incarcerated. He was found by a Tulane Law Clinic attorney and was released in November 2006. Lost in the system, he was doing what they call in the courthouse "Katrina time."

Though crime is issue one in most of the city, crime is not the cause of a city dying. Crime is a symptom of a city dying. Crime is the sound of a city dying.

There are major problems with the drinking water system eighteen months after Katrina. According to the City of New Orleans, hundreds of miles of underground pipes were damaged by 480 billion pounds of water that sat in the city after Katrina. They were further damaged by the uprooting of tens of thousands of trees whose roots were wrapped around the pipes.

The city of New Orleans now loses more water through faulty pipes and joints in the delivery system than it is uses. More than 135 million gallons are being pumped out daily but only 50 million gallons are being used, leaving 85 million gallons "unaccounted for and probably leaking out of the system." The daily cost of the water leaking away in thousands of leaks is about $200,000 a day.

The second major water problem is that the leakage makes maintaining adequate water pressure extremely difficult and costly, particularly in tall office buildings. Water pressure in New Orleans is estimated at half that of other cities, creating significant problems in consumption, sanitation, air-conditioning, and fire prevention.

Insurance costs are skyrocketing for homes and businesses. So are rents. Though low-wage jobs pay a little more than before Katrina, they do not pay enough for people to afford rent.

The overall planning process for the rebuilding of New Orleans has been derailed by several competing planning operations. The Mayor initially created a Bring New Orleans Back Commission, which met for months. While the Bring Back New Orleans Commission was underway, the Urban Land Institute, a D.C. based think tank, created and released a report of recommendations in January 2006. After several months of hearings, the Bring New Orleans Back Commission issued a report issued from the Mayor,s Office, but it was never funded. In April 2006, the New Orleans City Council awarded a $2.9 million grant, funded by federal grant money, to a Miami consultant to create a plan for the 49 neighborhoods of New Orleans. A fourth planning process, the Unified New Orleans Plan, was launched in spring 2006 with funding from the Rockefeller Foundation to integrate all the planning processes. In September 2006, the City Council plan was released, while the UNOP process was just getting underway that fourth plan is starting to wind up now.

These problems spread far beyond their most graphic illustrations in New Orleans throughout the Gulf Coast. As Oxfam documented, government neglect has plagued the rebuilding of smaller towns like Biloxi Mississippi, and rural parishes of Louisiana, leaving the entire region in distress. In Biloxi, the first to be aided after the hurricane were the casinos, which forced low-income people out of their homes and neighborhoods. In rural Louisiana, contradictory signals by government agencies have slowed and in some cases reversed progress. Small independent family commercial fishing businesses have been imperiled by the lack of recovery funds. The federal assistance that has occurred has tended to favor the affluent and those with economic assets.

Visitors to New Orleans can still stay in fine hotels and dine at great restaurants. But less than a five minute drive away lie miles of devastated neighborhoods that shock visitors. Locals call it "the Grand Canyon effect" - you know about it, you have seen it on TV, but when you see it in person it can take your breath away.

Our community continues to take hope from the resilience of our people. Despite lack of federal, state and local assistance, people are living their lives and repairing their homes. People are organizing. Many fight for better levee protection. Some work for affordable housing. Some are workers collectively seeking better working conditions. Neighborhoods are coming together to fight for basic services. Small business owners are working together to secure grants and low-cost rebuilding loans. Others organize against crime.

We graciously accept the kindnesses of strangers who come by the hundreds every day to help us gut and rebuild our homes. Churches, synagogues, and mosques from around the country come to partner with local congregations to rebuild and resource their sisters and brothers.

The new Congress appears poised to give us a hand. Congresswoman Maxine Waters, head the House Subcommittee overseeing HUD, delivered pointed questions and criticisms to federal, state and local foot-draggers recently and promised a new day.

Young people are particularly outraged and activated by what they see they give us hope. Over a thousand law students alone will come to the gulf to volunteer over spring break with the Student Hurricane Network.

The connections between the lack of resources for Katrina rebuilding and Iraq and Afghanistan are clear to everyone on the gulf coast.

Despite the guarantees of the United Nations Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement that people displaced through no fault of their own have the right to return to their homes and have the right to expect the government to help them do so, far too little progress has been made.

As U.S. Congressman Emmanuel Cleaver of Kansas City observed in a recent public hearing, "When it is all said and done, there has been a lot more said than done."

But still each day, Ms. Debra South Jones and her volunteers drive into New Orleans east to dish out hot food and groceries to people in need. In the past eighteen months, they have given out over 3 million pounds of food to over 130,000 families. We never dreamed we would be still be so needy eighteen months after Katrina. We look forward to the day when she will not have to feed us, when we will not need volunteers to gut and fix up our homes, when we can feed ourselves in our own fixed up homes in a revitalized New Orleans.

[ If you would like to learn more about Ms. Debra South Jones and the work of her organization Just the Right Attitude, see http://www.jtra.org ]

Bill Quigley is a human rights lawyer and law professor at Loyola UniversityNew Orleans. He can be reached at Quigley@loyno.edu
The Right to Return to New Orleans http://www.counterpunch.com/quigley02262007.html

New Orleans, Feb. 9, 10 and 11th

18 months ago, Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans. The city became a cesspool of despair and hopelessness in the raging floodwaters. Today, very little has changed. Miles of empty, flooded out houses stand as a tribute to the failure of local, state and national leadership during and after the hurricane.

These photos were made on a recent trip to New Orleans.

Katrina Devastation Feb 2007