Displaced Once More
August 29, 2008
San Francisco State University faculty and students aid the recovery of Vietnamese Americans in Biloxi and New Orleans
When Hurricane Katrina struck three years ago, I, like so many others, watched with disbelief and sadness the unending media coverage of the devastation, suffering, injury, loss and dislocation of thousands. I wanted to pack my bags, take my newborn daughter and assist with the relief efforts, but also like so many others, mundane real-world issues and worries intervened, and I didn’t go.
Then, in November 2006, some faculty at the College of Ethnic Studies at San Francisco State University, where I teach, brought up the idea of a service-learning trip for students to help the large Vietnamese population of hurricane-devastated southern Louisiana and Mississippi. I eagerly jumped on board. In June 2007, I accompanied seven graduate and undergraduate students, three of whom were Vietnamese - like myself - and four who were Asian or part Asian, to New Orleans and Biloxi for one unbelievable week.
Driving through the streets of New Orleans, we noticed a lot of rebuilding in some districts. Other areas looked like ghost towns, deserted areas that had apparently been bustling neighborhoods. Many houses looked decent on the exterior, but boarded or broken windows hinted at the lasting damage of Katrina’s destruction.
In the neighborhood where we stayed, near Vermillion Street, we were amazed that many houses were still boarded up and had not been rehabilitated since the hurricane. The scene was desolate and uninviting. At our destination, I had to double check the address. The front yard was waist-deep with unusable appliances and old furniture. One of the students asked what we were all probably thinking: “Are we really going to stay here?”
We met Father Ba, the community’s pastor at Mary Queen Catholic Church and owner of the house, who had been living there since Hurricane Katrina and was still in the process of single-handedly rehabilitating it. Inside, we were greeted with a sea of used furniture and rusted household appliances. Some had been donated by parishioners, community members and other priests, and much of it was being stored for others who, having lost their homes to Katrina, had no other place to put their possessions. Father Ba had offered it as free storage for community members in need.
The National Alliance for Vietnamese American Service Agencies, a Vietnamese community-based organization, helped identify the most beneficial activities for us to work on while we were there. In Biloxi, Miss., we met a caseworker for Boat People SOS, a non-profit committed to serving Vietnamese refugees since 1980 that today coordinates many activities to assist the 30,000 Vietnamese in the Gulf Coast region who were affected by Hurricane Katrina. The caseworker arranged for us to meet with religious leaders from Biloxi’s Vietnamese church and temple, where we heard local Vietnamese recount their Hurricane Katrina experiences.
Many compared the experience of Hurricane Katrina to their escape from Vietnam. It was humbling to listen to their stories of survival and endurance. I was reminded of my own flight as a child refugee from my home in Vietnam. Many of the Vietnamese residents in Biloxi had been displaced from their homes in 1954, when the Geneva Agreement split Vietnam into two parts. They had been forced to flee again in 1975, when the Republic of South Vietnam fell. Having settled in New Orleans and Biloxi, they may have been safe from communism, but Hurricane Katrina displaced them yet again.
Over the rest of the trip, we conducted surveys with businesses in the Chef Highway area, which is predominately Vietnamese American. In Biloxi, we also conducted a business survey focusing on properties along the Oak Street corridor, which has many Vietnamese-owned properties, in addition to taking property inventory. This information will be used by the National Alliance of Vietnamese American Service Agencies (NAVASA) to better address the needs of the local Vietnamese business owners.
After six days of difficult but invigorating work, we returned home with a sense of the magnitude of this catastrophe that no newspaper story or TV show could adequately portray - and a new-found appreciation of the tremendous human capacity for endurance and resilience.
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This article was decent, but I think the one below this should have made the paper.