Hi, my name is Alayne Lawrence. My Katrina story is a familiar one. Like many others, I did not evacuate until the night before. My father insisted that we weren’t going to leave and that we were just going to ride it out like we usually do. But as we watched the news and talked to other family members who had already left the city, he decided that it would be best if we just evacuated. Because my father really wasn’t in the mood of traveling we decided to go to my cousin’s house, which is in Lafayette, Louisiana. The traffic was so light when we first got on the highway but as soon as we got across the Bonnie- Carrie Spillway, we were stuck. This ride usually takes us about a hour and forty-five minutes but with so many people leaving the city, that hour and forty- five minute ride became a six hour ride. We finally reached my cousin’s house at about 1:00 that morning; surprisingly we got there before my aunt who had left hours before me and my family. Finally, everyone had reached my cousins house except my grandfather who refused to leave. My parents and other older family members stayed up that entire night watching the news. When I woke up that Sunday morning I learned that a Category 5 hurricane had hit the city of New Orleans. Of course the first thing we did was call my grandfather to see that everything was okay. He assured us that nothing was wrong and everything was just the way it usually is. We thought nothing of it. But over the next two days, my grandfather told us that the waters were rising. My mother and my aunt became worried, especially when my grandfather stopped answering the phone. They became delirious and were just crying all the time. It wasn’t until about a week later, when we saw my grandfather. My grandfather had actually gone to Houston, Texas on one of those buses that were leaving the city from the Superdome. From there he asked a woman working in the Astrodome how he could get to Lafayette. She took him to casino because she knew that a bus would be leaving from there, but when they got there he had missed that bus. Then they went to a greyhound station where he caught a bus to Lafayette. When he got to Lafayette he found a cab driver and asked if he would stay with him until he found his family. The driver feeling sorry for the Hurricane victims, agreed. My grandfather had no idea where my cousin’s house was and he left all of our phone numbers at his house. So he was basically just driving blindsight. He finally reached a small town outside of Lafayette, called St. Martinville. I have a lot of family members in St. Martinville, so when he got there things became familiar to him. He stopped at a grocery store, where he asked if anyone knew a woman named, “Roxy” (one of my cousins). Luckily, someone said they had a brother who was married to a Roxy and she wondered if that was her. She called her brother and got the number, and surprisingly he had actually got the number to the right Roxy. Roxy met him at the grocery store and called us. We were so relieved to see my grandfather. And when he told us his story of how he got to us, we were amazed. After about two weeks of living with my cousin, my father decided that we couldn’t stay with her anymore. It was just too many people in the house and we were all use to having our own space. My father finally told us that we were going to move to Tennessee. When I first found out that we were going to Tennessee, i was like “WHAT???” I had never been to Tennessee before in my life and i thought that i was going to the country or something. Unfortunately, for me I had no say so in the matter, so I just went. When we got there we met with one of my father’s friends, he had got us a room at the Drury Inn. We lived there for about two weeks. Then FEMA or somebody made us go to the Extended Day Hotel which was not as nice as the Drury. We were very disappointed about that and that’s when we really started looking for a house. About a week after that we moved into our house in Bartlett, Tennessee. After we moved in the house everything got back to normal. I was finally enrolled back in school, where I was welcomed with open arms. As I finished my tenth grade, year and my files were transferred, my guidance counselor noticed that I had extra credits, (courtesy of McDonongh #35 High School and New Orleans Science Math) and asked if I would be interested in graduating early. I jumped at the idea and took eleventh-grade English, government and a driver’s ed class during the summer. That fall I became senior. None of my friends could believe it and were even a little disappointed that I wouldn’t be graduating with them. In the end they were all very proud especially to know that their sixteen-year old friend had actually graduated and was accepted into several colleges. That’s pretty much my story. I am one of the few people that are actually glad that Hurricane Katrina came. Because without her I would still be a senior in high school thinking about going to college instead of the freshman at Xavier University that I am.
At Xavier I am studying to become a chemical engineer. I plan on attending Xavier for only three years then going on to an engineering school. I’m actually writing this blog for one of my theology classes that I have to take to graduate and of course I agree to the course commitments. So far the class is interesting. Even though I am Catholic, I haven’t really picked up a bible since I was eight, when I was trying to make my first Communion. I never made my Conformation, because I kind of stop going to church after Katrina (I know that is horrible). So I’m not familiar with any bible versus and I’m still a little confused about the whole book of lamentations. 586 B.C.E. was a key event in the bible because that is when Jerusalem was destroyed by the Babylonians, ending the kingdom of Judah. The book of lamentations speaks on the events that are happening in the fall of Jerusalem. I think that the entire book of Lamentations relates to New Orleans and the aftermaths of Hurricane Katrina. The “She” in the book of lamentations is Jerusalem. All of the things that Jerusalem is going through, New Orleans and its citizens went through too. In the first verse it talks about how “She” is now sitting alone in a “city that was abundant with people” and now it’s like “she has become widowed.” After Katrina, the city of New Orleans was abandoned; many people still have yet to return to the city. In the book it also speaks of how “She” is losing her faith. Likewise, some people believe that many citizens of New Orleans loss there faith in God when Katrina happened. The people also felt that because they were sinning, they were being punished. But because most people’s religion teaches them that they aren’t suppose to lose their faith, the questioning of God only led to a stronger belief in Him being God.

This entry was posted on Saturday, August 25th, 2007 at 11:28 pm and is filed under Week 01: Background. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.