Truth and Understanding

Marcus Mundy, March 30, 2007

Country: United States

I was only beginning to understand, or at least trying to understand, what this kind of new reality really meant.

Today started like a lot of other days: up before the children, shower and shave, out of the house early, no breakfast, meetings lined up.

Today was also extremely different: I was leaving town, beginning on a journey to help others. I introduced the Mayor of Portland to an unseen television audience, I flew to the city where my parents first met and I spent much more time on reflection than most days.

I reflected on my children. I tried to explain to my kids why I was leaving them on the last weekend of their spring break, and why it was so important that I go; to them, initially, it was so much drivel. Before I left, however, and since we had talked about Hurricane Katrina and its effect on folks, they knew that I was going to try to help.

I reflected upon the value of the trip itself. The Flight of Friendship is many things. It most certainly is a heartfelt, well conceived and generous outpouring of humanity and love from one city to another, from people to people. This "mission" defines Portland, and Oregon, at their best. In my short seven years here, I have not always seen that.

I reflected on the impact we could have. Early on, I was determined not to go if surrounded by well meaning but clueless Portlanders with too much time on their hands. There is too much work to do at both the Urban League of Portland, the nonprofit group I lead, and in New Orleans for this group to do anything but hit the ground running and try to make a difference.

What heartens me most of all is not the Flight of Friendship, it is the determination of the leaders of this group to continue far beyond the flight.

This trip is important.

Beginning to understand

My flight was a little hairy, a little turbulent. During the occasional turbulence, I tried to imagine what it would be like to be caught in a hurricane with flooding, with banal decisions left behind, and life and death decisions confronting me moment by moment. I could not.

I tried to understand what my family and friends in New Orleans had gone through, during the hurricane and since. I could not.

My cousin Peggy Frank met me at the airport, drove me into the city, and began to share with me how very little I had understood about the last 19 months in New Orleans.

She began to explain to me how the "real normal" had left, and she shared with me the routines of her life.

The things she did without made a much longer list than the things she now had. The losses she shared in a matter of fact way were as painful to hear about as almost anything I have before.

She began to drive me around the city, even at midnight, and show me places that I had seen in my younger days: my grandmother's house, the now closed Charity Hospital, her destroyed home. It was saddening and maddening, even to see the devastation at night, without the visual detail of the daylight.

Most of all, she told me what they needed here in New Orleans: they needed their resiliency to be respected; they needed understanding; they needed the rest of us getting out of their way; they needed to have the governments facilitate, not impede; they needed truth.

Mercy Corps' New Orleans-based Gulf Coast Hurricane Recovery team recently hosted a delegation of more than 100 Oregonians, including Mundy, Governor Ted Kulongoski and Portland Mayor Tom Potter. Mercy Corps' 11-member team briefed Oregonians on the state of recovery efforts, facilitate their volunteer work and introduce them to community members who are working to bring their city back. You can help that work proceed and expand by making a donation to our Hurricane Katrina Rebuilding Fund today.