Bay St. Louis, A Place Apart

Wow. Welcome back to the blogging world, Nora. Yes, I’ve been pretty absent for about a month, but only because I’ve been so busy.

We finished up our time with Pat Harrison by working on a couple of haunted forests that served as fundraisers for the local volunteer fire departments. It was really fun to have as much creative input as we did and be able to do some construction as well as trail work and painting. All in all, we worked at 5 of the 11 Pat Harrison Water Parks and completed a lot of work. We were really lucky to have Stewart as our sponsor and will miss him and all the PHWD staff very much.


On our way back to Vicksburg on the 23rd, we stopped at the Piney Woods School just south of Jackson. My team and the other NCCC team that had been in Hattiesburg, River 7, worked at Piney Woods for the day as part of Make a Difference Day, one of the National Days of Service that the whole corps participates in. Piney Woods is one of four historically black boarding schools in the country and was founded in 1909. They are now also the first and only high school in the country with an AmeriCorps program. They work on a 4 & 1 system where they attend normal classes Monday to Thursday and on Friday have work-study jobs or other tasks to complete around campus. The seniors are actually AmeriCorps members and so do community service on their Fridays. At the end of their senior year, they will have earned enough hours to qualify for an education award that is basically a college scholarship for them. It was a really cool place and it was great to get work with the students there.

All the teams were back on campus for transition last weekend and this Monday throughWednesday. It was really great to be back in my own room up on the TL floor and surrounded by Team Green Love (from all the team leaders). Transition was really busy and stressful though—meeting after meeting to debrief and close out Round 1 and brief and get ready for Round 2. Lots of paperwork and lots of scheduling, but I somehow made it through alive. I was incredibly exhausted by the end of it (physically and emotionally) but I was still really excited to get going to my next project.


So now I write you from lovely Bay St. Louis on the Gulf Coast of Mississippi. We arrived here on Thursday afternoon and settled into a lovely little house about 3 blocks from the beach and about a mile from the downtown district. The house belongs to a family that evacuated for Katrina and never came back, so we’re finding lots of little treasures here and there. Habitat is renting the house from them and we feel so lucky to be here instead of in a trailer at a volunteer camp.

The town is incredibly friendly and welcoming. We spent Saturday walking around and enjoying the daytime, family-oriented Halloween events the town put on for the residents. This community is still very small after Katrina, but it’s easy to tell how close-knit and caring it is.

It’s crazy to see how many empty lots there still are post-Katrina, though, too. You’ll be walking down the street and all of a sudden see a foundation slab and a driveway with no house. Or a staircase leading up to where a porch must have been but is no longer.

The other sight that I’ve been so excited to be noticing around town, though, is the many Habitat houses. I can already spot them based on their colors, designs, and matching backyard sheds. There are over 100 that have been built here since Katrina, and I’m so excited to keep adding to that number. On Monday we’ll start at a site that’s currently just a raised foundation and hopefully have walls and trusses up by the end of the day!


We get some spotty internet service in our house now, so I’m hoping to be able to keep in touch a little better this round. Please keep leaving comments and writing me notes! It makes me so happy to hear from all of you. Love love love.