I'm Crazy: Post Katrina New Orleans

 By Kalamu ya Salaam

I looked at him, this journalist who just wanted to talk to an activist from the Lower Ninth Ward. I had already explained that I do not live in the Lower Nine now. I live in Algiers. My house received relatively (i.e. when compared to most people) light damage. Two trees blown atop the roof but no structural damage-I refuse to think about books and other items I lost when a storage facility flooded. Plus, I still had a job. My work is primarily with young people in a high school program.

He knew all of that. He had read some of my work. I guess my reputation for taking a hard line on some issues, for being provocative at times, for, well, for being what I often am, particularly when I feel besieged, as I generally do, I guess all of that preceded our meeting.

Interviewing me at an after school program we work with, the journalist and I were sitting in the school cafeteria at a table whose dimensions suggested it had been designed for seventh and eight graders, or so it seemed to me. Of course I am 59, very stocky. I sit sideways on the low seat. I can barely get my knees under the table.

I look directly at the freelancer with credits in major publications like Dissent magazine and answer his question about why do I stay, “I guess, I'm crazy.”

As I answer him my life with my wife Nia runs through my mind. Right now she is in Oppalouses, Louisiana working a temporary job as a liscensed X-Ray technician who has very recently retired from the Veterans Hospital. I have never been sentimental, but Katrina has weakened my emotional sternness. Since Katrina, Nia and I are working like crazy, but most often working in different places.

We have returned to New Orleans. We want to stay but every day some news comes and I feel the wind briefly ruffling my going away sails. I have not talked to Nia recently about this breeze I'm sensing. I'm just starting to acknowledge these tremors and talk to myself about this.

Saturday (June 17, 2006), the same day Jim and Greta got married at a little church in the Lower Ninth Ward, five teenagers were shot to death in what obviously was a hit. The mass murder happened in Central City, the once predominately Black area, indeed the only predominately Black area, that was not hard hit by Katrina. Gentrification is accelerating there because Central City is high ground, not too far from the river.

There also was a sixth murder further uptown, I believe in Pigeontown, a neighborhood near the Jefferson Parish line. Two friends apparently were arguing over a beer: one stabbed the other to death.

It is Monday, the 19th, the mayor has requested and the Governor is honoring a plea for armed troops to patrol the streets of New Orleans. Am I in Iraq, do I live in Baghdad, soldiers patrolling the streets, sectarian violence ripping apart the social fabric?

Saturday after the wedding I was feeling relatively upbeat. Just two days later and, well, let's just say, things change.

Jim Randels and I are co-directors of Students at the Center, an independent writing program that works within the public schools. Jim is white. His new family is Black.

Greta Gladney, who is a third generation Lower Nine resident, has three children, her two daughters are grown and her young son, Stephen, is twelve or thirteen. Stephen is an alto saxophone phenomenon. You should have heard him play Abdullah Ibrahim's composition “The Wedding” and Sidney Bechet's “Le Petit Fleur.” He was truly playing beyond his years, but then, that is to be expected; when they were evacuated the only thing he took with him was his horn.

”Yes, that's it. I'm crazy.”

I look around. I don't remember the brother's name. I could look it up. Almost every other day or so it seems, someone calls or visits or emails, wants an interview, a poem, an article, an essay, something, anything. Although Katrina's waters are gone, I still feel like we're in a fish bowl and everyone wants to know how wet it is down here where we are trying to survive.

I look around and see some of the young students I teach. Some of them are writing amazing stories. Two of them were the subjects of a feature on the Weather Channel. Their work is requested, published and referred to all over the place. But it is not their writing that is most important, what is most important is that we give them sustenance and hope.

Their tears and their laughter, the way some of them have come to trust us with their secrets, their fears, their conundrums; trust us enough not only to share their inner selves with us, but also to bond with us and accept guidance from us. If I leave, it will be more than just me who is eventually gone.

”It's these young people. They are here, so I must be here. Working with them energizes me and gives me hope.”

That was last week.

My friend Doug had had a good week. But today, he has had to take radiation treatment again. He will probably be ok this evening when I see him shortly but later in the week, who knows.

I had not planned to write this report. I had planned to file once a week. But sometimes, sometimes it gets crazy and you just got to say something to someone.

Last week it was hard. This week it is crazy. Who knows what tomorrow will bring.

Que sera, sara. Whatever happens, I'm from CTC (Cross the Canal-a New Orleans reference to the Industrial Canal, below which is where Lower Nine is located) and paraphrasing the words of a New Orleans Mardi Gras Indian song: I'll be right here when the morning come. Be right here, I ain't going to run.

I'm crazy that way.

posted 20 June 2006