The Beginning of Spring Break
By Anna Taylor
Yesterday I found a piece of film. Just a short bit of negative from an old fashioned camera. It had been totally bleached by the sun. There wasn't a trace of the original pictures on it. Finding it was the first time that the reality of the tornado hit me. It wasn't just buildings and material belongings that had been wiped away, but memories and family homes. It is hard to imagine the total devastation that must have been felt by the families who had lost their houses and how hard life must have been in the following days and months. They have had to rebuild their entire lives piece by piece while their negatives sit bleached on a pile of debris, cleared away by a stranger.
We cleared debris for a couple of hours yesterday. It was Sunday so nothing was functioning in the morning as the masses went to church, but in the afternoon sun we headed out to a plot of land to start the clearing process before any rebuilding can be done. The tornado was almost a year ago now and so the weeds have taken over in most areas, shrouding the devastation with fertility. We were given a brief to leave nothing but the dirt behind and with a positive attitude we began to clear the ground. It wasn't long before we began to realize quite what a task we had been given. The ground was covered in weeds, small stones, glass and a whole load of miscellaneous objects as well as some bigger bits of wood and bricks. We attacked it with rakes, shovels and our bare hands. There were times in the afternoon when it felt like we were getting nowhere, but by the end of the day I think we all felt proud of what we had achieved. We made a small indent into the clearing, but probably a bigger impact on the people who call that neighborhood home. For them every little bit of debris cleared is a step closer to getting their lives back to normal. One lady stopped her car next to us and inquired where we were from and simply said ' Well God bless you all'.
Today we were split into two groups. One group trooped off early in the morning to go roofing whilst the rest of us had a more leisurely start and headed off to volunteer with Project Blessing. Project Blessing is a Christian charity and it was originally set up in response to the request of a terminally ill child who wanted to have her room cleared up so she could have her friends over to stay. From there it moved onto bigger projects and has gone on to help many low-income families with the maintenance of their houses. Since the tornado they have been building, fixing and decorating houses for those displaced by the storm. We spent the day helping at a house in a low-income area of Tuscaloosa. The house had been on a waiting list for months and it was in need of some TLC that the owner could just not afford to give it. Project Blessing had built a nice front and back porch for the house as well as painting a couple of the rooms. When we arrived the woodwork on the back porch was being finished off and the front and back porch needed painting whilst inside the newly decorated rooms needed cleaning. The first job of the day was to remove all the things that had accumulated in the porch into the yard and then we set to work sweeping and preparing the porch for its paint job. The house itself was painted eggshell blue with the all the shutters painted a rather striking red. We split up into projects, with two people inside cleaning and two people on each porch. The front porch was finished in the morning and it was amazing the difference it made to the appearance of the house. After lunch we slowly finished most of the projects and all we had to do was paint up the back porch. While the carpenters finished off the banisters, we got out the paintbrushes and plenty of blue paint and set to work. It was fiddly work and I did wonder if we would ever get it done but we persevered and with the aid of a few word games and the company of a stray puppy, loving named B-squared, we managed to finish painting all of the woodwork and clear up the mess before the owner got home. Now I think the house looks more like a home, and I hope one that the owner can feel proud of.
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