I’m arriving in New Orleans by plane for the first time. I look out the window at the Mississippi River and wonder about all the details to the landscape that I can’t see from the plane. I think the river looks quite busy with shipping business, though I don’t have much of a frame of reference–what was this like before? A question I realize I’ll probably ask a number of times. My six plane companions and me (we’re meeting 3 more in N.O.) wonder what our experience will be like. When they say ‘mold removal’ what exactly does that mean? When they say don’t EVER open a refrigerator, how many times did it take to learn that lesson?

Once we land, we notice two things right away: how outwardly friendly everyone is, and how incredibly hot it is already. How are we going to work in this heat? On the drive to the site, we pass hundreds of wrecked and damaged cars. “Those are victims of Katrina too,” our driver Blanca said, explaining the city collected them and told everybody they have until a certain date to come get them or they are going to trash them. The date has come and gone and they sit there still.

Blanca points out the water line on the houses we pass — which looked to me to about 6 feet — as we approach the Superdome. She said they are currently doing repair work on it and it actually looks better now then before Katrina. She points out a billboard saying that the city is publicizing that the Saints will be able to play their first home game on September 25th. Blanca doesn’t like football, but she knows that’s a good thing.

Blanca tells us she had to leave New Orleans for 2 months last year. When she came back, she had to work construction because the cab business wasn’t busy enough to give her full time work. It took a month to get her house gutted and back in shape and she’s glad that someone else did the drywall in her house because she wasn’t very good at construction.

We arrive at the First Street Methodist Church. We get out and enter our new home and air conditioning. We are greeted by the volunteer coordinator, Megan, an AmeriCorps member who arrived here a week ago. She shows us around — a big room with 74 bunk beds (and by bed we mean plywood, no mattress), 3 showers (that require signing up for to use) kitchen, dining area, tool shed and church. The basics. Dinner is starting soon so we get settled and introduce ourselves to our 60+ new friends.

Dinner includes a community meeting where announcements are made, they welcome new-comers and say goodbye to those that are leaving. Every person who was leaving next day stopped to say thanks to the staff and everyone at Hands On New Orleans. They spoke about how they won’t forget what they saw here and how they know that they got more then they were able to give. Some of the folks who left had been here for months–working everyday. I wondered, if the welcome was this humbling, what would the work be like? I guess tomorrow I’ll find out.

Sent from the field, by Meghan Moloney, New York Cares staff member leading a team of New York Cares staff volunteering to help with Hurricane Katrina recovery.