Cajun Adventure, Post-Hurricane Rita
January 14 - 21, 2006
By Gail Grenier Sweet ©2006
Anyone need a hand?
Anna was almost done with her school year in New Zealand when I popped the question over the phone.
“I was thinking about going down to Louisiana to help with hurricane recovery. Would you like to go with me?”
“YES!” was her answer, without a beat.
After Anna returned to Wisconsin in November, we narrowed down our volunteer time to the month of January. I’d have a break from teaching and she’d have a break from college.
We had plenty of motivation…. We both loved New Orleans. After almost 10 months abroad, Anna still had the travel bug. I wanted to “pay back” some of the fun Louisiana gave me during three prior visits filled with Cajun music, dance and food. I think both Anna and I were curious about the hurricane devastation, and wanted somehow to be part of history.
…. And January is a good month to be gone from Wisconsin.
Researching by phone, by Internet, and in person, and filling out forms, Anna and I tried for two months to get a volunteer assignment. Red Cross: NOT NOW. Archdiocese of New Orleans: NO RESPONSE. New Orleans connection through my church: CANCELLED. Our January free time was running out. I was desperate.
At last I struck gold on a long shot: Joe Paris.
Joe was a man I only knew from Cajun dancing. I remembered him as a wild-bearded, sparkly-eyed character who had challenged me with: “I bet I’m older than you.” (He was wrong by a few months.)
In September 2003, we met at a dance hall in Lafayette, Louisiana. My husband, Mike, and I were enjoying Festivals Acadiens, about two hours west of New Orleans in the heart of Acadiana. We were fairly new to Cajun dancing, but by then had adopted the Louisiana tradition of dancing with others as well as with each other to the traditional waltzes, two-steps and jigs.
We were at Grant Street, a historic dance hall that looks like a small bleak warehouse on the edge of downtown Lafayette. Steve Riley and the Mamou Playboys were fiddlin’ and singin’ up a storm there in celebration of the release of their album “Bon Reve.” After I danced a jig with Joe Paris, he talked to me about his love of storytelling and about Louisiana. He wrote down my email address in a little notebook.
I never heard from Joe after that September, but I remembered him this January when I was running out of options for hurricane relief work. I typed “Joe Paris Storyteller” into Google. Bingo-- luck on the first try. I e-mailed Joe and asked if there was any need for volunteers in Acadiana. I included my phone number. Within the hour, he called me and said “Come on down!” He couldn’t remember meeting me, but I guess he trusted that I wasn’t a kook.
He said, “I enjoy hearing that lovely, and I do mean lovely, Midwestern accent.” He promptly e-mailed five or six phone numbers I could try for an assignment.
Things moved fast once I started calling. Within a day, Anna and I were guaranteed work through the Diocese of Lafayette in collaboration with the local United Way. I grabbed frequent flier tickets through Northwest Airlines, and booked a hotel room which we were able to cancel almost immediately because we were offered free lodging at the Diocese dormitory, a former seminary.
When I let Joe know these developments, he said he’d try to meet us at the airport and offered to be our host in Lafayette.
He added, “I hope you plan to have some fun down here besides working.”
My answer: “What? Leave cold Wisconsin in January and go to Louisiana and have some fun? Hmmmmm….”
Allons à Lafayette ("Let's go to Lafayette")
On Saturday January 14, we took a big plane to Memphis and from there, a little plane to Lafayette. I showed Anna where her dad and I stood in Lafayette airport in ’03, when our flight to Milwaukee was delayed due to an alligator on the runway.
“We watched a guy come drag the gator by the tail, bundle it up, lift it into a pickup truck bed, and drive it away. Folks thought the gator must have walked here from a bayou nearby.”
There is nothing easier than picking up a rental car at Lafayette airport. You grab your bag off the conveyor belt, go see a nice lady with an accent thick as syrup (“Ah just need to see your cridit cord”), and walk outside to your car. There’s no security guy or spikes to drive over as you leave.