Two Hollywood angels in New Orleans to help Katrina kids

Reese Witherspoon and Jennifer Garner were in New Orleans to give their support to the kids who have been traumatized by hurricane Katrina in August 2005.
Ericka Johnson, 8 years old, is traumatized by what she had to go through in the last 9 months. She cannot focus at school anymore.
Nine months after Katrina, a lot of neighborhoods of New Orleans are still desert and destroyed. At nighttime, the streets belong to the gangs.

New Orleans. The huge fan is fighting against the mold and the punishing heat of New Orleans. On a big sign hanging from the structure of the bare building, a message proclaims: “I must make a difference for myself, for my family, for my town, for my country and for the world”. The kids, who welcome Reese Witherspoon and Jennifer Garner that afternoon, echo the message, singing: “Something so strong inside me. I know I can make it”. The two Hollywood stars came to New Orleans to try to draw the attention on the plight of the Katrina kids, who are finding it hard to come to terms with the what they had to go through after Katrina devastated New Orleans at the end of August 2005.

Jennifer Garner, 33, took her digital camera to take pictures of the scarred city and of the kids’ smiles. “Can I have a picture taken with you?”, Jennifer Garner asks Donte, a nine-year old boy, as she hands her camera over to a her publisher. Donte is part of the first Freedom School, a structure set up by an NGO in New Orleans to help the kids deal with the trauma and nightmares caused by the deadly hurricane Katrina. “Our goal is that nobody forgets these kids, says Jennifer Garner in an interview with the.point.is.. There is no structure left in this town and nothing has been done to try to help them recover. We are facing a bigger crisis than Katrina if nothing is done to give these kids a reason to hope”.

The actress admits she was surprised by the state of devastation she saw in New Orleans. “Like all Americans, I thought that families had been reunited and the city was being rebuilt. But it is not the case. If Katrina had hit Beverly Hills, the streets would already have been cleaned up, and we would already have planted flowers.”

The petite Reese Witherspoon is discreet. The actress who won the Oscar for best actress this year for her role in “Walk the Line”, was born in New Orleans. Earlier in the afternoon, she prayed with the kids: “This comeback to the city where I was born, is emotionally very strong for me”, she says. “I did not expect such scenes of destruction. We have to fight in Washington DC to make sure nobody forgets these kids”.

Professor Joy Osofsky, head of the pediatric psychological unit at LSU. is not convinced by the long term impact of such high profile visits: “A lot of kids are traumatized. But I do hope the story will have a happy ending for them”, she says. According to recent studies, 10% of the 1,2 million kids living in areas hit by Katrina risk to suffer from behavioral problems.

At the end of their tour, the two Hollywood stars are expected at a trailer, which has been set up by the US government for displaced Katrina families, in one of the hardest hit neighborhoods of New Orleans. This silent camp surrounded by a high fence looks like a prison camp in a war zone. “Who is that?”, asks large woman standing in front of her trailer, as she spots Reese Witherspoon and Jennifer Garner approaching. “She is an actress. Her name is Drew something, I think”, her neighbor replies. “I see”, says the large woman. “She could at least have brought fried chicken, the woman adds. We could have done a nice barbecue”.

Jean-Cosme Delaloye / New Orleans
Tim McKulka (pictures)

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Ericka’s never ending nightmare

The.point.is. had met Ericka Johnson, 8, and her mother Patrice in September 2005 in a motel in Houston. They had lost everything in the floods caused by hurricane Katrina in New Orleans and were trying to figure out what to do with their lives, hundreds of miles away from home. They finally went back to New Orleans in November of that year. But since then, mother and daughter have found it hard to readjust to life in the devastated New Orleans. Ericka cannot stop moving around: “Come to look at what Katrina did to my house”, she says as she takes the visitor by the hand and leads him into what used to be the garden of her grandmother before Katrina hit New Orleans in August 2005. Today, it is junkyard with two old cars that will not move: “That one was mine”, says Patrice “The other belonged to my sister”.

While mother and daughter are waiting for their house to be rebuilt, they are living in a white trailer provided by FEMA. They share their tiny space with Ericka’s grandmother and Ericka’s cousins: “It is impossible to have any kind of private life”, says Patrice. “But we don’t have any other choice”.

Ericka will be nine years old at the end of the year. She already behaves like a small lady but her uneven handwriting reveals the story of a troubled little girl: “It was not like this before Katrina, explains Patrice. Since we came back to New Orleans, Ericka finds it hard to focus at school”.

Patrice, 33, lost everything in the flood. She has no health insurance and cannot afford a medical and psychological assistance for her daughter. The single mother, who graduated in psychology, is helpless. Next fall, she will move to Dallas to go back to grad school: “I hope that the change of environment will help Ericka, says Patrice. Last year, Ericka was the one who wanted to go back home. Now she is the one, who wants to leave”.

J-C De
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New Orleans gangs find their way back to a ghost town

The bottle of champagne is standing on the kitchen table. Most walls of the house were swept away by the flood but the dusty bottle is still here, as if it was waiting for an impossible comeback of the owners of the house. 100 feet away, construction workers are working on the 17th Street Canal, which flooded by the sudden rise of water in the Lake Ponchartrain caused by Katrina in late August 2005. They only have a couple of weeks left to finish the walls before the beginning of the next hurricane season.

There is not much left of Lakeview, the middle class neighborhood that next to the 17th Street Canal. Only one family seems to have made it back. The lawn in front of the house is mowed. A couple of trailers in front of destroyed buildings, indicate that other people of Lakeview are eyeing a move back to their neighborhood.

On the other side of town, it is pretty much the same sight. Poor sections like the Lower Ninth War are totally abandoned and desert. At nighttime, entire neighborhoods of New Orleans look like ghost towns and are left to the gangs. Criminals are moving back in what used to be one of the most violent cities in America before Katrina. Whereas there were only 22 homicides between January and March, that rate dramatically went up in April with 13 murders in one month. New Orleans is still far away from the pre-Katrina homicide average of 22 murders per month, the number of violent deaths it is rising.

The schools in the Eastern part of New Orleans are still shut down and will not reopen before September. Grocery stores and doctors are rare. Out of the 455 000 people who lived in New Orleans before Katrina, only 210 000 have made their way back to town. 14 000 families used to live in subsidized houses before Katrina. There are only 900 left today.

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A French version of this story was published in May 2006 24heures and Tribune de Genève

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