Day Two Final

Well Day Two is finally over. Again it was a long day. It started at 4:00am, when I woke up and got ready to head to Baton Rouge, LA to meet up with a supply plane. Unfortunately, there was not enough room in the truck going to Baton Rouge to fit me, so I went back to sleep.

I woke up again at about 10:00am or so and we headed over to the Coliseum in Jackson, MS, which has been set-up as a mass shelter. The Coliseum is currently playing host to about 300 people, but at its max was sheltering over 1200 evacuees. Again, we were unable to bring cameras into the facility, due to the Red Cross privacy rules. We ended up volunteering at the shelter, doing various jobs. For the first number of hours I worked separating toys. As it can be imagined, people donate lots of toys, books, crayons and various other things for kids do, to the Red Cross. At some point those toys all need to be organized and put out, so the kids can find what they want. That was my job. As a side note, I think the whole South has enough crayons. Man, were there a lot of crayons.

But really there was a lot of everything. Walking around the building you saw semi, after semi of supplies being unloaded. Food, toys, clothing, medical supplies...everything. It is also amazing how much they have for the kids and parents to do. For example, tonight was movie night. Outside on a huge screen, they were showing children’s movie and passing out tons of free popcorn. All donated by a local movie rental chain. They also have a computer bank manned with people who are trained at helping evacuees to fill out the FEMA paperwork to apply for grants and low-interest loans. All of this was donated by AOL Broadband. Starting next Monday, they have a whole crew of people volunteering their time to tutor kids, to make sure they don't fall behind in their studies.

I think because of all this people seemed generally in a good mood. I mean don't get me wrong everyone wasn't walking around singing in sheer joy, but I really expected a lot more negativism, a lot more anger. The kids also amazed me. They all just seem amazingly happy. After we finished sorting the toys, we had a quick box lunch provided for us by the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church. While we were eating, we saw that there were people giving out stuff in the back parking lot of the Coliseum, so we walked back there to see what it was all about.

It was a group involving the supposedly famous Mississippi rapper David Banner and the magazine Juice. They had three truckloads of stuff that they were giving away. This ranged from nice new Nikes, donated by ludicrous, to baby food and medical supplies. We ended up interviewing the on-hand representative of David Banner and a woman who calls herself Juice who, you guessed it founded and runs Juice magazine. As much as I want to mock her name and all, I really must say they are doing some good stuff. Over the last week, they have raised over $261,000 and they are driving around to different shelters and hard hit neighborhoods and giving away supplies. It was two nice solid interviews.

After that we went back to work in the Coliseum. This time we were assigned to help and clean-up in the play area. It ended up just being playing with kids for hours. It was really fun and refreshing and interesting. It was interesting to hear what these kids were saying. If they really understood what was going? If they knew their family was hitting some if its hardest times? After we finished playing with kids, we saw a video crew talking to some people outside.

We talked to the videographer and finally found out who we needed to talk to and how we could go about getting some interviews. We talked to the man, Butch Harms, the shelter manager, and explained to him what we interested in doing and he set us up. So tomorrow it looks like we are going to head back to the Coliseum, were we will be getting to interview whoever is willing to be interviewed. I am really looking forward to this. All the conversation that I did have with people today, I had really wished I could have gotten them on film, so hopefully tomorrow I can.

Moving on, we then left the Coliseum and came back here to the AME Church shelter, where we had an impromptu kind of class with our professor talking about what we have done so far and what we are planning to do. I told her I plan on doing my story on faith in times of crisis. I think that is an interesting topic and can lead to many different things. We also hung out with the people here and picked up a crewmember.

Also we plan on heading somewhere down south again on Sunday. We are going to try to get together with a church that has lost their church and see if they are having any kind of non-traditional service. That is another reason I picked the above topic. I know I will have more than enough good video. Also we will tentatively be leaving here on Monday morning at 7:00am. Arriving back in Muncie at about 9:00 or 10:00pm. Give or take.