Thursday, 6/14 – Maggie Silton

The day officially begins at Camp Victor at 6 am when the lights are switched on in the dormitories, but for some the day is in full swing. Jackie and Virginia and their fellow kitchen crewmates have been working for an hour already cooking breakfast for the (mostly) sleeping camp. Andy, and no doubt several others, have been answering email related to their real life jobs back home. The first greeting of the morning for me comes in the form of a “meow” from Fema, one of two resident felines. Fema is taking a break from nursing her five newborn kittens and relishes a scratch behind the ears. I’m not sure if Fema is old enough to have lived through Katrina, but she bears scars that witness to a hard life; she’s missing an eye and even when she was about to give birth gave the impression of scrawniness save for her swollen belly.

For Andy and me, the day doesn’t really begin until we’ve taken a walk down the street to the Tatonut Shop for their heavenly doughnuts and some caffeine. No offense to Jackie, Virginia, and rest of the very hardworking kitchen crew, but the camp breakfast just can’t compete. We savor our doughnuts and then stroll back to the camp to confer with the rest of our construction crew and wait for our floor experts to show up.

The contrast between the house we’re working on and the house the Moravian team has been gutting illustrates the scope of the work in the area. Kenyatta’s house is a thirty-five minute drive from Camp Victor and is in relatively good condition even before we started work; it sustained relatively minor storm damage. In contrast, Brooks’s and Brian’s team is working on a house around the corner from Camp Victor; their house is so badly damaged it needs to be taken all the way down to the studs. I think we were all surprised that almost two years after the hurricane there are still houses that need to be mucked out.

When we’re not busy working or hydrating ourselves—critical in this heat and humidity—we chat with homeowner Kenyatta’s sister Ernestine and the five children with her, a blend of grandchildren and foster children. In between shooting nails into the living room baseboards, I learn that Ernestine has for the past twenty years taken in a series of foster children with special needs. She has loved and cared for them, adopting two and losing one, an infant, last year to liver failure. Another child, a twenty-month old girl, is so disabled that both her motor and social skills seem far behind those of most children her age. I get a distinct feeling of an encounter with the holy when I watch the adults and children of the family gently and patiently tend to this little girl’s comfort and happiness.

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