The next day the mission field arrived by bus from Fort Chaffee. This military encampment located in the Ozark mountains near Fort Smith, Arkansas, was the processing center chosen by Arkansas Governor, Mike Huckabee, for all Katrina evacuees seeking shelter in the state of Arkansas. (This was not the first time that Ft. Chaffee had been a place of shelter. In 1975, Ft. Chaffee was a refugee camp for South Vietnamese fleeing Sài Gòn at the close of the Vietnam War. In 1980, Cubans refugees seeking to live permanently in the U.S were housed there.) Since Ft. Chaffee is approximately 700 miles away from New Orleans, for many of the people, uprooted by Katrina, this was the farthest they had ever been from the place they called home.
They had endured a long bus trip to get there, but what tested the evacuees more, was the grueling wait for registration after they arrived at Ft. Chaffee. Almost a full week after Katrina struck, many had been without a hot meal for days, and could not remember the last time they had a bath. Most were looking for their loved ones, separated as they boarded buses in New Orleans.
To add to their trauma, they were told to get right back on those same buses, bound for an unknown destination described only as a camp, 200 miles back in the direction from which they had just come. The trip should have taken only 3 ½ or 4 hours, but because of communication problems, it took almost twelve.
The eleven buses arrived in the dead of night. When they pulled up at the camp, their passengers were like the living dead. Confusion reigned. Misunderstandings had caused some to think that they were being taken to a prison compound where they would be locked up. Fear and despair were gnawing away at wounded spirits, but total exhaustion dulled the bite.
Preconceived ideas of racial conflict plagued both the evacuees and the volunteers waiting at the camp. When the buses pulled up and the evacuees saw a crowd of white people staring at them, a man on one of the buses broke into sobs of fear, "I don’t want to be around so many white folks." he exclaimed. Whether they would admit it or not, there where those in the waiting crowd whose emotions mirrored his. Spring Lake Baptist Camp is located in the tiny community of Lonsdale, Arkansas. When those buses arrived, the population of the campground became three times the population of the surrounding town. The racial balance shifted accordingly.
Another long wait ensued while lists of names were checked and rechecked, but people finally began to step down off the buses where, much to their surprise, they were greeted with applause, cheers, and hugs from the crowd. Each group of four or five evacuees, or "guests" as they were called, was assigned a "host". The host promptly escorted his group of guests to the cafeteria where tables of steaming hot food were waiting. After a good hot supper, each group of guests was escorted by flashlight to a lodge where a bed with fresh linens was ready. On each bed was a small bundle of toiletries including a towel, wash cloth, soap, lotion, toothpaste and brush, deodorant, and other personal items. The host showed each of his guests around the lodge to which they were assigned, making sure that there were no other immediate needs that should be addressed - medical concerns or pets, for example - before bidding the new arrival farewell. Hosts then headed home in the wee hours of the morning with a promise of return the next day.
Several weeks later, as I sat eating breakfast with some of the ladies that came in on those buses, I asked them to tell me what that first night was like from their point of view. They talked about the fears that they experienced coming into a very dark, strange place in the middle of the night, completely and totally exhausted. Their fears sounded silly in the light of day, but we all know how night inflates little fears into terrors. One lady said that she was scared of the woods. In the urban environment of her New Orleans neighborhood, trees were for the park. And parks were dangerous places after dark. Another woman shivered and explained that she hated the sight of the dark mountain across from the lake. "I was afraid it would fall on me!" she said. Her mountain was actually little more than a small rolling hill, but her fear of an avalanche was very real. Some confided in me privately that they were mostly afraid of the volunteers. They wondered what kind of people we were.
But everyone to whom I talked agreed on one thing. Within a few minutes of getting off of those buses, they felt …well … safe! Hot food, showers, clean beds and plenty of hugs had brought about a feeling of security for the first time in a week.
For the first few days after their arrival, the evacuees spent most of their time just trying to get their fundamental needs met. Some stood in lines, hoping to see a doctor and arrange for medications and eyeglasses lost in floodwaters. Others waited for their chance to go through piles of donated shoes and clothing, searching for something close to the right size. The handful of donated washers and dryers, hastily hooked up behind the cafeteria, ran non-stop as almost four hundred people tried to wash the few clothes they owned. Waiting for an opportunity to use a telephone was maddening. Almost everyone was trying to contact someone else just to let him or her know that they were alive. Volunteers brought computers to the camp and searched for hours through long lists of names on the Red Cross and other rescue organization web sites. Other volunteers wrote down names and hurried home to search on their own home computers for vital information lost in the flood, things like the addresses and phone numbers of banks, employers, and insurance companies. The trauma of the last week had even caused long-memorized necessities like social security numbers and family names to be wiped from the memory.
When I think back to that early time at Spring Lake, during the first few days, there was one object that, for me, came to symbolize the general feeling of the entire camp. Somewhere along the way, during the journey between New Orleans and Spring Lake, each person had been given a single white plastic bag to carry his or her possessions in. These bags were clutched. They were clung to. They were guarded and treasured. No one would have thought of leaving his bag unguarded on his bed. That attitude of clutching and clinging was tangible all over the camp. Mothers grasped their children. Husbands and wives entwined. Some, especially the elderly, clung to their beds, hardly leaving them, even for meals. Others grabbed every physical possession that they could get their hands on, stuffing their bags to the bursting point with tracts, newspapers, and magazines, free toiletry samples, snacks and bottled drinks. Hands squeezed phones so tightly that they seemed to have adhered to the plastic. It was as if every person was hanging on to something for dear life.
And then there were those who clung to their little green books. One afternoon during that busy first week, I leaned against the balcony railing on the upper floor of Faith Lodge for just a moment to catch my breath. While there, I counted at least a couple dozen people in the courtyard below holding fast to their Bibles. Whether they clutched them for the right reason or not, I didn’t know; but I was encouraged by the fact that at least some folks had chosen to hold on to the one thing that could show the way to Dear Life. With that thought, I was gently reminded that the Almighty had taken my dare and was waiting for me to keep my promise.