What do you get when you combine Prep students, humid weather, multiple bug bites, house building, and colossal sized parade floats? NOLA.
Every Spring Break, students volunteer to go on a service trip to New Orleans to help those affected by Hurricane Katrina. The group has the opportunity to help rebuild houses, learn the history of the city, and witness the effects of the hurricane that endure to this day.
Coach Scott has been going on this trip for seven years and says that the work is worthwhile: “When the first homeowner that I met broke down and cried because at one point she thought she would never get back into her home, I knew I had to do more because there were so many homeowners in the same situation.”
Claire Alderman ‘20 agreed, saying, “the experience made me so much more thankful for my own home, and more importantly that my family is all safe and together.”
This trip also exposes the volunteers to the rich culture of New Orleans including the annual Mardi Gras Parade. “Mardi Gras fully embodies the spirit and culture of New Orleans,” said Cameron Stockwell ‘18. “The music and parades bring the community together, which is something that amazes me.”
Students had the opportunity to sort beads at Arc Mardi Gras Recycling, a group that organizes and repackages old beads to resell. Beads are normally thrown away in the trash, but the organization helps the environment by reusing the plastic beads. Clearly, beads are very important to the event: “They represent the history and the festivity of Mardi Gras,” explained Alyssa Sutanto ‘19. “It also incorporates the people on the streets too. So, the parades aren’t solely the people on the floats, but everyone else as well.”
Students also visited Mardi Gras World. On the tour, they walked through different work stations and saw how the floats came from pieces of styrofoam to painted masterpieces that pass through the streets. This event showed how important Mardi Gras is to the people. Kenji Kurose ‘17 said, “The community in New Orleans is so strong, and they have become so much stronger because of the disaster and the hardships they have gone through. Mardi Gras is one of those things that can bring them together and it’s a time where have fun they can find themselves on Mardi Gras and try to make the best out of it.”
With humongous floats, an entanglement of beads, and so much more, New Orleans’ annual celebration is a tradition that expresses the lively culture of New Orleans and brings the community together. This year’s NOLA service trip participants got to be a part of it.