An Introduction to Cedar 4

Picking up where our friends Oak 5 left off is Cedar 4, another team from the Vinton, Iowa NCCC campus. Block by Block is our third round and the second disaster-relief project we've done. For our first project we were lucky enough to go down to New Orleans and work with lowernine.org, rebuilding houses in the lower ninth ward. Our second project was in Akron, Ohio where we did taxes for low-income families and individuals. Although the job was rewarding, sitting at a desk for so many hours a day got us missing the time spent painting, breaking walls, clearing yards and generally moving our bodies. We're looking forward to getting our hands dirty again.

Cedar 4 is a team of nine members, and the states we call home span from Washington to Florida. The Team Leader is Niko Valaris, who was a corps member at the Iowa campus last year. The rest of us - in alphabetical order by first name because it's just easy that way - are Alyssa D'amico, Amber (Amb) St. Vincent, Amber (Ber) Kuth, Charles Jack, David (Davey) Parziale, Jasmine Hickey, Lindsay Shamrock and myself: Sarah Debrick.

It hasn't yet been a week since we started working with Block by Block; our first day of orientation/work was Wednesday the 3rd, while other teams were travelling to their "spikes" (projects) scattered across the 12 states our campus serves. We were given a tour of Cedar Rapids, complete with history and notable trivia, from a man who called himself Sam and wore a nametag that said Jim. We met our new sponsors and they worked on sorting out what they wanted us to start with. After visiting some of the worksites, we were thrown headlong into exactly what I know my team members were most eager to do: some board-breaking, crowbar-swinging, drywall-shattering gutting. Protected from head to toe in hard-hats, goggles, masks, coveralls, gloves and steel-toe boots, we were prepared to take on whatever hazards that (literally) came our way. I must say that the source of our greatest trouble was the fluffy, innocuous-looking insulation stuffed into the walls. The fiberglass found its way through folds of fabric, between the gaps of our gloves and sleeves - and if you're not careful it gets on your clothes or blankets back home.

On Friday, we were given the chance to watch a house being torn down. We were intially excited to have the chance to witness, from start to finish, a process you don't see every day - one of force and destruction - but I started to think while it occured about how truly intimate an event it was. From the outside it was a cute, two-story house matching with its neighbors, but as walls came down we had glimpses of the belongings inside. Among the wood, metal and glass we saw: a bookshelf, a suitcase, a blanket and a tiny, red, plastic chair. Had those books been read? Had the suitcase traveled? How old is the child that used to sit in that chair? There were others with us, some from Block by Block and some who had probably wandered out of their houses in curiosity. I wondered if the homeowner was among us, watching as everyone else did but with more of a connection than I could have gathered by looking at them.

Jobs like this are very curious things, because by nature their goal is to no longer have a purpose. There are different stages in the effort put in to assist people after a disaster, from the immediate relief (such as supplying food and water) to recovery (which means more than putting a house back together, it means getting a family, business or community back to where they once were). Every home finished is a step closer to a Cedar Rapids where the flood is a thing of the past. When a recovery is successful - and this takes years as evidenced both in New Orleans and here in Cedar Rapids - you're no longer needed. It's unlike almost anything else you can do. Teachers never finish teaching, and retailers never finish selling, but a recovery eventually draws to a close. The impact of the flood is deep, and citizens will remember it every time they think of an object they once owned or pass a lot where a house used to be, but in time Cedar Rapids won't be a city in recovery. It'll be a city that has closed a trying chapter in its history.

Newly yours,
Sarah Debrick, Cedar 4