Walking to New Orleans: Day 5

[noamnety]

What a difference a day makes. The group of walkers is getting larger and larger as we go - where I used to see the back of the caravan in my rearview mirror, now the tail end of it is beyond what we can see or count. And that's in addition to the people loaded on the buses. Today when we left camp and arrived at our start point, Cindy was standing there waving at us. Her sister had been with us all along in a chase vehicle, but still it was nice to see Cindy.

We ran off schedule this morning because some local folks asked us to come take a look at their section of town. They wanted someone to see what had happened to them. So instead of sticking to the planned route, we walked a loop around their area. People came out of their businesses to watch us go by, and were incredibly supportive. I dropped out of formation to talk to a few women from a dental clinic who came out in their scrubs and business suits. They didn’t know we were coming, but felt they had to come out and support us. I introduced myself and explained who we were, and our purpose. They said they came out to watch because they felt they had to show their support. I asked if they’d been affected by the hurricane, and one woman looked away, another nodded in her direction and said she had been. She said she lost everything, and then choked up. She was having a bad day, she said – it was the third time today she had broken down. We ended up just standing in the center of the parking lot, hugging each other.

Changing up our schedule meant we had to load the buses and caravan out to Slidell rather than walk there, because we’d paid for the police escorts starting at 1:00, and a local jazz band from a high school was waiting to escort us through town. Police once again were great. They shut down the westbound side of the road for us, and we just danced our way through the city, with the tuba, sax, and great drum players, Louisiana style. Car after car was honking in support; people were peeking out from their curtains waving to us, people were standing out in the streets to watch us go by. I spoke with a couple standing in their doorway. They said they’d heard we were coming – they were both National Guard veterans themselves.

With the morning being off schedule, we ended up skipping lunch, just running on the awesome breakfast our even more awesome chef Grumbles cooked up for us. The grumble sandwiches were waiting for us when we arrived at camp at about 5:30 in the evening. The support system set up here is amazing – we’ve got medics traveling with us, Jose at every stop is running around hawking his moleskin and sunblock, like he’s selling peanuts at a stadium. Without lunch being served, I guess we didn’t have enough stops to keep him busy, so he appeared at the side of the road as we walked by, holding out a bottle of sunblock squirting it into our hands in the way that folks at a marathon would hold out glasses of water for the runners. A nurse from Florida who joined the protest today was able to have her clinic back home call in a prescription to a local drugstore for my daughter, whose eye has almost swelled shut for no apparent reason.

We are being hosted at a relief camp tonight, and they are giving us the warmest welcome ever. I’ve got a belly full of the best gator gumbo in the world, we’ve got live music, and folks are dancing the night away, with one of the filmmakers juggling in the background.

Nothing but love in Slidell.

day 4
day 3 (the day my thread sank like a stone)
arrival, day 1