Dead City

SEB left today and I’m feeling quite sad. Having had her here for 3.5 weeks I’d grown used to and even reliant on having someone to meet me off the trolley of an evening, and accompany me on the walk home. She cooked for me, cleaned for me, even did my laundry! I had my very own housewife and now I’m like a newly divorced husband without a clue as to how many quarters I need for the Laundromat. She did however leave my freezer well stocked with enough leftovers to last me until Kiffie gets here. Thank you SEB!

It made life a lot easier having someone to explore this new and exciting city with – let me tell you Bourbon is not a street you want to walk down alone, particularly on a Friday or Saturday night. It is, as I mentioned before, the tourist trap – it is closed off to cars each evening and at the weekend its basically one massive street party heaving with people skipping from one bar to the next slurping an alcoholic slushy along the way. What you have to watch out for though is the people who have positioned themselves on balconies along the road so they can shower people with mardi-gras beads. Its as though they are trying to play that fairground game of throwing the hoop over the bottle, or maybe lassoing a cow would be more a more appropriate simile – they sling out a strand (or not infrequently multiple strands) of beads at the people below – I’d like to say trying to get the beads over their target’s head, but it is probably more likely they are aiming for a cleavage.

Alpha took SEB and I for an explorative afternoon one day. First stop was a cemetery. This may seem like an odd tourist attraction but they are something quite incredible here. There are a number of cemeteries around the town, and there is usually an organized tour going to any one of them as they have a reputation of being quite a dangerous place to visit – known for muggings and attacks. I had heard from a number of people that one should not go to a New Orleans cemetery alone – Alpha herself was one of these people, so when she offered to take us I jumped at the chance to be safely escorted through the corpses lair. The sad thing about the organized tours is that none of the money they earn goes into the cemeteries.

We went to the Lafayette Cemetery No. 1 in the Garden District, established in 1833, and incidentally where Interview with a Vampire was filmed. We were lucky enough to happen upon one of the cemetery workers (he had a very official sounding title which I neglected to note down) who offered to guide us around. The problem was we had arrived at about 2.30 when the cemetery was being cleared for closing at 3pm, consequently our guide was in less than top form and somewhat inebriated or intoxicated by drugs or alcohol. The Southern-drawl is still rather hard for me to understand, adding too it the drunken-slur, and we were lucky if we caught every tenth word – thankfully we had Alpha to whisper a translation. I will upload some photos of the cemetery so you can see what I mean when I tell you they are quite spectacular. They are not home to fields of headstones, it is more like row upon row of tombs. The bodies are buried above ground – and there is plenty of controversy as to why – the most reasonable explanation is that there is a “high water table” in New Orleans which means a, that its hard to dig graves deep enough without them filling up with water before anyone is buried in them and b, that when there is a storm or heavy rainfall anything in the ground gets picked up by the water and washed away causing quite a site with corpses floating all over town. Each tomb can house 10 or 20 or even more people depending on how long it is between burials in the tomb – basically the body is put in the tomb, sealed up and left to rot, after enough time the tomb is reopened, the remains pushed to the back or side and another body is ‘laid to rest’. Sometimes a tomb is emptied out and the remains sent elsewhere to make more room, but the names of the people laid to rest in the tomb remain carved into the stone. We were shown an open tomb which had recently been emptied, I will load that photo too – the strange man crouching inside the tomb was our guide.

Alpha also took SEB and I to the Ninth Ward which was the area worst affected by Katrina. On the drive there we saw many abandoned homes with numbers and crosses spray-painted on them – this is what the emergency services did to indicate when the house was checked for bodies, by whom and how many were found. As we approached the ninth ward there were fewer and fewer houses until eventually there were none but the odd couple of new houses recently erected. When Katrina hit the river swelled and the banks (or Levy) on the side of the Ninth Ward broke. The water rushed through with such force that it literally picked the houses up off the ground and swept them away. In some spots you can tell where a house used to stand as only the steps which once lead up to the front door remain. The Ninth Ward is now being rebuilt, with help from Brad Pitt who has commissioned architects to design eco-friendly housing which will stand up to the force of nature. However, hurricane Katrina hit in 2005 and it is only this year that people have started moving into the newly built houses, and many of the houses are still in the process of being built. The problem with this is: the people who had nowhere to live after their houses were swept away have by now made a new life somewhere else, and its hard to give everything up again to return. The population of New Orleans has almost halved since Katrina hit, and many of the numbers who live here now are made up of immigrants who came to help rebuild after the hurricane.



We did get to meet one man who has pretty much made rebuilding the ninth ward his life now. He lost his mother and granddaughter in Katrina, and watched his home being swept away. He now lives in a beautiful house, but only just moved in, in July. From 2005 to this year he lived in a little caravan next to the site of his house with a memorial to his mother and granddaughter. You can imagine the toll such devastation and loss could take on a man, but when we met him he had a massive smile plastered over his face. He showed us a picture of his children and remaining grandchildren. “I lost a lot, but look what I’ve still got – plenty to be thankful for!” He says. I am hoping that when Alpha’s volunteer team return to New Orleans next year I will be able to help out in the rebuilding of Ninth Ward Homes.

Okay work – well I have my own office! Quite exciting! But not a whole lot to do in it yet. So far I have just been reading up on our cases and familiarizing myself with the procedures. Boss Man did buy me a whole puncher and ring binder the other day and let me loose on one particular case which was basically just piles of papers in boxes – sadly enough I get such a thrill out of organizing things. It definitely helped me get to know the facts of the case and the evidence we have which meant that when I was invited to sit in on a meeting with one of the experts I was actually able to contribute to the discussions.

And now I find I’ve just been babbling/rambling away again… and not really told you much about the people or work, but alas it is time for me to sign off once more. Perhaps if you tell me what you want me to write about I could attempt to steer myself in a defined direction.

Welcome to Nawlins

So I have been here just over a month and I am finally sitting down write the first installment of my latest adventure. I promise I’ll be better at this now that I have established a semi-routine.

I arrived in New Orleans on 31 October 2009 – my favorite day of the year! And New Orleans being the home of Anne Rice's vampires, what better day to arrive than Halloween? As the plane touched down on the runway the Captain said "Goodmorning Y'all and welcome to Nawlins!" And as a surge of adrenaline and excitement flooded through me, i thought "Absafuckinglutely". I took a cab from the airport and arrived at a house which I had agreed to rent having only seen photos on line. Waiting for me outside the house was my land lady – the cutest little Honduran woman you ever did see. I could not be more lucky – the house is huge by my standards (my Sydney apartment can fit in the kitchen of my new house!) though rather oddly laid out. It is a “shotgun house” – which means one room follows on from the other (so you could fire a shot from the front door and it would go all the way through the house) – as you enter the house you come into the living room, then you walk through the bedroom to reach the kitchen, then the bathroom to reach the courtyard. Yes that’s right, I have a courtyard! Not quite the same as my Sydney rooftop, but I’m sure it will lend itself well to similar festivities.

The area I live in, The Marigny, was recently voted one of the top 10 areas to live in the States. It is a very cute neighborhood, full of bars and coffee shops – so I suppose New Orleans’ answer to Potts Point. I actually live a stone’s throw away from the “coolest bar in town” – Mimi in the Marigny, which I’m sure will become a regular haunt for me. I have made an appearance a few times so far, but its usually the last stop of the night (nothing like Empire, I swear) which means I remember very little of it. New Orleans is a major party town – no matter what day of the week it is, everyone is out drinking in the evening, and being the socialite that I am () I can’t turn down an invite for a drink! Just to give you a vague idea of the extent of it all – there are some bars in the Quarter that don’t have a lock on the door, because they never close! And ordering an alcoholic beverage at a bar is like ordering a coffee – you can have it to stay or to go – yes drinking in the streets is not only permissible here but very common!

The Marigny is next to the famous French Quarter, and I walk along Royal Street (or sometimes Bourbon St) through the Quarter on my way to work every day. It is such a beautiful walk - contrary to what you may have heard the Quarter was largely untouched by Katrina and remains fabulously intact. The architecture here is quite unique and it feels as though I’m living in Disneyland! It’s a half and hour walk through the Quarter to Canal Street where I then catch the “Street Car” or “Trolly” (i.e. Tram) down St Charles Avenue to my office. So I live entirely the opposite end of town from work, but in the perfect location for crashing in the wee hours… Americans are astonished when I tell them I walk for the Marigny to Canal – despite the convenience of everything, everyone here drives which means they never need to walk further than the house next door. Having said that I pass a number of friendly faces every day – and it never ceases to amaze me that everyone looks to make eye contact and say “G’mawnin’” – in London you’d be suspected of being a serial killer for making eye contact on the morning commute!

So- transport – there are buses, or so I have heard though I’m not entirely convinced its just some form of urban myth. The trolley however is awesome – there are a few different lines, but so far I have only used the St Charles line – which literally just runs up and down St Charles (it’s a very long road!) There is no schedule for the trolleys, you could wait 5 minutes for one or 45 (no jokes – I really did!) And more often than not when one comes along there’s another one following close behind.

So one evening I met up with a fellow intern, we’ll call her Miss F, for coffee after work along Magazine St (New Orleans’ Kings Road London or Oxford Street Sydney). She told me a few things about what made her laugh and what annoyed her about the States, particularly the South – these included:
1. When someone hears even a word come out of your mouth the react instantly with “you’re not from around here are ya?”
2. When emphasizing a point they will say “You hear me?” Or when agreeing with a point being made they will say “I hear you!”
The list went on but I’ll create my own another day. After coffee I walked back up to St Charles to catch the trolley back into town. As I approached the stop, a trolley was just pulling away. From the opposite side of the road a woman ran to the stop. “Damn, we missed it.” She said when she reached me . “I know” I agreed rather glumly. She perked up instantly, almost jumping with excitement as she exclaimed “Your not from round here are ya!” I had to bite my lip – could this seriously be happening to me right after Miss F and I had been talking about it? “No I’m not” I confirmed when I finally trusted myself to speak without bursting out laughing. We then went on to discuss where I’m from (I kept it as simple as possible), why I’m here etc… and then she decided to take me under her wing, telling me all about how to be careful here, who to be wary of. The she pulled out a pen and paper, “You tell me your number cos I’m gonna check up on you!” She told me, I was too bewildered by the whole experience to disobey her command and promptly read out my number from my phone. She then gave me her number, and said “If you need anything, a hot meal, a hand around the house or just someone to talk to you call me! Ya hear me?” She looked at me so firmly, I was crossing my legs and holding onto my waist praying I wouldn’t break down there and then on the trolley tracks in front of her. I sucked in a deep breath, smiled and said “I hear ya!” Just then the trolley approached and I was unbelievably relieved to sit down after 45 minutes standing and waiting while trying not to let my body convulse with laughter. We continued to chat on the journey to Canal, and (we’ll call her V) is really very sweet, so we have (she called me to check up on me as she said she would!) and will stay in touch.

Now most of you may (or should at least) know that New Orleans is the birth place and home of jazz. On every street corner on my walk home there is someone playing the trumpet or guitar or singing something – in fact there’s even a little crevice along Royal where a woman stashes her piano to play of an evening for shrapnel from passers-by. Frenchman Street (a mere five blocks from my house) is the place to go to hear some good jazz, there are a number of bars and clubs along the street offering liver performances every night. While most tourists look no further than Bourbon Street for a good night out, now that I am a local I head straight for Frenchman! Among my new friends is a saxophone player (lets call him Sax) who plays at La Maison De Musique on Frenchman, with a fabulous band which includes a trumpet, drums, guitar and keyboard to name but a few.

Well its 4.30pm on a Friday night so I must be getting on – I have an hours journey home before I get ready to hit the bars for a night out in party-town! I’m sorry this first installment isn’t complete – next week I’ll tell you more about the people I have met and the work I’m doing.