I lied to my mom last week. When two other Chronicle editors and I decided to get in a car and drive 16 hours to southern Mississippi, I called my mom to ask if she knew anyone in Biloxi-but I didn't tell her it was because I needed a place to stay.
I didn't tell her I'd probably end up spending the night in a car on the side of the road (which I did). All I did was promise her-like I always do-that I would try to get some sleep over the weekend.
I never did get much sleep.
In the nearly three days I spent traveling to and from the hurricane-ravaged Gulf Coast, I ran on adrenaline and kept my eyes open. In the small town of Waveland, Miss., there was too much to see-too much heartbreak, devastation and charity-to let my eyes close.
There were homes reduced to piles of wood, mud and scattered furniture. Tattered American flags wrapped around broken trees. Collapsed bridges submerged in the ocean. National Guard trucks parked in an abandoned playground. Power lines twisted around mounds of debris.
There were exhausted pregnant women waiting to talk to FEMA representatives. Small, sunburned children digging through boxes of donated food. Soldiers with AK-47s patrolling the desolate area. Church volunteers doling out home-cooked meals by the thousands. Doctors rubbing the backs of sobbing storm victims.
As I wandered around, recorder in hand, playing the role of dutiful reporter, I felt thrown into another world-a surreal world no CNN footage can accurately portray.
My hometown of Greenville, N.C., flooded after Hurricane Floyd in 1999, and I knew many people who lost their homes. A friend of mine had to canoe back to her apartment, hoping to recover the few belongings the floodwaters had not claimed.
But the destruction in Mississippi dwarfed the damages my town sustained. Katrina cruelly ripped through the coast, massacring mile after mile of land and leaving thousands of people homeless.
In Waveland I was too shocked to be tired or to care that I hadn't showered or brushed my teeth since leaving Durham. I was too shocked to cry-even when a local woman, hands on hips and bag of canned goods at her feet, told me her daughter refused to talk about the day "hell blew through." Or when a medical helicopter crew picked up a five-month old baby that had been left exposed to the sun in a car for two days.
All I could do was step behind my co-editor and rest my head on his back, realizing the images around me were burning indelibly into my brain.
I didn't sleep until we passed through Atlanta, Ga. on the long trip home. I didn't cry until I reached my Chronicle office. And I didn't call my mom until I was ready to tell the truth-to express in words all that I had witnessed and felt.
Now as I walk around campus, every Katrina relief flyer or money collection jar I see brings back a snapshot, a moment in time from the weekend in Waveland. I am proud to see Duke reaching out-but I know that no amount of donated cash, boxes of old clothing stacked on the quad or "I know, isn't it terrible?"s uttered over coffee can convey or remedy the destruction Katrina inflicted, the misery she left behind or the selflessness of the volunteers who are laboring to help her victims.
Though our reports on the aftermath of the storm will of course continue, today's issue of The Chronicle offers the final installment of our Waveland coverage. I hope this series has provided at least a glimpse of the horror and compassion converging on the Gulf Coast.
And I hope that one day soon, those who were hit hardest by Katrina will be able to enjoy a good night's sleep.
Seyward Darby is a Trinity junior and editor of the The Chronicle.
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