WAVELAND, Miss. - Sitting alone at a table in the New Waveland Cafe, a church-sponsored makeshift cafeteria in a decimated parking lot in Waveland, Miss., Louis Kieff stared blankly ahead, oblivious to the bustle of the crowd around him.
He stayed home in nearby Bay St. Louis when Hurricane Katrina slammed the Gulf Coast, Aug. 29.
"The storm hit at about 11:30 Sunday night. I didn't get picked up until four the next day," he said.
After being swept from his home by a wave, Kieff clung to a second-floor porch for nearly 17 hours, fighting against the swirling seawater.
Now he is lost in a whirlwind of paperwork he cannot decipher.
Rescued with almost nothing except his life, Kieff came to the relief site set up in a local Kmart parking lot seeking aid from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
But he lives in the state with the lowest literacy rate in the country and is one of the many people in Mississippi who cannot read.
"[I'm] just trying to survive. I lost everything, and FEMA can't help me because I have mental problems," he said. "I can't concentrate... and I don't know how to read and write. They ask me for information that I don't know how to do. And because of that, I can't get no help."
In Waveland several hundred people wait in line for hours each day to file claims with FEMA, which set up a disaster recovery center at the hurricane relief compound a few days after Katrina hit.
"Things were so backed up yesterday that people made appointments to come back today," said Jesse Seigal, a FEMA public information officer.
Frustrated by the long and slow-moving lines, Bianca Guice contrasted her impression of the government's action with those of the local Wal-Mart, which opened its doors to victims just days after the storm.
"Maybe the people that own Wal-Mart should be the president," she said half-jokingly.
Hurricane victim Lynne Farve waited in the sparse shade with her grandson and daughter-in-law, while her husband and son stood in the FEMA line for nearly four hours.
"I would've expected our government to have been better prepared so that they would've been able to do something for us before this," she said.
Hundreds of people who evacuated the Waveland area returned to their homes to find only rubble. To make matters worse, many said, the arduous process of getting through to FEMA has been frustrating.
"We are on day 10 since the storm, and we're just getting to talk to FEMA," she said. "We have no services. We have no phones. Our cell phones just started working, and they have it set up here so that we can use a phone bank, but even that is frustrating because your calls are dropped."
Temporarily living in a shelter about two and a half miles away from the compound, the Farves have taken advantage of the services offered at the compound, dubbed "Camp Katrina." Lynne's son and daughter-in-law visited the North Carolina State Medical Assistance Team field hospital, and the family has enjoyed hot meals and free supplies from a church-sponsored marketplace.
Guice has also been taking advantage of the services offered at the relief compound.
Upon seeing the devastation, the life-long Mississippi native said she didn't recognize anything underneath the ruins. But more troubling for her was seeing the affect the hurricane had on her 11-year-old daughter.
"My daughter, when she seen it, it was harder on her. I guess the only way for her to be able to go through it is to be able to write and draw, which she does a lot of," Guice said. "In a way, she wants to go back [to school] because she wants to see who's still around. But then she doesn't want to because she's afraid of what she'll see. So, it's hard. It's very hard."
Though the floodwaters have receded off the coast of Mississippi, the victims are still a long way from knowing how exactly to react to what they have gone through.
"It went from really frightening to really frustrating," Farve said. "I don't feel desperate, but I know a lot of people are desperate-I guess because I have all my family-but it has been really life-changing for all of us. And beyond that I don't know what to say. We're still... in limbo."
Get The Chronicle straight to your inbox
Signup for our weekly newsletter. Cancel at any time.