Thoughts from Boston Cares Project Leader Tim Lundergan, on his Third Service Trip to New Orleans

As I swelter in the warm afternoon sun, sweat-drenched inside my Tyvek suit, I remove my respirator so I can wipe my

foggy face shield, and I ask myself, "Am I an idiot to be here?"

Since 8 a.m. I've been standing on a ladder, pulling down drywall and dodging ceiling tiles, moldy insulation and the occasional mouse-sized cockroach when a section of the ceiling finally succumbs to my crowbar. 

Now it's almost 3 p.m. After hauling countless wheelbarrows full of dirt at a park-creation project yesterday, and hoisting my umpteenth barrel of debris to the dumpster today, my back muscles are threatening to go on strike and my arms may just walk out in sympathy. But I'm focused on how hot I am inside this suit. I unzip it, sit down outside the veterinary clinic we're gutting, and think about my experience in New Orleans.

I think about the front-page articles in this morning's paper: A quarter of those New Orleans residents who have stuck it out this long say they are thinking of leaving because the pace of recovery is so slow.  The water board of this poor city lacks the money to rebuild its system. A plan to restore the wetlands that could protect the city from future storms will take years to navigate the approval process, by which time hundreds more square miles of wetlands could disappear into the Gulf.

Yesterday's headlines were no more cheerful.

I think about how little change I've seen since my last trip down five months ago, about the neighborhoods where only a handful of people have returned, the thousands who still live in tiny FEMA trailers two years after Katrina.

 I reflect on the "Thou shalt not kill signs" posted throughout Central City in response to a wave of violence, including some shootings just two blocks from where we've been staying.

I remember the security guard who said he appreciated us coming down, but who predicted that "those people" would vandalize the playground some of our Boston Cares volunteers had just built.

I recall the group of men sitting and drinking across the street from where we were converting a vacant lot into a park, watching but not offering to help improve their neighborhood. Perhaps poverty, prejudice, poor schools and too many other factors to name had conspired to keep hope a lie for them. This is not a town where hope is easy to come by.

In my head I run through the long list of complaints I've heard about the slow pace of recovery. I still hear the elderly Central City woman telling me she hadn't received a dime from the government or insurance companies, so she had to spend her 401(k) retirement savings to fix her house. 

Is there even a recovery plan, or are we just practicing random acts of debris removal? There are thousands of inner city kids without good jobs and years of work for thousands of apprentice carpenters, plumbers and electricians, but no program to take care of both needs at once.

Where to start in the face of all this? Why continue? And why am I rebuilding a shelter for animals today when so many people still lack homes?

Then a woman walking her dog says hello to the vet, who has been working alongside us.  She asks when he's reopening the clinic. I realize that in a city where so many services we take for granted are still lacking, she must view the clinic's reopening as a hopeful sign that her neighborhood is coming back.

I think about all the residents I've met who are determined to stick it out, and of the generosity displayed by those with the least to share. Everywhere we go, New Orleanians who suspect the rest of the country has forgotten them are quick to thank volunteers for coming. Yesterday a church group from one of the city's poorest neighborhoods treated about 50 volunteers to lunch. Two women from the neighborhood cooked dinner for 100 volunteers at Hands On New Orleans. A man living in a FEMA trailer bought lunch for a volunteer crew, even though we were working on a neighbor's house, not his.

There was the woman who had lost her home and her business because of the flood, but who was helping to organize a benefit for musicians who had lost their homes. 

Then there are the volunteers. The Boston Cares group I'm with displays the same enthusiasm for these tough, dirty jobs as it does for exploring the French Quarter at night. In less than a week, 30 strangers and distant acquaintances have become good friends.

We're led by Americorps volunteers in their teens and early 20s, who call a six by two bunk among 100 roommates home for two to three months as they perform this hard work every day for something like $13 a day. Many of the Hands On staff who unflappably organize everything in the midst of chaos have been here a year or more.

Some of my new, Tyvek-clad friends walk past me, dragging another heavy barrel of debris. I'm not helping them by sitting here.

No, in my week down here, I am not going to see every abandoned neighborhood spring back to life. I won't cut the red tape impeding the recovery. I won't make a dent in solving the problems of poverty and economics, race and class, education and inequality that afflicted this city even before the storm.

But that corner of the ceiling near the clinic's entrance, where there's still tile holding up some moldy insulation? I put my respirator back on, grab my crowbar, and head back inside to do something about that.