things in the south...

its been three weeks.

three weeks split between Birmingham Alabama, Hoama Louisiana, and Bayou La Batre Alabama. my time in bermingham was pretty much filled with training sessions and team building so I really dident get to experience the culture much until arriving in hoama.

Upon arriving in however, the culture hit me like a brick wall. my staff and I stayed with a lovely family from the church that is hosting our programing during the week. They were happy to put Scott (my work projects staff) and I up in their friends trailer that was in their neighbors frount yard which was actually for sale. good times.

I spent most of the week in Hoama trying to get a feel for the area. After making about a hundred phone calls, meeting with about 9 pastors several government officials, and getting lost every other hour, I felt like I finally had an idea of what I was dealing with.

Hoama is one of the most diverse areas of the south, after Katrina the population went from around 20,000 to about 110,000, the area wasent hit as bad as others and many people moved this way because of that. This obviously created an issue.

The bayous are still filled with crabbers, shrimpers, fishers and their beat up boats. However, most of them have not been able to really do much in that area since katrina, they are also having to compete with foreign competition. Needless to say, the bayou area is incredibly impovrished as most of population is trying to count their losses in the industry and find a new way of life. Most of these people have been doing this since they dropped out of school at 12ish, as did their fathers and their grandfathers ect. This group of people is mostly Caucasian although one corner of shrimpers row (a stretch along th bayou) is African American, they keep to themselves, segregation is not only accepted in Hoama, it is expected.

About five miles down the highway from this shrimping community there is a native Americans population. Although they comprise about 10 percent of the population of Hoama, they are completely ignored by most. I spent a few hours talking to the native American representatives on the city council, whose presence on the coucel at all shows that forward progress is being made and he shed a lot of light on the Native American situation. They have actually made a lot of progress they were not allowed in schools until the 1970s. However, although progress is being made and the native Americans are beginning to be recognized by the government as a sizeable portion of the population of Hoama, there is a spirit of resentment that propogates among the people, they are bitter over previous generations and dont want to intermingle with the rest of Hoama, they want to stay in their corner, persecuted or not. The general attitude is that people are ok with that. 90 percent of Hoama would just as well pretend that the native Americans were not there at all.

Mean while on the other side of town... the influx of people coming into Hoama created projects. There is an area called senators circle whare housing projects have created an urban setting whare there is a lot of gang violence, drugs and abuse. After talking to a pastor in the area who is very involved I found out that nearly every house has a mother whose husband is in jail or on their way to jail. its really rough. the neighborhood has kids everywhare, the majority of these kids have awful family lives and like I said one of their parents is most likely missing or in prison. This area is pretty much totally African American.

As you can see Hoama is incredibly diverse. However, the diversity is entirely segregated. African Americans seem to have accepted a lower positions, in both a socio economical sense and a demographical sense, there is no fight between social classes because of this, but there is deffinient segregation. The three areas I talked about dont talk to each other at all.

I'll write more later about my time with 60 high schoolers in bayou la batre.


i'm picking up a southern drawl... i hate that.