New Orleans still reeling, but residents make do

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NEW ORLEANS -- They said she was too frail, that the mold growing on the warped walls of her flooded house would make her ill. They said she shouldn't bother since her mottled, mud-filled home likely would be bulldozed anyway.

But Willie Lee Barnes, who recently turned 94, didn't listen.

Standing outside her house, she clasped her rosary in her frail hands and prayed. "Lord," she said, "I'm not asking that you climb the mountain for me. I'm only asking that you give me the strength to do it myself."

Strapping on a dust mask, Miss Barnes grabbed a shovel and with all her force began pounding the deformed walls of her living room until they fell to the floor. She filled buckets with the broken drywall, which her son ferried outside. Bucket by bucket and week after week, she kept at it, resting occasionally on a stool, the only piece of furniture in her house to survive the flooding. Flanked by a worn statue of the Virgin Mary, hers is now one of the few houses that's been gutted in the city's Lower Ninth Ward.

Ask her to explain how a nonagenarian succeeded in doing what thousands of younger families have failed to do, and Miss Barnes offers an analogy: "I'm like bad grass. Because it never dies. You gotta pull it up, and even though you do, it still grows back. I don't care how hard something looks, I'm still going to try."

In a city that still lies largely in ruin after Hurricane Katrina hit Aug. 29, life is pushing through like "bad grass," forcing its way through cracks in the pavement.

Those who choose to return do so in spite of the city's broken infrastructure, which nearly a year later remains in tatters: Nearly 60 percent of homes and businesses are still not receiving electricity or heating gas. Only three out of nine New Orleans hospitals have reopened. Only 56 of 128 public schools will enroll students this fall.

The city itself still has no master plan.

Still, even in the worst-hit neighborhoods, where homes were ripped from their foundations and spit into the street, and where mattresses still lie impaled in the branches of trees, the rebirth is taking place.

Those who have returned to live here proudly proclaim their existence.