ZEITOUN Van Tour

On Friday, November 18, the reading classes of the Loyola Intensive English  Program (LIEP) boarded the Loyola van for a tour of New Orleans sites that are important in the book ZEITOUN by Dave Eggers. The LIEP classes had read and discussed this book about the experience of the Zeitoun family during and after Hurricane Katrina. Below is a short summary of the book ZEITOUN, followed by an account of our van tour.

ZEITOUN by Dave Eggers

Mr. Abdulrahman Zeitoun, called Zeitoun by most people who know him, comes from Syria. He and his U.S. American wife, Kathy, own and run a house painting business in New Orleans. The Zeitoun family practices Islam.


As Hurricane Katrina was approaching New Orleans, Kathy and the Zeitoun children evacuated to Baton Rouge, while Zeitoun remained in New Orleans to oversee his home, his rental properties, and the properties of his clients. After the hurricane, Zeitoun found a working telephone line and called Kathy faithfully every day at noon. Zeitoun also owned a canoe and used it daily to rescue people trapped in their houses.


However, about a week after the hurricane, Zeitoun had the misfortune to be arrested for "looking suspicious." As a Hurricane Katrina arrestee without proper processing, he fell into "a black hole" in the prison system. The only thing that Kathy and the Zeitoun children knew was that Zeitoun's daily noon-time telephone calls suddenly stopped.


The book ZEITOUN had gripped us so strongly that we wanted to visit the sites that were important in Zeitoun's Hurricane Katrina experience. Our van tour included the following sites.

• RESCUES AND PHONE CALLS: In our van, we followed Zeitoun's canoe route so that we could actually see the places where Zeitoun had stopped to rescue people and to make his daily telephone calls to his family.
• THE CLAIBORNE / POYDRAS OVERPASS: We drove over the Claiborne / Poydras overpass, where Zeitoun had met and spoken with survivors who were waiting, unsheltered in the sun, for buses to take them out of the city. Many dogs were also on this overpass. Zeitoun had returned later in his canoe to find that all the people had been taken away and that all the dogs had been shot.
• STAGING AREA: We drove past the staging area where official boats had been sent out each day to find and rescue people on roof-tops and where Zeitoun had been taken after his arrest to be transported to a temporary jail.
• CAMP GREYHOUND: This was perhaps the most impressive site on our van tour. We stopped to visit the New Orleans Union Passenger Terminal, where Amtrak trains and Greyhound buses arrive and depart. Called Camp Greyhound in the weeks after Hurricane Katrina, this terminal had been transformed into a temporary jail for anyone arrested in the post-hurricane chaos. Arrestees like Zeitoun had been placed into outdoor cages to await transportation to larger prisons.

The photo below shows Camp Greyhound in the weeks after Hurricane Katrina.

Camp Greyhound in the weeks after Hurricane Katrina

The New Orleans Union Passenger Terminal has an amazing four-wall mural depicting scenes from the history of New Orleans. Newly arrested and frightened, Zeitoun had been struck by the darkness and violence of some of the scenes. A scene from the mural appears below.

Scene from mural at New Orleans Union Passenger Terminal,
the site of Camp Greyhound in the weeks after Hurricane Katrina

This impressive van tour concludes our study of Hurricane Katrina and of the book ZEITOUN by Dave Eggers. Our thanks to LIEP instructors Karen Greenstone and Leo Rocha for planning and driving for our tour.

Our next post will take you with us as we visit Mardi Gras World, the den where Mardi Gras floats are prepared and decorated. We will hear about the history of Mardi Gras, try on elaborate Mardi Gras costumes, and watch the artists at work as they apply finishing touches to the floats.

A Visit with Three Hurricane Katrina Survivors

Hurricane Katrina has been much on our minds at the Loyola Intensive English Program (LIEP), as all three LIEP reading classes are reading the book ZEITOUN by Dave Eggers.


ZEITOUN tells the true and captivating story of the Zeitoun family of New Orleans during and after Hurricane Katrina. Two days before the hurricane, Mrs. Zeitoun and the Zeitoun children evacuated to Baton Rouge, while Mr. Zeitoun, owner of a house painting business, stayed in the city to oversee his own property and that of his clients. A week after the hurricane, Mr. Zeitoun was arrested and imprisoned for "looking suspicious." He fell into a "black hole" in the prison system. His wife and children, away from the city, knew only that his daily phone calls at noon suddenly stopped.

ZEITOUN by Dave Eggers

To help us understand better what it was like in New Orleans during and after Hurricane Katrina, we invited three Hurricane Katrina survivors to speak as a panel with our three LIEP reading classes. Each panelist had a unique experience:

• One panelist was isolated with her ill husband in an uptown home surrounded with flood waters
• Another panelist found herself on a rooftop with her two beloved dogs
• Our third panelist remained in the city to be with her hospitalized mother and was taken by helicopter to the New Orleans Convention Center, where people were crowded to await help without basic necessities

Each panelist spoke in turn, sometimes with emotion and tears, about her experience of Hurricane Katrina and the subsequent flood. Here are some of the most striking points in the panelists' stories:

• Reasons for remaining in the city: Each panelist personalized some of the frequently heard reasons for not evacuating: the huge difficulty (or impossibility) of transporting an ill loved one for hours in bumper-to-bumper traffic, the devotion to beloved animals for whom there were no evacuation facilities, the trust in decades-old houses that had withstood many hurricanes, the experience of having lived through hurricanes in the past.
• The flood: Seeing the flood water rise so swiftly when the levees gave way on the day AFTER the hurricane was a great shock. One panelist spoke of the "visceral feeling" of watching the water rush up her driveway, and another told us that there was no water in her house after the hurricane but that the flood waters rose 12 feet -- up to the gutter of the roof -- on the next day.
• Complete lack of certainty and information: All three panelists said that they were isolated from information sources. One panelist spoke of "the real uncertainty about what would happen from day to day," and another told us that her only source of information was her mother, who was watching the news reports in Virginia.
• MREs, or Meals Ready to Eat: One panelist brought items from an MRE, or Meal Ready to Eat, to show us. Some New Orleanians received MREs from the military after the hurricane.
• Destruction: One panelist made the destruction of the flood real to us by showing vivid photographs of her flooded home.
• Help from friends and neighbors: All three panelists insisted that help came, not from government agencies, but from friends helping friends and neighbors helping neighbors. One panelist and her ill husband were eventually rescued from their flood-surrounded home by friends. Another panelist banded together with neighbors for help. Our third panelist found that customers of her father's neighborhood store recognized her and took her under their wing at the Convention Center.
• Animals: One panelist said that it was "very painful to see elderly people forced to get into rescue boats but leave their animals behind to die." This panelist is pleased to have been part of the post-Hurricane Katrina lobbying group that has resulted in a Louisiana law requiring side-by-side evacuation of people and their animals.
• Deaths: The panelists spoke of their sadness whenever they thought of family members, friends, and neighbors who died not long after Hurricane Katrina because of the physical and emotional toll taken by the high level of stress.
• Preparedness: All three panelists spoke of the need for to be ready for an emergency. One panelist told us, "Save money. Be educated. Be prepared."

Hearing these intense personal stories by three people who lived through the days and weeks after Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans made the storm and its aftermath very real to us.

A huge thank-you to our three panelists for sharing these personal experiences with us.

Our next post will tell you about a visit with Dr. Bethany Brown of Loyola's Criminal Justice Department. Dr. Brown will speak with us about the sociological aspects of Hurricane Katrina to help us understand how people respond in crisis situations.

Our Visit with Chief Meteorologist Carl Arredondo

As mentioned in our previous post, our three reading classes -- Intermediate, Advanced, and Pilot (those students taking courses at Loyola University New Orleans as well as two credit-bearing intensive English courses) -- are reading the book ZEITOUN by Dave Eggers. This book tells the true story of the Zeitoun family of New Orleans during and after Hurricane Katrina.


To gain a better understanding of hurricanes in general and of Hurricane Katrina in particular, we at the Loyola Intensive English Program (LIEP) invited Mr. Carl Arredondo, Chief Meterologist at WWL-TV in New Orleans to visit us on Wednesday, October 26, and talk with us about hurricanes.

Mr. Carl Arredondo,
Chief Meteorologist
at WWL-TV in New Orleans

Mr. Arredondo told us that he was fascinated with weather even as a child. When a television meteorologist visited his sixth-grade class and talked to the students about forecasting the weather, Mr. Arredondo knew that this would be his career choice, too. Accordingly, Mr. Arredondo studied meteorology in college and eventually came to New Orleans in 1991 as a meteorologist for WWL-TV, where he is now Chief Meteorologist.


Mr. Arredondo explained that we are now in a cycle of greater hurricane activity that began in 1995. When asked how long we could expect this cycle to last, Mr. Arredondo replied that no one knows but that the previous cycle of greater hurricane activity lasted over forty years. Mr. Arredondo explained that, even within cycles of greater hurricane activity, there can be an odd year of lesser hurricane activity, and vice versa.


Mr. Arrendondo told us about two currently-used systems for predicting hurricane activity. One is the system used by Dr. Gray at Colorado State University. Dr. Gray makes his yearly predictions based on hurricane activity in years with atmospheric conditions most similar to those in the current year. This system is best at predicting numbers of hurricanes in a given year. The other is the system used by the Hurricane Research Center in Houston. This system makes predictions based on sun activity and is best at predicting where hurricanes are likely to make landfall in a given year.


Mr. Arredondo talked about the length of the yearly hurricane season -- June 1 through November 30, with the peak on September 10. He emphasized that storms can occur at any time, though, even outside the official hurricane season. He also showed us the six rotating lists of alphabetical hurricane names. Every six years, we use the same list of hurricane names, but when a hurricane is particularly destructive and memorable, its name is retired and replaced with a new name beginning with the same letter. This year, 2011, we are using the same list of hurricane names that we used six years ago in 2005, the year of Hurricane Katrina. However, there will never be another Hurricane Katrina! The name Katrina has been replaced with Katia.

Hurricane Katrina

Mr. Arredondo shared his own Hurricane Katrina experience with us. He showed us a video of his first return to his flooded home in Slidell, Louisiana, soon after the hurricane. He explained that the flooding of Slidell, a city to the east of New Orleans and of Lake Pontchartrain, was due to the tremendous storm surge. Mr. Arredondo told us that, just because a hurricane's strength lessens (Hurricane Katrina, at one time a Category 5 hurricane, had lessened to Category 3 when it passed through the New Orleans area), the storm surge does not lessen. After the storm surge pushed into the western part of Lake Pontchartrain, it slashed back forcefully into Slidell, flooding many homes there, including Mr. Arrendondo's. Mr. Arredondo said that one of his most difficult tasks after the hurricane was explaining to his children that all of their toys and belongings were gone.


Mr. Arredondo emphasized the importance of good preparation for the hurricane season. He stressed the importance of evacuation, of planning where we will go, and of giving that contact information to our family and friends. He also said that we should keep any important hard-copy documents in a case ready to take with us on evacuation.


Thank you, Mr. Arredondo, for giving us interesting and important information about hurricanes and for sharing your own hurricane experience with us.


In our next post, we will share with you our Halloween pumpkin carving!

Reading ZEITOUN and Watching STILL WAITING

This month at the Loyola Intensive English Program (LIEP), all three of our reading classes -- Intermediate, Advanced, and Pilot (those students taking two courses at Loyola University New Orleans as well as two credit-bearing intensive English courses) -- are reading ZEITOUN by Dave Eggers.

ZEITOUN by Dave Eggers

ZEITOUN tells the true story of the Zeitoun family during and after Hurricane Katrina. Mr. Abdulrahman Zeitoun, a Syrian, is married to a U.S. American named Kathy. Together, Kathy and Zeitoun run a house painting business. In 2005, at the time of Hurricane Katrina, they had four children: Kathy's son from a former marriage and three daughters of their own. The family practices Islam.


Before Hurricane Katrina, Kathy and the children evacuated to Baton Rouge, but Zeitoun stayed in New Orleans to protect his home and to oversee his clients' houses. About a week after the hurricane, he was arrested because, with his Arabic accent and swarthy appearance, he looked suspicious. He was imprisoned, with no way to let his wife know what had happened. All Kathy knew was that her husband's daily telephone calls at noon suddenly stopped. Zeitoun had been calling everyday at noon from a working landline in one of the Zeitouns' rental properties in the flooded city.


Zeitoun spent about three weeks in prison, undergoing sub-human conditions and humiliating treatment. He and Kathy tell their story in Dave Eggers' book ZEITOUN.

Members of the extended family
featured in STILL WAITING

To prepare for reading ZEITOUN, the three LIEP reading classes came together to watch the documentary STILL WAITING: LIFE AFTER KATRINA on Thursday, October 20. STILL WAITING shows how Hurricane Katrina has affected one extended African American family in St. Bernard Parish, the low-lying and heavily flooded parish just east of New Orleans. This extended family, with over 150 members, was left homeless after Hurricane Katrina. They received help from the one member of their close-knit family, Connie Tipado, who lived elsewhere -- in Dallas, Texas. The documentary shows the family's determination to return home and rebuild despite tremendous odds -- the complete destruction of their homes and towns and the slow response of the government to provide promised assistance.


After watching STILL WAITING, the students formed small groups composed of members of each of the three LIEP reading classes. Each group focused, first, on vivid imagery from the documentary. The students were especially impressed by these images:

• Houses completely submerged in water up to the rooftops
• The interior of a flooded church, with overturned pews, moldy bibles, and a grimy altar
• Home-cooked food -- gumbo, jambalaya, sausage, sea food
• The tiny, cramped kitchen in a trailer provided by FEMA (the Federal Emergency Management Agency) as a temporary home
• The family tree of this extended family, with branch after branch showing mothers, fathers, sons, daughters, aunts, uncles, cousins
• The large crowd of family members gathered for a meal at Connie Tipado's home in Dallas

After exploring these images, the students examined the forces pulling this extended family apart:

• No homes to which to return
• No services, such as police, fire fighters, mail service, banks, hospitals, schools
• Fear that such a hurricane could happen again
• Racism in St. Bernard Parish
• Better job opportunities elsewhere
• The lack of government help

Finally, the students explored the forces uniting this extended family:

• Their love
• Their habit of frequently visiting each other's homes
• Their common faith and church community
• Their many meals shared together
• Their very desire to continue the unity built up by generations of togetherness

The documentary STILL WAITING gave us all a clearer picture of what people in and near New Orleans went through during and after Hurricane Katrina. With this in mind, we began our reading of ZEITOUN.

Our next post will describe our visit with Mr. Carl Arrendondo, Chief Meteorologist for WWL-TV, one of our local television stations in New Orleans. We will share with you how Mr. Arredondo gave us a better understanding of hurricanes in general and of Hurricane Katrina in particular.