Reporting from Biloxi

I hate when I learn a life-changing lesson and forget about it shortly after. It happens all the time. My mom used to hammer into my brain the importance of eating vegetables, and I still weigh 125 lbs. I’m terrified I’m going to forget the lessons I’ve learned on this trip a few months down the road.

Living in military tents without the luxury of stable showers and clean toilets toughened us all up down here. I’ve been chatting with people at the camp, and we’ve learned from first- hand experience this week to be thankful for the lives we’re blessed with.

When I boarded the bus today, I saw people forget those lessons already. A handful of students on one bus began complaining about the television sets not working. They protested by walking off the bus.

Civil rights activists in the 1960s walked off buses in Alabama to push for needed racial appreciation. Seeing these students walk off the bus to protest the capability to watch movies was disgraceful.

But of all people, I should be most critical of myself. I’ve appreciated the luxury of home cooked meals after eating mush for breakfast, lunch and dinner all week. I’m scared a few months down the road, if not weeks, I’ll be complaining about my mom’s rice being too cold.

I don’t mean to preach, but I do have this rampant fear of returning to normalcy. But perhaps maintaining this fear will be a safeguard against them from happening.

I wish I could go door-to-door to everyone in this city and interview them. For every person who told me they survived the storm by seeking shelter on a rooftop, there are hundreds more that climbed a power line or hid in a closet instead. There's so much to this city that is crying for me to explore.

I've hopped around from worksite to worksite watching and recording what the Kent State volunteers have been doing. They've worked in sweltering heat thatching roofs, laying drywall, fixing pipes and landscaping gardens every day for hours. I'm sure they will take home an experience that will be permanently ingrained in their brains for the rest of their lives.

What I've gained from this trip is that the volunteers really haven't had a chance to talk to the people here. Gary Reid, director of the Pass Christian Community Action Network, told me "You get familiar to this area getting to know people and it just feels like home." I can see where he's coming from.

I've chatted with some of the other media personnel who came on this trip, and we all agree how weird it will be to go back to Kent. Driving around the city in a rental car hunting for stories every day is a routine we've gotten used to. We've all captured so many good stories, photos and video footage already but could capture so much more. Every person here in Pass Christian and Biloxi has a story worth reporting.

Whenever my brothers snatched my Genesis controller, I could always play again if I waited a while … perhaps my time in Biloxi is only over for the time being.

There is just way too much news down here for one young buck reporter like myself to cover in a week. I feel like I'm trying to put out a forest fire with a squirt gun.

The fact that Kent State University is down here volunteering with Hurricane Katrina relief efforts is definitely an important story. But there is so much more to this city that I don't know where to start.

Do I write about casino gambling or the religious communities in the area? Do I profile the fishing industry in Biloxi or the insurance struggles people are having? Those are just four story ideas out of who knows how many.

The beautiful thing about this city is that there is no one particular issue/story that defines it. But with that beauty is the difficulty in figuring out how to cover it.

I've interviewed more than 20 hurricane victims so far and each of them has a unique and compelling recollection of how they survived Katrina. I've spoken with religious leaders, ex-convicts, politicians, fishermen, drug addicts, children, police officers and even former champion boxers. Some of them survived the storm by hanging onto power lines and others did by hiding in fishing boats.

I could stay in this city for months and I would still be learning about the people and this city. This has been one of the greatest journalism experiences in my life.

I have four entire notebooks so far filled with notes so I have to stay organized. After running around from site to site, each night I run back to my tent and type my notes on my laptop. I have so much information to sift through that I'd probably have a heart attack if I didn't organize myself.

Covering the inferno of Biloxi stories is difficult, but I guess my squirt gun is going to have to suffice. After all, it's the only thing I have to fight this fire.

Interviewing people is a delicate process that takes years, if not decades, to master. Interviewing hurricane victims is even harder.

These past few days, I've run around Biloxi and Pass Christian talking to people who were here when Hurricane Katrina hit Mississippi. I wanted to capture their stories on paper but didn't want to bring back their emotional trauma during the storm. I had no idea how hard it would be.

One particular woman I interviewed, whose name I will leave out to respect her privacy, stepped away to cry for a few minutes when I interviewed her. She said she hadn't cried like that since the hurricane first came. She was one of many who hadn't until I interviewed them.

Many of the people in Biloxi are still in shock from the hurricane. Asking them about the hurricane can add salt to their open wounds. I've been fortunate enough down here in Biloxi that many of these people have showed me their open wounds.

It is awkward standing there when a person I'm interviewing starts crying. It's not necessarily my fault and I debate whether I should offer a hug or something. But all I can really do is stand there and wait.

It's really hard to avoid making these people cry. I don't want to directly ask the Katrina victims "How did you feel when the hurricane hit?" I just want their responses to that question, if that makes any sense. The public needs to feel these victims' raw emotion too.

I need to report their stories because in many cases nobody else has already. What I have to do is gently walk them around the question with my buildup ones. I have to make them feel comfortable before they can start opening up to me.

Waiting is one of the worst feelings in the world to experience. I hold it up there with slamming a car door on my hand. After all the waiting I did today, I would have given anything to get my hand stuck in a car door.

My plan today was to tag along with a drywall crew that was repairing the home of Father Dong Phan, a Catholic priest here in Biloxi. Phan is one of the most influential figures in Biloxi. He was a former military chaplain during the Vietnam War and survived Hurricane Katrina by hiding on a fishing boat. His stories were compelling.

We were supposed to get to Phan's house around 9 a.m., but nobody seemed to know why we got there at 10. He was there waiting for us with a confused look on his face. 20 volunteers came to his house for drywall and Phan was wondering who in the group was an electrician.

After looking at his building permit, a crew leader noticed Phan hadn't gotten an electrician to inspect the building. Phan thought the volunteers were coming with an electrician, and the crew didn't know anything about his request. The crew couldn't drywall until an electrician could OK the building.

Even worse, about 20 people came to drywall – all wondering why there were no building materials at the work site either. Crew leaders whipped out their cell phones and tried to get their hands on an electrician and some building supplies.

Pretending to be busy is almost as bad as waiting. In the three-hour time span that it took for the crew to start laying drywall, a dozen or so crew members were outside cleaning up leaves. The feeling of a car door caressing my hand was tempting.

After about an hour of yard work, a local Vietnamese woman dropped off some food for the volunteers. Many of the crew workers felt bad for taking a break when no concrete work had been done yet.

I honestly don't know who is to blame for these delays today. The crew was there eager to work and organizers were working even harder trying to find out what was going on. Hopefully this won't happen tomorrow.

Oh yeah, today is my 21st birthday.

I remember watching Hurricane Katrina news coverage back in September and thinking CNN's Anderson Cooper cried on the air one day just for the cameras. But now that I'm down here experiencing it for myself, I don't know how it's possible to not cry.

A few hours after I got here, I attended a Sunday service with some of the Kent State volunteers at a Vietnamese Catholic church about 20-30 miles away. We drove alongside state Route 90 where I got a chance to see the hurricane devastation first hand.

I saw houses with insides completely leveled, as if C4 explosives had wiped out each one. Some houses were completely destroyed with only the porch steps remaining. Imagine climbing a set of stairs now leading up to nothing.

Even creepier were colossal highway signs for restaurants like McDonald's and Waffle House; except the restaurants themselves were gone.- Waffle House is a well-known restaurant chain in the South, so along the way to the church we saw at least four to five Waffle House signs all having no restaurant buildings to offer.

Casinos along the shore, which once served as a tourism and economic backbone for Biloxi, were leveled too. I can't stop thinking about one casino in particular that was shaped like a giant Viking ship. The entire middle had collapsed as if a renegade pirate ship assaulted the casino with cannonballs.

Going to church was a chilling and calming experience at the same time. The Vietnamese people in the church were happy to see us, but they were too overcome with shock from the hurricane to smile. Throughout the week, many of the Kent State volunteers will be repairing roofs and fixing drywall for members of this church.

My family is from India and I've seen parts of that country with the lowest-of-low living conditions. But I didn't think conditions like that existed here.

Today I began my most exciting journalistic trek to date. Who knows if I'll ever get a chance to take a trip like this again, even after I graduate.

Just like how any smart journalist should prepare, I spent the entire night playing "Streets of Rage 2" on my Sega Genesis. I could have been Googling last minute information on Biloxi and Pass Christian, but "Streets of Rage 2" was the only thing that could quench my thirst for beating up biker thugs.

The bus leaves the C-Lot from across the Student Center at around 7 a.m. I could feel my "Streets of Rage 2" hangover kicking in and fell asleep immediately. Around three hours later, I wake up to the downtown scenery of my hometown Columbus. After waving goodbye to the last familiar landscape I could recognize, I knew my trek into unchartered territory had officially begun.

I sat next to my photographer and partner-in-crime, Gavin Jackson. Around us were people that had more junk food between them than Anna Nicole Smith's kitchen cupboard. Just about every five seconds, I politely refused offers for Kit Kat bars, Reese's Pieces, Combos, Orbit Gum, Juicy Juice boxes and generic Golden Crisp cereal. Saying no to the Juicy Juice was the first of what I'm sure will be many poor decisions I make on this trip. Who in their right mind says no to grape juice?

After switching back and forth between napping and staring at passerby church signs reminding me "Hell is Real," we stopped for an hour in Kentucky for food. I'm sure the six-inch Subway sandwich I scarfed down will terrorize my digestive system within a few hours.

We just left the Kentucky stop and are now back on the road. It's been around six hours since I left and still have a good twelve hours or so to go. I've managed to make the time go by with napping, but these uncomfortable seats are bound to put me in a neck brace by the time the trip is over.

Time to count some sheep.

Ah yes, I pulled out of the blog scene a few months ago because I was bored. It annoyed me constantly having to post over and over again.

I still don't know how I feel about blogs. Its cool that now any average citizen has a chance to express themselves in a public forum, but its hard to figure out who's credible and who isn't. And me, I'm about as credible as a Larry King marriage.

Well now I'm taking a Media Convergence class and one of our assignments is to start blogging. So for the time being, I'm back in the game creating ruckus again.


I'm making a comeback to the blogging game like Michael Jordan did to basketball, except I didn't have to disgrace professional baseball or promote overpriced shoes made by Malaysian children to do so.