When Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, most of us watched the images on the screen and in newspapers and despaired. Lara Weber, though, headed south.
Lara, an editor with the Tribune’s “At Play” section, previously had spent two years with the Peace Corps, coordinating HIV programs in a remote region of Zambia, and felt compelled to be in New Orleans when the Peace Corps sent volunteers to the region.
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This week, in our cover story “Walking through New Orleans,” Lara reflected on the time she spent there. The hardship in Africa prepared her for the devastation she found here at home. “None of the Peace Corps volunteers expected the Katrina relief to feel as much like our overseas service did,” reflects Lara, “but the similarities were huge. The things that other relief workers struggled with-staying in tents, not being able to drink the water, seeing extreme poverty, didn’t faze us because we had already dealt with that for two years. A month was nothing.”
While on leave from the Tribune, working on the relief effort, Lara kept track of her group’s progress, the problems they encountered, and her own response to the gravity of the tragedy. Out of those notes and reflections, in this story she gives a wonderful new perspective to the ongoing displacement and disappointment of New Orleans.
In a certain way, Lara’s experience in Africa led to a kind of patience and compassion that served her well in New Orleans. “On a human level, Africa teaches you to listen and to laugh,” recalls Lara, “and that went a long way with everyone we met in New Orleans. There’s no way we could really understand what anyone went through, but we just connected with people and let them talk and laugh-and it worked.”
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