It started in Mississippi: They saw 100-foot trees snapped
like twigs and littering the interstate. Huge highway signs
twisted like balled-up like candy wrappers. Gasoline lines
around the block.
In Louisiana, Eric Green and Alan Green saw cars piled on
top of each other in ditches. People wandering aimlessly,
walking down the street in a daze.
And when they finally got where they were going Wednesday
night-the southwest Louisiana town of Opelousas-the two
SPSBE faculty members found thousands of displaced persons.
They were sleeping in cars. Hanging out in parking lots.
Playing on the concrete aprons of shuttered gas stations.
And living on cots in crowded shelters.
"It's heart-wrenching," said Eric Green, until last year a
New Orleans resident and now assistant professor of
counseling and human services in SPSBE's
Graduate Division of
Education. Many of the people they saw in shelters, he
said, "looked dazed and scared and, even after a week,
looked like they were suffering from shock."
Green and his colleague, Alan Green, an associate professor
and coordinator of school counseling at SPSBE, drove to St.
Landry Parish, northwest of New Orleans, to set up a
program to attend to the psychological needs of children
wrenched from their homes by Katrina, the Level 4 hurricane
that ravaged Louisiana on Aug. 29.
The kids-a thousand or more-were evacuated to Opelousas, an
area less seriously crippled by wind and water but
unequipped to handle the tide of evacuees from the New
Orleans area.
Eric Green said the kids are experiencing symptoms akin to
trauma.
"These children, many of them have lost their homes," he
said. "They've been taken out of their schools. They've
lost friends and extended family members. This creates
instability, and children need stability and structure in
their lives."
Young children, Green said by phone from Louisiana Friday,
aren't ready cognitively to appreciate the enormity of the
hurricane, the floods that came in its aftermath and
Katrina's long-term consequences for the Gulf Coast. But
they do know what's happened to them, even though-at their
age-they can't adequately express their concerns and fears
to parents or shelter workers.
The result, Green said, can be anything from withdrawal to
uncontrollable crying to hyperactivity, aggression or other
inappropriate behavior. To try to head off those problems
for children too young for conventional therapy, the Greens
and colleague Kristi Gibbs of the University of Tennessee
at Chattanooga are setting up programs in play therapy, a
technique in which kids are helped to vent their feelings
through play, for them a natural medium of expression.
"They know they're not in their rooms, they don't have
their toys and they don't have their friends," Green said.
"What we're doing is to try to help these kids regain their
sense of belonging and, in some way, that may help them
feel better about the uncertainty of what they're
experiencing. We can play with them and help them find some
sense of peace in a chaotic environment."
Several colleagues from around the country were on their
way to Louisiana to join the initial team over the weekend.
In the meantime, Alan Green was headed to Shreveport to
coordinate efforts there. In Opelousas, the team scheduled
a mass training session Monday for principals, counselors
and teachers who will be working with the displaced kids
for, at least, months. The two Greens (who are not related)
say they plan to spend two weeks in Louisiana before
returning to Baltimore.
Eric Green said they were grateful to SPSBE, and especially
Dean Ralph Fessler, for support of their volunteer effort.
Colleagues were covering their classes, and students were
tolerant of the disruption to the start of the semester, he
said.
Whether in St. Landry Parish or back in Baltimore, he said,
everyone was pulling together "for the same ultimate goal:
to show compassion for these people in need down here in
Louisiana."
The team is grateful for the many donations they've
received so far. Anyone interested in helping may send cash
or toys, dolls, puppets, sand miniatures and picture books
and children's reading materials directly to Eric Green's
uncle:
The Rev. Monsignor Paul Metrejean
136 Metrejean Lane
Opelousas, LA 70570
337-942-6123