|
|
|
Healthwatch: Zoo Story
|
|
|||
“I’ll tell you what; they’ve got everything here – you’re lucky,” he announces to the hundreds of poor, uninsured, trailer-livin’, destroyed-home owners and/or otherwise psychologically ravaged of us who have been standing on line outside the Audubon Zoo for hours.
Yes, everything: dentistry, free glasses and prescriptions, immunizations and the non-diabetic staple – Krispy Kreme doughnuts.
Darlene hasn’t been to a doctor in 11 years. Like a lot of people at today’s free clinic, offered to post-Katrina New Orleanians by the volunteer organization Remote Area Medical in conjunction with the city and state, Darlene’s problems began long before August 29, 2005.
“Like I told my son, if I’da been another 10 ta 15 years younger, I wouldn’t have come back to New Orleans,” the man behind Darlene is telling a woman from what’s left of New Orleans East.
People are coming and going in waves these days, but today they are standing in line, a prerequisite of life here now. Some have brought the chairs they’ll occupy during the upcoming parades from their front-row perches on the neutral ground. Others carry umbrellas to block out the soon-to-be blinding sun.
A pasty white man ten feet and five people back is creating a ruckus, shouting about that time he accidentally ran someone over and, a few minutes later, something we can’t have heard right concerning how a pimple in your mouth can and will kill you. Fortunately for him, there are also complementary psychiatric services available inside.
Another clipboard carrier comes by to announce that mammograms will not be offered today, and the dentist will not be able to take many more patients. People began lining up at four this morning; demand is high, supply low in post-apocalypse NOLA. We’re beginning to wonder if we’ll ever make it to the wooden gates that constitute our alleged salvation, though we passed the stop sign long ago. “At the very least, we’ll be registered today” has become our mantra. Even if we don’t get to see a doctor on Monday, we can bypass the eight-hour wait to clear this initial registration hurdle on Tuesday – we think.
“I don’t know” is the standard response to our attempts to verify this theory and though surely they can’t expect us to start at square one again next time, stranger things have happened. It smacks of FEMA-speak, of guarantees of basic necessities – food, running water - that are never honored, of waiting on buses that have flooded, authorities who have split. Of a T-shirt that proclaims: I stood in line at the medical zoo all day and all I got was this lousy sunburn.
A developmentally disabled man whose navy outfit is reminiscent of a Boy Scout uniform is shouting something at the crowd: “Come with me if you have to go to the bathroom.” At first, there are no takers, but he seems to work there – he’s carrying a clipboard - and soon a group of elderly women follow him to the front of the zoo, an organized outing: ten per trip. Too bad he wasn’t around during the Ivan evacuation to help organize the I-10 Baton Rouge rest stop, where only one toilet functioned, trash overflowed, toilet paper rolls lay empty on moist tile floors, and the line for the women’s room alone ran fifty deep.
We clear the wooden gates and are ushered in groups of five to the first of several registration tents. Another hour and another tent later, I am on a miniature train, on my way to a pair of brand-spanking new glasses, which I imagine will be thick and horn-rimmed – they’re free – and rigged together with plenty of duct tape; hipster gone wild. The train starts sans choo-choo, headed along a path marked by booths and tables, people handing passengers pamphlets and water bottles. The long lines, the train ride, the attendants; it’s a theme park minus the actual fun.
Lisa Haviland holds it down in the N.O. You can follow her adventures at
Ablaze in this Haze.
|
||||||
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
||||||
|
||||||
