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| Author's note: / I have always dreamed of visiting New Orleans, and it started in high school -- even though I was still in the Philippines then -- when I learned to sing jazz and loved its beat. I have heard of the legendary French Quarter where nights become days with live bands literally a few feet apart from one another and competing against each other with old and new jazzy sounds of music. And of course, I have heard of the Mardi Gras or the "greatest free show on earth," a colorful, high energy traditional parade that brings New Orleans' community and visitors worldwide together for a single purpose: to have fun. That was New Orleans' picture on my mind before Hurricane Katrina struck in August 2005. When the levees broke, New Orleans' landscape, as well as its people's lives, drastically changed. The fun part has been taken away, and today, New Orleans is struggling to keep its soul together by rebuilding, as much as possible, what has been destroyed. Everyone seems to agree, however, that that's something impossible to accomplish in many, many years. Rebuilding infrastructure is one thing, rebuilding lives is another, and that's a hard one. I visited New Orleans only a few weeks ago, a day after the one-year anniversary of Katrina's devastation on August 29, and just after President George Bush's "contrition for the cameras" (a quote from NY Times' Mureen Dowd) at St. Louis Cathedral. Unlike President Bush's staged visit, which was steered away from the path of Katrina's destruction, mine was a visit to places where the levees broke, and there I found blocks and blocks of debris, utter devastation, and ghost communities. The Lower Ninth Ward broke my heart completely. There was no one to talk to, none of its former residents in sight, except the city's cleaning crews and a nonprofit, "Common Ground," that provides housing repair tools, shoes, clothes, service and job referrals to -- hopefully -- returning residents. Indeed, most of those affected by Katrina's fury were people of color. I sought Asian Americans who experienced this great human catastrophe in America. I thought I never saw or read any story about them in any Katrina-aftermath media coverage. "There must be Asian Americans in New Orleans," I kept telling myself! Indeed, there were and there still are. Asian Americans in New Orleans I was fortunate enough to find a few Asian Americans (my five-day stay in the city wasn't enough to connect to many of them) who have been loyal citizens of New Orleans for decades. One of them was Dr. Wing Fok, a professor of management at the Loyola University in New Orleans. Fok was born and raised in Hong Kong and came to the United States in 1981. He came to Loyola U in 1988 and has been teaching there for the last 18 years. Beside serving as the College of Business' Department Chair of Management, he is also the faculty adviser of Loyola Asian Students Organization (LASO). "Before Katrina, Loyola University had a total student population of close to 8,000," Fok said. "Our Asian student population was somewhere about 13%, sometimes 15%, depending on the year. But if you look at our composition, of course, Latin American students remain the biggest group of students because of our proximity to Latin America and also because of the Catholic connection. We are a Catholic university started by the Jesuit Society, and obviously a lot of Latin Americans are Catholics so they like to send their children to Catholic universities. And Loyola carries a very good name in Latin America. There are at least 28 Jesuit universities in the U.S." Fok and his wife, a faculty member of the University of New Orleans, have made New Orleans their home by choice. "My wife and I have always lived in cities, so we ruled out college towns when I was looking for a job," Fok recalled. "We were going through a Ph.D. program roughly at the same time and I had to look for a job first. So we had to make a decision where to go. We both liked a little bit of the city, but we don't want a city to be too big. We hate fighting traffic jams, and all those kinds of things. And another funny thing is that my wife is sort of like a warm-climate person. She cannot live in Wisconsin (laughter). That time we were in Atlanta, Georgia, and she gave me a guideline. She said, 'Anywhere north of Georgia, you can go by yourself.' So I ended up looking up for schools down south, in cities not too big, so New Orleans is perfect for us -- a city big enough but you don't have to fight traffic jams like New York. The truth is, when I was looking for a job, I had an offer from the University of Boston, but I couldn't take it because of my wife. My wife will not go to Boston. That's why I'm here." As to Asian Americans in New Orleans, Fok estimated that before Katrina, there were somewhere between 5,000 to 6,000 Chinese in Metro New Orleans and a big Vietnamese population. "I would imagine the Vietnamese community is bigger than the Chinese community," Fok said. "So using that as a benchmark, you're looking at I would say somewhere in the neighborhood of maybe 20,000 Asians, with a fair number of Indians as well." Most Asian Americans own very traditional businesses like restaurants, Fok said with certainty, such that quite a few Chinese were operating laundromats/dry cleaning shops, and Koreans were running some grocery stores. Assessing the impact of Katrina on the Asian American businesses in New Orleans, Fok explained that it was difficult to tell whether a lot of these businesses left New Orleans for good. "I would say quite a few left," Fok responded thoughtfully. "What happened is, a lot of Vietnamese stayed on the Eastern side of New Orleans, a place we call 'New Orleans East.' Unfortunately, that part of the city got flooded very, very seriously. I don't think it's that easy to rebuild. So, using that as an indicator, I think a lot of Asians are still living away from New Orleans." He also cited four or five Chinese families he personally knew who decided to stay in Houston. "They lost everything, their homes and their businesses, so I cannot blame them for not coming back." Fok stressed that Katrina affected everyone in New Orleans: all colors, all races. While his family lives on the West side of New Orleans, their homes also suffered water damage. Most people evacuated to "safer grounds" outside their state. In Houston, Fok said, Asian American evacuees were treated warmly and cared for by several Asian groups. "When I was in Houston, I saw a lot of Chinese and Vietnamese evacuees. There are big Chinese and Vietnamese communities in Houston, and this experience really taught me a very important lesson," Fok spoke from his heart. "The people in general are very helpful. Everywhere I went in Houston, people were so nice to us. The Asian community organized a lot of things for us. For example, in the Chinatown in Houston where there were a lot of Chinese and Vietnamese shops, you will see a lot of different things going on during that period when we were there: free lunch for evacuees like us, and then there would be some charitable organizations that even gave financial assistance to evacuees. We received a lot of help in Texas. That's my personal experience; and some friends even have the privilege of going through toll roads without paying toll. The Houston government waived the toll for evacuees. All you have to do is to show your Louisiana driver's license, and you can go to the toll road for free." More fortunate than many others Unlike many evacuees, though, Fok and his family didn't stay at the Superdome. They had a friend who took care of them. "I think maybe in that sense, that's why people tend to pay a lot of attention to African Americans because a lot of them ended up staying in the Superdome," Fok said. "I understand that obviously that was not a good experience. No doubt about it. I'm not downplaying the devastation that impacted the African American community. I know -- my heart goes out to them as well because I know they suffered a lot throughout all this devastation." In October 2005, Fok came back to New Orleans when they heard news that they were allowed to go back to check on their houses. "In Metairie where we live, a lot of houses were flooded; but the damage was not as extensive as some of the things that we saw on T.V.," Fok said. "A lot of houses in our neighborhoods got maybe 18 inches of water in the house, maybe 2 feet, and some of them got 2-3 feet. Most of them didn't have water up to the ceiling. In that sense, a lot of us were spared. We were able to move back home in October and a lot of people started to rebuild quickly in our neighborhood, although it's a long process. We still have a lot of neighbors still trying to rebuild as of now." Loyola University students went to other schools Loyola University is located in Orleans Parish, an area with extensive damage as well, so the school remained closed for a number of months. "Because of the extent of the damage including the infrastructure, we were not allowed to come back to the Orleans Parish until late November," Fok said. "So initially, we were able to live at home, but we could not go back to work. At that time, our university opened up two temporary offices: one in Alexandria, about 3-4 hours from here, same state; and another office in Houston. I was in the Houston office for a short period before I came back to New Orleans." What happened to the Loyola University students? "Our students were scattered all over the country, in over 500 different schools in the nation, during the fall semester," he recalled with gratitude to those schools. "All over the country, people had been very helpful, and they took on our students. The good thing is, most universities let us keep the tuition, because the students had already paid. We just had our orientation, ready to open a new semester, then the hurricane hit, and the students had to be evacuated." Most of the students came back in the spring semester, with a lot of help from other schools and universities that took them in after Katrina. "We officially opened on January 2 of 2006," he continued. "We have over 90% of our students who came back, again partially due to help of other universities. They realized we're in a tough situation so they encouraged our students to come back. They tried their very best to make it very difficult for the students to transfer. In fact, a lot of our students believe in the city, believe in the university. I think we're very lucky that we've been having a lot of good relationships with our students. Therefore, they like this university. Most encouraging thing to me is a lot of our freshmen came back -- over 90% of them!" Over 70% of Loyola University students came from out of town or out of state. About 30% came from even out of the country. Most of the Asian students of Loyola U are residents of New Orleans. (Next installment will feature two other New Orleans survivors, Dac Van Tran, a Vietnamese who works at Cafe Du Mond, and Anna Roxas, a Filipino tourist-shop owner.) |
| Dr. Wing Fok An Asian American educator in New Orleans reflects on Katrina by Heidi M. Pascual |
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