I was born, raised and still live in southeastern Louisiana. I have personal ties to everywhere in the area, from St. Bernard Parish to Lafourche Parish and all points south. The Cajun side of my family comes from the west, and the Dago side comes from the east. I’ve somehow managed to blend right there in the middle. As my heart was leaning to the east after Katrina, my heart is leaning to the west right now after the oil spill.
I know it doesn’t look too pretty on a map, with the veiny-type appendages coming from the land, but trust me – when you see it in person at eye-level, it is truly a sight to behold. The world has already heard about the love affair we all have with the city of New Orleans and points east, but I don’t think everyone knows just how much we love L’Acadiane.
We’ve got character, and quite a few characters.
We’ve got an amazing sunset that is rivaled by very few.
… and we have trees that grow in water.
We’ve got cute, cuddly animals.
And our food? The best in the world.
We’re a happy bunch. We laugh often. We laugh to deal with our pain. In fact, I am convinced that the first BP jokes came from down here when everyone else was too scared to make them.
We may not be the richest people in the world, but we never really did care for materialistic things. As long as we have happiness, we feel like the richest people in the world. We’ve got deep bonds with our family and take care of each other. In fact, we’d even treat you like family.
We have a language all our own, and some things we say may sound really funny to you, maybe even a little scary. When we want to “axe you” it just means we want to ask you a question, and dat meenoo is probably really sweet. If you’re actin’ coo-yôn, don’t be so haunt when we point it out. And dat zink? You wash da dishes in dere. “What time it is?” and “Where you at?” may seem like horrible usage of English, but it’s quite normal to us. Word placement isn’t really that important, is it?
Patriotism is rampant around here, a trait that has been passed down by one of the greatest generations ever to grace us that volunteered in droves to support the country in World War II, whether in foreign lands or on the home front. They ignored the prior cruelty imposed by the government and heeded the call of duty, with many of them sacrificing their lives for what they believed to be the greater good.
We love our region, from l’côte des Allemands all the way down to the Fourchon. Older generations in my family tell stories about places they would frequent as kids, like Bird Island, that were washed away by hurricanes. The place where my great-grandmother was born, Cheniere Caminada, was completely wiped out by a hurricane in the 1890s. It’s a way of life down here in Acadiana, and we all know that our marshes and fragile coastline aren’t going to be the same for our children and future generations to enjoy, because that’s how nature works down here.
In the back of our minds, we always knew it was possible, but never did we think that one of our greatest economic treasures would harm us in such an unimaginable way. While many of us are dependent on the waters for fishing, many of us are also dependent on our oil in one way or another. We cope better with Mother Nature harming us than with human greed and error destroying the life we know.
Soon there will be another huge news story to take your attention away from us. It happens. Maybe another environmental catastrophe, maybe a massive hurricane. Maybe there will be an earth-shattering political scandal. Or maybe you will just get tired of hearing about the oil spill because of information overload. All reasons understandable. But we aren’t going to quit caring. We are not going to give up fighting this. We refuse to let BP destroy our fragile culture that has been long endangered. We are strong people, and we are not going to let the oil win.
After all, we have a beautiful state with beautiful people and a lot to offer the world. We are not going to let this be a symbolic picture of our state:
We are stronger than that. We’ve had our tests before, and we’ve always passed them with flying colors. Sure, this one is going to take a little while to recover from, but we will recover. We will be back, maybe not as strong as before, but we’ll be just fine. We always are.
