Travel notes from Mississippi

Port Gibson, Mississippi. The town that General Grant said was too beautiful to burn when he was marching his Union troops up to Vicksburg in the Civil War. A town where old trees spread their limbs to shelter the streets lined with churches. Amidst all this beauty, the town is gripped by poverty.

Over reading break, a group of Redeemer students drive to Port Gibson to work on several service projects. Redeemer has been visiting Port Gibson for eighteen years and has developed deep friendships especially with Pastor Randy, who organizes the group’s stay. He is always happy to see us come back and he always makes sure we have lots of work to do.

The service trip taught us much about the areas culture and history. On Sunday, after introducing ourselves at two churches, we were given a tour of Port Gibson by one of the local pastors. He showed us the Windsor Ruins, a huge mansion which accidentally burnt to the ground after a party and which also appeared in the movie Gone with the Wind. We learned about the soil, which erodes like lightning and can turn a farmer’s field into a deep gully within a couple of decades. On the third day we were given a Civil War tour by one of the locals in Vicksburg and that night we got to try our taste buds on one of the local foods—fried catfish. The day after Mardi Gras, we went to see the sights of New Orleans and most of us even ended up attending an Ash Wednesday service.

Once you travel off of the main streets and highways you are immediately confronted with the poverty that many of the citizens of Port Gibson suffer from. The houses and trailers are falling apart, the brush is overgrown, sometimes trash is piled in the yards. We were given many different jobs: we built wheelchair ramps, fixed drafty walls, cleaned up people’s houses, fixed toilets, and dry walled ceilings. While we were working we were also able to talk to the people we were doing the work for.

One of the things that struck me most after leaving Port Gibson were the many barriers that exist, preventing the people from helping each other. They are not always physical barriers, but perceived barriers that have been built up with long histories attached. They exist between neighborhoods, between Blacks and Whites, and between churches. Though those barriers exist, when our group worked there, usually we did not see those same barriers; we came into the place without knowing its history or the conflicts that exist. This helped us because we were able to come in without prior prejudices and we were able to help the black communities that have been shunned by the rich and are now considered dangerous. Near the end of our trip, Pastor Randy mentioned that this is the way our groups have really helped Port Gibson: they show people that these boundaries can be crossed and they do not have to continue living the way that they have been.

How easy it is for us to become blind to the barriers that have been built around us. I think of Redeemer. What stops so many of us from going downtown? It is only ten minutes away by car or thirty by bus. What stops us from committing to a home church while at school? What keeps students and staff distant from each other at times? It seems that when people are not aware of the boundaries around them and do not try to travel across boundaries that a lot of pain begins to build up. What boundaries are there here at Redeemer that we are not aware of and how can we begin to walk across them?

The Crown reserves the right to edit or remove any comment that:

• is libelous, threatening, obscene, or constitutes hate speech
• directly and deliberately insults other posters
• is promotional or commercial in nature