A Hurricane Katrina memory.

 15 years ago I was staying for three months at a guest house in East Jerusalem on the grounds of a hospital that served a Palestinian population. Everyday I saw Muslim women dressed in abayas and everyday I ate green olives in the hospital cafeteria. I was there with an international group as an EAPPI. Ecumenical Accompaniment in Palestine and Israel. I know this because I remember watching the news about Hurricane Katrina on the television with the other people in the group. I was horrified, gripped with sorrow and also mortified because this tragedy was occurring in my country; the country that at that time people looked up to. It is hard to have the failings of ones country splashed across the television set when one is with a group of people from all over the world. Now we've been living that for well over three years