Coincides more or less with my arrival Stateside…

It was certainly an intersting time to arrive, coinciding with the Katrina castrophe. Like the rest of the world, we watched the disaster unfolding on our TV screens, although I’m sure the coverage here was different. It was certainly a major balls up on behalf of Bush and co. Sure, it’s almost impossible to estimate the power of nature, but I’m sure the relief work would have been different if the hurricaine struck the Hamptons or somewhere else white and rich. Perhaps the major thing I took away from watching the horrors was that this was an advert for tougher gun laws. Disaster strikes in the US and everyone starts shooting each other. It also highlighted the huge disparities that exist here. White black. Rich poor. Even in California you see some of the richest people on earth and only a few miles away and you are in the ghetto.

I keep running into people from New Orleans. With nearly a million people displaced by Katrina that’s not surprising. Sometimes the suspicious European in me doesn’t believe them. At a restaurant in Las Vegas I got talking to one guy who told us he’d lost everything. I thought perhaps he’d lost everything in a hurricaine of gambling and was now looking to recoup his losses by pulling a fast one. How terrible that I think like this? However, there was one character I believed as I filled up a gas (petrol) station. He was a black guy offering to clean my car windows. ‘I’m 59 and from New Orleans. I have nothing, except these clothes on my back,’ he told me. I looked into his eyes. I didn’t know what to say. Offering him a few bucks I felt pointless and awkward.