August 29 marked the one-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, which killed more than 1,700 people in the Gulf area and left hundreds and thousands of people displaced.

One year later in New Orleans: 17 percent of city buses are running; 54 percent of restaurants are still closed; 3 out of 9 hospitals with emergency rooms are open; and rent has jumped 39 percent.

In St. Bernard Parish, east of the ninth ward, 7 percent of public schools have reopened.

Jazz vocalist and pianist, Monica N. Dillon, was born in New Orleans and raised just outside the city in a town called Kenner and Metairie. I spoke to Monica on her way back to her home in Kenner, one day before the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. Here’s Monica…

Where were you when Hurricane Katrina hit?
I was [in New Orleans] up until Saturday evening. Most people were aware of Katrina, but the last thing that everyone heard was that it was going to go to Florida. I actually performed Friday night and started hearing people saying that Katrina had entered the Gulf, and that it was coming towards New Orleans. It took me off guard. It took everyone off guard and by surprise. [Then] we really started listening to the news.

I left Saturday evening with a group of women, some sister friends of mine. We left thinking, “OK, we’ll get out of town ahead of the rush,� and just get to Mississippi where one of us knew a couple of women. Then there we would basically just hang out for three or four days, or for however long. We all wanted to stay together during the storm. And at that time, none of us really knew how bad it was going be. We just thought it would be a long weekend or something.

We slept in Pascagoula, Mississippi, Saturday night, and got out Sunday morning and drove to Enterprise, Alabama. We stayed at Enterprise Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday—and by that time we knew about everything that happened and that we weren’t going to be able to go back to the city for a while. And at that time, the projections were really crazy. Like it was going to take three to six months [before we could go back].

We then dispersed from there to where we knew we had family and friends who would put us up for a while. I pretty much took an independent trip because there was nothing else you could do. I took an extended trip to Baton Rouge, Atlanta, Maryland, Philadelphia, and New York.

How long were you away total, do you think?
I got back into the city right before Hurricane Rita. I’m thinking that was maybe a month later; somewhere in mid- to later September.

How was it financially on you, having to travel all over the place?
Most people brought cash. I just did the best I could. And the places we went, we were staying with friends, so we really didn’t have hotel bills and stuff like that that some people had to incur. So, that helped a little bit.

Was your home damaged?
Yeah. I was living with my partner at that time [in New Orleans], and that house got about 10 to 12 feet of water. I also had a house that I owned in Kenner where the roof came off and I had substantial wind damage. That house I was able to repair, and that’s where I’m living now.

How did your family and friends make out?
It was kind of like a mixed bag. Some people lost everything. Some people didn’t get any water. And there’s all the in-between. Some of them didn’t lose anything, and the rest of them lost everything.

I have two brothers that live in the West Bank, it’s to the west of New Orleans, and they didn’t get any substantial damage. They didn’t have the kind of flooding that New Orleans experienced so they made it out OK. Most people had wind damage. You couldn’t get away from the wind damage.

The house that I grew up in, where my mom and my grandmother were residing, had approximately fourteen inches of water. They’re still trying to figure out if they’re going to raise the house up or sell it or what have you. They’ve relocated for the time being to Mississippi.

How was it going back to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina?
It was kind of surreal. They were letting you go back and you didn’t really know what you were going back to. I’ve often equated it to “The Wild, Wild, West�; the early days when there were very few businesses open. There weren’t many restaurants open. Basic services weren’t necessarily back up. We still have some streets where there aren’t any traffic lights; they are still 4-way stop signs. So, it’s kind of like picturing parts of a city just abandoned.

And what was it like watching people walking around New Orleans trying to figure out what to do next?
You go back and forth on, are we insane? But you wind up rebuilding your community and surroundings because that’s your support system. People who were there, were there consciously. They were there because they had property they had to or were obligated to fix up or sell, or for whatever reason. But you basically have to rebuild your community back and figure out, how do I take care of myself? Those are the questions people have to deal with on a daily basis.

There’s also a new phenomenon of stress in this type of post-traumatic trauma for people who aren’t even in the city, and for people who are there as well. Basically trying to regroup. How would you feel if everything you knew to be real was just swept up or taken away? It’s traumatizing.

Have you noticed any new anxiety within yourself?
Yeah. I have experienced different levels of anxiety. Different levels of feeling helpless or hopeless. The thing that I struggle with now is what can I, as one person, do? How can I contribute to this massive situation? I’ve done everything that I can to rebuild the community that I was living in. To make different choices after Katrina, in terms of just how I live my life on a daily basis. To be more vocal. To be more true to who I am. Those types of things. So, once you do that, you look at your community and you look at your surroundings and you try to figure out, how does all this fit in within the larger community of where I live.

Those are the things I really struggle with now. I made peace with the things that I lost. I made peace with the changes that I see around me. But the big questions are: How does that impact the city itself? How does that integrate with the people who are able to come back down? What role or possibility do I have?

As a jazz pianist and a vocalist, has Hurricane Katrina influenced the songs you write and how you perform?
One of the songs that I did was about the levee breaking and the impact that it had on people. Having to gather. Losing everything. The displacement of people. And the loss.

A year later, do you think enough improvement has been made in New Orleans?
Of course not. I mean you have major parts of the city that aren’t inhabited! We haven’t seen anything like this in a long time.

When you think of militarization, when you think about the fact that the amount of money that we’re spending in Iraq every day through the administration that is in office right now, even through the governor of Louisiana and the governor of Mississippi, of course it doesn’t look like anything is being done. Where’s the vow? Those are the things that I think everyone is asking.

Mayor Nagin was re-elected after Hurricane Katrina. What are your feelings about Mayor Nagin? Do you think he responded the best way he could have when Hurricane Katrina hit?
In my opinion, the way things happened, I don’t think any kind of blame rests on one person’s shoulders. Whether it’s the mayor. Whether it’s the governor. You can go as far up as the president of the United States. You can talk about FEMA. All of those played a part into what happened. I mean you can’t even talk about the levees themselves, that was a system that was neglected for years way past Nagin’s administration. So, do you blame him for the neglect?

We had a separate levee board who oversaw the core of engineers’ work in relation to the levees. Most people thought they were fine after Katrina hit. But it was the breaching of the levee that caused all the problems. So, do you blame him for the levees breaking? And we’re surrounded by water, so, everybody could have done more.

We could have not had a shelter of last resort to get people out of the city. But then again, we have to talk about the socio-economic picture in New Orleans before we even talk about why didn’t people leave, and why couldn’t people leave. There were a lot of people who didn’t have the means to leave.

I think the city, at the last minute, was inundated with, “What do we do? What is our legal responsibility to all these people in the city?� That’s been an issue for a long time in terms of how do you deal with poverty in the United States. Who are we responsible for? To answer that question, would be like to answer how do we eradicate poverty in the world.

I think everybody was in over their heads. And again, it was the element of not knowing what could happen that really put everyone in a really, really, really terrible situation. I think the treatment that people were seeing in the Superdome, I think the message is there. I think the level of help that happened and took place when it became a national issue—FEMA got involved, the President of the United States, the national guard—I think their response to it was poor. I don’t understand how we can get services and can get food and water to people in [another] country by dropping them out of airplanes and helicopters. And it takes till Friday to get any kind of assistance and aid to people who have been there since Saturday. I have a problem with that. But that issue is a lot bigger than the Mayor of New Orleans. So, is the issue that he’s still the mayor now?

Granted, he’s now in charge of something that is probably—I don’t know how they’re going to do it. There’s so much confusion. I don’t know how it’s going to get accomplished. It’s going to take a very long time in terms of funding.

And it’s a Catch-22. I actually voted for him. And I cried all the way to the polls because I was so torn about who I should vote for. Is my vote really going to make a difference? And if whoever gets elected affects how much money comes into the city of New Orleans, then we really have a big problem because regardless of who the governor or who the mayor is, we should get the money that’s supposed to come redevelop the city.

If you could talk to President Bush, what would you say?
[Laughs] I would tell him basically that the needs here are great. And that instead of sending money out of the country to liberate people who may not even want to be liberated, we should focus on our own country.