Letter to a Katrina Survivor

Copyright 2005 Dr Michael Norwood This is the dramatic story behind a new website, www.LettersToKatrinaSurvivors.com, where beautiful letters are pouring in from around the world giving emotional support to the millions of hurricane survivors. With greatest respect for all those suffering, the story nevertheless starts off humorously. Here goes . . . When I was 18, I came close to starving to death. All right, I may be exaggerating. But it was the first time I was living away from my parents as a freshman chiropractic student near Atlanta, Georgia. And the only thing I knew how to cook was rice and beans, which I would boil together, add salt, and half gagging, literally force down twice a day. I would eat the slop outside on my second story apartment stoop. This way - if you can excuse me for being graphic - when I could no longer take it, I had a place to spit out the last mouthful onto the bushes below. One day while quite literally choking there, I noticed an Asian student walking into the apartment across the way. In a blatant case of racial profiling, I said to myself, "I bet that guy can cook!" And what do you know, everyday hence, he'd go walking below my perch, carrying a grocery bag with wonderfully looking exotic vegetables and spices overflowing the top. I tracked his movements with the eye of a lean wolf, waiting for the right moment to make my move. I don't remember the moment I finally introduced myself to the Asian student named Antoine, but I'll never forget how abruptly my life changed afterward. I went from being half-starved on prison gruel, to suddenly finding myself feasting twice a day on lavish Vietnamese cuisine. Tantalizing soups, hot chili dishes, saut