Time to pack

Donna S. writes:

The team met tonight for the final time before departure. Most of the vehicles are leaving Saturday around 2 p.m. from Chapel Hill headed for our stopover in Oxford, Miss.

Here are some things about Dulac, Louisiana, the town we're going to serve:

— It's in the bayou in the southern reaches of Terrebonne Parish. Water and swamp outnumber dry land in square miles.

— Around Dulac, the population is around 90 percent Houma Indian. The parish is 51 percent Houma and 49 percent Cajun.

— The word "Houma" means "red" in Choctaw. After several migrations in the Louisiana, the bulk of the Houma people settled in an area they called "Dulac" — "the land of the lake" — referring to nearby Lake Boudreaux.

— Life in the bayou is centered around fishing, trapping and farming.

— The Methodist Church came to the area in 1882. In the 1930s, Miss Ella and Miss Wilhelmina Hooper brought educational opportunity to the children of Houma. Public education was not open to Native Americans at that time. When that changed, the focus of the Methodist Church shifted to social outreach to the community.

With this visit, we are in for an educational experience ourselves.