Taxi!

Ah, the wisdom of taxi drivers.... We have jumped in and out of a few cabs in the past few days, from the speed freak one who argued with us about how fast he wasn't going as he overtook a car in a narrow street doing 40 mph to the man who had the most lulling southern drawl and had been driving a cab for 50 years. We could have paid him just to drive us around to show us his neighborhood and listen to his stories. There was also the one who lost his mobile, swerved all over the road looking on his seat then asked us to call it for him. Aside from the swerving he also had no suspension left in his cab. Most memorable though was the Pakistani born, New Orleans raised man who told us about his family losing their house in Katrina. He said they had 17 feet 3 inches of water in their home. It was completely ruined. He then said he has the insurance money to rebuild it in the bank but the state government wanted him to rebuild from scratch while the federal government wanted him to use the existing foundations and this argument saw him renting an apartment for $1200 pm until it was sorted out. He also spoke about how some parishes (council areas) had been rebuilt because there was a high level of disadvantage amongst the people but their state of the art housing (solar etc) had done little to change the way they lived. I guess this sort of resentment could come easily when you are tied up in red tape. He also said that the rebuilding was complete for areas where the money came in (French Quarter, CBD etc) but not outside these areas. He said the services provided were concentrated on making those areas safe also and a 911 call in his district took at least 30 mins to get a response! We couldn't argue with him on that one as we have seen Police everywhere in the Quarter.