Life After Katrina: Ghanaian Student Speaks

For Phyllis Okwan, life after Katrina is beginning to turn around.

The 31-year-old Ghana native fled her New Orleans apartment ? and her studies at Southern University at New Orleans ? to avoid Katrina and the oppressive flooding the hurricane unleashed in the Crescent City.

?It (was) distressful because we had to leave the place with nothing,? Okwan said. ?We took two to three days? clothing.?

Now ? thanks to University of Southern Mississippi Professor Khin Maung ? she has a new academic home.

Maung picked up Okwan, her husband and another New Orleans student in Jackson, put them up in his house and helped enroll them at Southern Miss, she said.

?We come from a small campus, we?re still learning our way around (Southern Miss),? she added. ?But, so far, people here are real helpful.?

This weekend ? a full two weeks after most students evacuated University of Southern Mississippi in anticipation of Katrina?s wrath ? the school?s Hattiesburg campus slowly filled up again with life.

And as the students returned, so did Katrina.

As families carried armloads of supplies into residence halls or students wandered down paths once lined with more trees, the hurricane was more a story than a literal storm. It was a shared experience on which the university?s weather-worn population sought to rebuild.

But the impression it left on Southern Miss was unquestionably strong.