Still Here - Darrah Fox Bach (with bonus preview of Rashida Ferdinand)

Darrah Fox Bach is the restoration programs senior manager at the Coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana.

Darrah cultivated her love for the outdoors in her native San Francisco, where environmentalism flourishes and Saturdays were devoted to hiking. She moved to Louisiana to study at Tulane University, and stayed for an AmeriCorps position with the Coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana (CRCL). When a job opened up at the non-profit advocacy group, she came aboard full-time.

One of the programs Darrah manages is an oyster shell recycling program that collects the shells from restaurants in New Orleans and Baton Rouge. Volunteers then turn them into oyster reefs–”living shorelines” that serve as habitat for baby oysters and also reduce erosion and protect cultural heritage sites. 

After listening to Darrah's interview, stay tuned for a bonus preview of our conversation with Rashida Ferdinand, the Executive director of Sankofa Community Development Corporation in the Lower Ninth Ward.

After Rashida earned her master’s degree in ceramics, she considered moving to New York for its energy and professional opportunities. “But I wanted to also be in a warm environment, physically and culturally,” she says. “Being around blue, purple, yellow houses. Being around my family. My grandmother was getting older. So it was a no-brainer.” She moved back home to New Orleans in 2001.

Rashida had grown up in the Lower Ninth Ward, a former cypress swamp that had become a working-class district with one of the nation’s highest rates of Black homeownership. As a child, she heard adults reminisce about the crawfish that used to live in the gullies, about the neighborhood’s informal bartering system, and about keeping their doors unlocked at night.

Then, four years after her return, Rashida’s neighborhood made national headlines. In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the city’s levee system failed, and the low-lying Lower Ninth Ward took the biggest hit. Thousands of homes were inundated or leveled. Residents fled to their rooftops for rescue. The death toll exceeded any other part of the city. When Rashida finally saw the neighborhood again, she says, it looked like “a shell of nothing.”

Thanks for listening to A Peace of My Mind's podcast. For photos, videos, and additional content, visit our website and follow us on Instagram.