September 29, 2009

New Orleans' different Cemeteries

While several places in the world suffer from shortage of ground water resources New Orleans, Louisiana has the opposite problem... too much water. Two feet into the ground would yield water. This has led to great challenges to the local population in pretty much every field of endeavor. Building homes, roads, bridges, commercial structures are expensive and takes lot more efforts than elsewhere in the US.

Perhaps this problem made the people to build cemeteries over the ground instead of digging graves. Over the past few centuries the mainly Christian immigrants from Europe and Africa to this place have started building graves above the ground. These graves look more like small rooms than places for eternal resting. I visited one of the cemeteries which has several small individual rooms and several family rooms which look more like a large bank vault with individual chambers for different members. Here are few pictures of the cemetery.







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