Religion: In the last week, Joseph Brant lost his apartment, walked by scores of dead in the streets, traversed pools of toxic water and endured an arduous journey to escape the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in his hometown New Orleans.
Yesterday, he was praising the Lord, saying the ordeal was a test that ended up dispelling his lifelong distrust of white people and setting his life on a new course. He said he hitched a ride on Friday in a van driven by a group of white folks.
"Before this whole thing, I had a complex about white people. This thing changed me forever," said Brant (36), a truck driver who, like many of the refugees receiving public assistance in Houston, is black.
"It was a spiritual experience for me, man," he said of the aftermath of a catastrophe al-Qaeda-linked websites called evidence of the "wrath of God" striking an arrogant America.
Brant was one of many evacuees across Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi who gave thought to religion yesterday, almost a week after the floods.
At the Astrodome in Houston, where 16,000 refugees received food and shelter, Rose McNeely took the floods as a sign from God to move away from New Orleans, where she said her two grown children had been killed in past years in gunfights.
"I lost everything I had in New Orleans," she said as she shared a cigarette with a friend. "He brought me here because he knows."
Gerald Greenwood (55) collected a free Bible earlier in the morning, but sat watching a science fiction television programme. "This is the work of Satan right here," he said.
The Bible was one of the few books many of the refugees had among their possessions.
On Friday, several Jehovah's Witnesses walked the floor of the Astrodome, where thousands of cots were set up, to offer their services.