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Kyla's Full Interview

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Category: Kyla's Full Interview
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Kyla Billiot

February 15, 2012

Galliano, Louisiana

Golden Meadow Middle School

 

My name is Kyla Billiot.  I’m from Galliano, Louisiana.

So you were 10 at the time of the oil spill?

Yeah.

How did the oil spill affect the jobs in your family?

Well my uncle he would help bring, he would help them to bring the boats in and with the oil spill there was no boats going out, so he couldn’t help so he got laid off.

Okay.  How did it affect your community?

I guess it’s when the people that would do fishing and everybody they would fish and do that, it would, it affected them because they we can’t have our, eat seafood like we usually do.

How did the oil affect the natural habitat?

It killed a lot of fish and birds and the natural, the natural habitat that lived here.

How many animals died?

A lot.

Did many people get sick?

Uh, yes.

Did it affect the food you was eating?

Yes, we couldn’t eat our seafood.  We would eat seafood a lot, so we couldn’t eat it, you know.

What kind of seafood did you eat?

Crawfish, shrimp, fish. Crabs!

And all of that was affected by the oil spill?

Yes.

What can you eat now?

We can, I’m guessing a lot of people just usually eat the crawfish and crabs, the shrimp and the fish now because people might think the oysters still have oil in them because of where they live.

Has anything returned to how it was, how it used to be?

Nothing will return how it used to be.  We won’t become the same happy community as we was because it destroyed a part of our culture, I would say.

You mentioned sort of that it won’t be the same.  But are there some things that you see that are getting better and that are coming back?

Yes.  We can go to the beaches now and we can go swimming without getting all full of oil now.  Or falling in the ditch.  Or falling out of the boat. 

*Thank you to Kyla and to all of the Golden Meadow Middle School after-school program student photographers, tech crew, prop personnel, and interviewers that worked together to create this and other interviews.*