An aid worker’s insights, from ground zero to Haiti

Thompson’s time at ground zero shapes her desire to serve as a first responder to global disaster. Thompson, who hails from Australia, is the daughter of a minister and nurse. Her parents often served as missionaries, demonstrating to their daughter the importance of a sense of volunteerism born of the Judeo-Christian value of being of service. The memoir further unfolds in earthquake-ravaged Haiti, but most of the book is devoted to Thompson’s intense 18 months in the small Sri Lankan village of Periliya.

On Christmas Day 2004, Thompson learns that a level 9.3 earthquake has triggered a tsunami devastating much of coastal Southeast Asia. By Jan. 3, 2005, Thompson had raised the airfare to go to Sri Lanka and help in any way she could. She initially foreshadows her bittersweet year among the villagers of Periliya by describing Sri Lanka as “an island shaped like a large teardrop located to the south of India.’’

Although “days crawled by as if they were centuries,’’ Thompson and a team of volunteers establish a refugee camp for several thousand people with a working infrastructure that covers food distribution and medical aid. Thompson personally raises additional funds for purchasing weather forecasting instruments to alert locals to potentially cataclysmic conditions.