Tsunami and the Single Girl
September 2013
Krissy Nicholson / Allen & Unwin
At 29, Krissy Nicholson is no stranger to overseas travel, having spent three years backpacking to over 40 countries in Europe, South America, the Middle East and parts of South-East Asia. Nothing however, could have prepared her for the next stage of her journey, when she recognises her calling as an aid worker in the developing world. After a year working for the Melbourne branch of Oxfam deploying aid personnel to war zones and natural disasters, she desperately wants to work in the field, but wonders whether the nomadic lifestyle will mean losing hope of her other dream of meeting ‘Mr Right’.
Arriving in Dhaka, Bangladesh, Krissy is quickly initiated into her new life of extremes – extreme suffering, conditions, stress, and love affairs, and for the next six years she searches for love (in what seems like all the wrong places) against the backdrop of adrenalin-fuelled emergency response in disaster zones spanning New Guinea, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Ethiopia and Uganda. As she confronts the myriad of physical, emotional and spiritual challenges thrown her way, she draws strength from the resilience of the human spirit she encounters each day, and rests her hope in the fact that by devoting herself wholeheartedly to her work, her love life just might fall into place when she least expects it.