Dear practically everyone,

So first of all, my first missive went out to the world and went viral. I had no idea it would do that. I have gotten responses about it from people I don't know, who start their emails with, "You don't know me, but ..." and they go on to say something heart-rending about how touched they are and how much they have been inspired to contribute to a cause and could I please suggest one? And then I get emails from people in various places asking me if they could publish my work, from Utah, to Ireland, to Sweden, New York, and — get this — Abu Dhabi. They are actually using the thing to raise money with the sheiks.

MINUSTAH's Jordanian Battalion set up and opened a 12-bed hospital at their base in Port-au-Prince on Tuesday, January 19. The peacekeepers are feeding any children who enter and are treating patients injured in the 7.0 earthquake that struck Haiti on Tuesday, January 12. Photo/MINUSTAH

What an amazing spiral effect of this incredibly awful and horrendous thing happening in this tiny corner of the world. And sometimes a person doesn't realize the impact of anything they do. But if one little sentiment set down in a tiny crummy office in an earthquake zone in the Caribbean can make an oil sheik pour some cash into an aid coffer, then I'll be a can of tuna. Let me give you a sense of these last days. It has occurred to me that there is a word for what I am: "Refugee." It fits. My entire office of more than 30 people is squeezed into a small, three-room building in our compound by the airport.

We sleep on camp cots or on the ground outside the building, because no one is quite comfortable in a closed space yet. There is a bit of grass and a concrete pathway. We listen to the drone of military planes landing and leaving the airport all night. I can see the lights of the massive planes fly just over my face when I lie on my cot. It is the only time I really stop to think about anything that has happened, and sometimes I cry.

Then I fall into a dreamless slumber, swathed in mosquito repellent, in my clothes, until 7 a.m., and wake with the sun high. We stumble into our office with rumpled hair, smile sheepishly, and smooth out our clothes. If we have other ones we might change them. If we don't, who cares anyway, there's too much to do. Yesterday I was wearing my boss's shirt. No one even noticed. We are lucky to have a bathroom in our office, and a shower. So I do wash. But I don't think I brushed my hair today — I can't remember, anyway.

Then, for me, it's a frantic dash to get from thing to thing — Bill Clinton visits, a food distribution goes awry, Ban Ki Moon lays a wreath at the site of our offices, a survivor somewhere is pulled from the rubble, alive by God! Alive! News news news, it never stops, it is an insatiable animal, and I am the news-keeper, I have to keep feeding the machine. So our two camera crews go out, they fight their way through blocked, smoking, stench-filled wreckage to grab the images you see every day, then charge back to the office to me, to hand me the tapes. And I cut it and throw it out to the world. To you.

Meanwhile, from time to time, a colleague sits in a side room with a staff counselor receiving some very bad news. You know this happens when they come out red-eyed and broken, but somehow relieved. The news has arrived, the body was found, and now the knowledge sits like a boulder on every movement and thought this person will ever have. But at least they know. And there is a relief in it, to have a place to bury the body, to have a confirmed reason to grieve. And then, more often than not, they go back to their desk, wipe clear their eyes, and get back to work.

One of my colleagues told me last night about his girlfriend, who is lost in the big rubble graveyard that was my office. "I don't hope for her, I know she is dead." He says it and looks at the sky where the planes are passing. He shrugs. "What can I do? Maybe she will come now and visit me in my dreams. I love her. And I don't know how I will go home and clean up her things." And he comes to work every day. And he smiles, and tells jokes. And sits apart, and cries sometimes. Stares, sighs, gets up. And goes back to work.

I guess this is why I don't think about anything until very late at night, watching the tail lights of the aircraft bringing help and hurt across the sky.

My other good friend here has signed up for probably the worst job there is. Her office no longer functions — there are no longer uses for things like "language training" or "career development." Those concepts seem absurd even. So she volunteered for duty at the morgue, and her job is to take photos of the dead. She is young, and beautiful, from Paris — she loves to read Vogue and wear pretty, red high-heeled shoes. But she spends her days now photographing the decomposed remains of the people we worked with, the ones that annoyed us, the ones we loved. And it has to be done, there has to be the proof that they are gone. And for some, it's impossible to tell who it is, they must search the pocket for an ID card or look for a signet ring. She sat in my office today, impassive, exhausted, looked down at her sneakers and said, "I think I will throw these away."

One last thing. I work in the news business. So I see the things that the agencies say about us — CNN, the major networks. They decry the slowness and the disorganization, and defame the UN, the Red Cross, the American soldiers. "Why isn't the aid getting through!" they collectively scream, and I would like to invite them to Port-au-Prince on a good day and see how long it takes them to cross the street, much less deliver hundreds of thousands of tons of food and water to 3 million people through stench and wreckage and shooting and burning and blockades built of the dead.

And I look around my office, at my colleagues who have lost their husbands and their secretaries, their hard drives and their homes, who sleep on cots by the airport and slam their way through the day so fast — probably so they don't have to spend too much time thinking — and I think, Hey, man. Cut us some slack. Because we are doing our best. And the truth is, we are victims too.

But I am going to end this message on a good note. Today is my mother's birthday, and we talked about how we have so much to be thankful for — our families, our friends. Heck, I even have clean underwear! But for me, maybe the best thing came from my cousin today. He wrote to me on Facebook:

"My wife and I just wanted to send you a quick note. She and I have been following your updates since the earthquake and have been touched by your courage and dedication in the face of the horrors that you have witnessed. Tomorrow evening we are headed to the hospital for the birth of our daughter. We decided midway through this last week to change our daughter's name from what we had previously decided (Ginny) to something that represents the courage that you have shown in Haiti. We have decided to name her Amelia Grace Macaulay."

Now if that doesn't beat all. I read that, and put my head down on the desk and cried.

With that I leave you, thankful to be alive, and looking forward to another night tracing planes across the sky. I am sure you will see pieces of me tomorrow, behind the scenes, as you watch the news. I send you my love from Haiti. Please send us your prayers. And don't stop writing, it's some of the best news I get all day.

Listen to Amelia tell her story in a phone interview with Peggy Wehmeyer.