Travels with Tavish

Hello Blog Readers, I am offering math tutoring services via Zoom for grades K-12 this winter. I am interested in working with students who need extra math help, students who enjoy math, and students who want to go above and beyond the math they are studying in school. I have been tutoring via Zoom for two months and am pleasantly surprised with how quickly I have been able to establish personal connections despite the lack of in-person interaction. If you or any families you know are interested in tutoring, please email me. I will provide my resume and scheduling and rate information via email. Here is a bit of background information about me that you can pass on to any families that may be interested: I grew up in Seattle and participated in math competitions such as Math Is Cool and MathCounts from grades 4-12. I then attended Northeastern University in Boston and graduated in 2018 with a degree in Mechanical Engineering. I recently spent 18 months in the Peace Corps in Senegal doin

I am aware that I never got around to writing Part 2 of my July 2020 Books update. In the spirit of not leaving myself a list of backlogged book reviews to write, I am listing here all the books I have read since my quarantine in the basement ended. I have chosen to write about a select few books instead of writing about all of them. As the literary-minded of you may notice, I am indeed on a long quest (which will take years) to read all of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novels. The Overstory This novel is on a higher plane than the average novel that I pick up. It thoroughly deserves its Pulitzer Prize. It is about trees. More specifically, it is about nine characters whose lives interact and overlap, but the central force in each of their individual and collective stories is the trees in their lives. Some have reverence for trees to begin with, others know nothing about them. Either way, trees slowly, irreversibly, become the driving, motivating factor in each of their lives and bring th

When I was evacuated from Senegal in March, there were still quite a lot of things I wanted to do before returning to the US. In addition to my work and spending with time my host family, I had a few personal projects that I was working on. I had a list of books that I wanted to get through before my service was over, a sewing project, some biking goals, and a project born out of my curiosity about winning percentages in various forms of solitaire.  During my down time for the first 9 months of my service, I either read a book, napped, called another volunteer, listened to music, or listened to a podcast. Those were just about the only forms of entertainment I had in my hut for the hot afternoons. Then, one day, I "discovered" a "new" form of entertainment: solitaire! After just a few days of playing, I decided to make a project out of this and record how many games I won or lost each day on my calendar. Then, after playing 100 games or so I would have a general id

During my last month in Senegal, I was nominated for a Daily Point of Light award. Points of Light is an organization started by President George H.W. Bush that celebrates volunteer achievements. My story is Daily Point of Light #6848. Here is the link to the article about me: https://www.pointsoflight.org/ awards/seattle-mans-service- plants-the-seed-for-stronger- communities-and-environmental- health/ I have been doing some volunteering in Seattle for the last few months: once a week at a food bank and once a week at an urban farm  which was in the local news recently. I am learning a lot from seeing different parts of the food system than I did in Senegal. Commuting to these volunteer positions is also a good way to ensure I bike a minimum of 35 miles a week. I'll be back with more updates soon, including one for the solitaire enthusiasts. Stay tuned.

Here are some books reviews from the last few books that I read in Senegal and a few that I read during my 2-week quarantine period in Seattle: Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet This novel is fantastic. It follows the life of a young Chinese boy, Henry, living in what is now Seattle's International District in the 1940's and his budding romance with a Japanese girl, Keiko, of whom his family does not approve who lives nearby in Seattle's former Japantown. Her family is sent to an internment camp; Henry tries to keep in contact with her as much as possible, but the gap eventually becomes impossible to bridge. The timeline of the novel jumps back and forth from Henry's past (the 1940's) to the present (1980's) where Henry is struggling to deal with the death of his wife (not Keiko) and the memories of Keiko that come flooding back when the long-lost possessions of interned Japanese families are found in the basement of a Seattle hotel. Reading about

Here are some pictures from my last couple weeks in village. A lot of these pictures were taken as soon as I was told I was going to be evacuated. My hands and feet dirty and full of blisters after helping clear shrubs and stumps from the new soccer field in my village Ramatu (Amadou's wife) and her son Jomboy Amadou and his family Amadou, his mom, and his son Amadou's younger brother Ousmanni Amadou and Ramatu's youngest son (born12 hours before this photo was taken!) Amadou's cousin Moussa. He is scared of me and would always cry when I tried to pick him up Amadou's uncle Mamadou, Mamadou's son Moussa, and Ousmanni Me and Amadou My beautiful saddle bags that I only got to use once. They took over 6 hours to make in the city. Modeled after my friend Eric's saddle bags Me and my host dad, Seydi  Me with the women in my host family. From left, Sohona, Maimouna, Nyuma, Fatou, Sohona, Balla (4) and Nyum

Note: I was evacuated from Senegal about one month ago due to the coronavirus pandemic. I plan on making a few more blog posts in the coming months. Now that I am back from Senegal, many of you have asked me for a list of my favorite books that I read while overseas. I was planning to have a "Top 10" list, but my time got cut short, so it is a "Top 8" list instead. I enjoyed the majority of books that I read in Senegal, so naturally I would recommend most of them. These eight books, however, stood out above all the rest. If you have continued to read my blog thus far, please take my advice and pick up one of these eight books (feel free to send me an email to recommend one of the eight specifically for you). I know you all have some extra time to read right now. Without further ado, here are my favorite books (in no particular order) that I read in Senegal: Fiction : The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead The C

Here are some more book reviews. This batch was full of some great reads: Doing Good Better MacAskill's explanation and justification of effective altruism is another book that will make my list of the most important books I have read while in Senegal. Effective altruism is the process of donating your time and money in a way so as to help the largest number of people. The most effective charities are hundreds of times more effective than a typical (or "average") charity. This means that by carefully choosing which organizations we give our time and money we can do an incredible amount of good, even with limited resources. In addition to providing a common sense framework to evaluate charities, MacAskill discusses how to evaluate our consumer choices (Fair Trade, sweat shop clothing), career choices (NGO work, politics, earning to give), and choice of which cause to support (global poverty, climate change, etc.) in order to make the biggest difference in the large

Here are some pictures from my site from the month of February: My toxoma pruning a cashew tree that he planted a few years ago After pruning and cleaning weeds from around the tree The largest of my toxoma's cashew trees My friend Bamansa took me to the Ingeli waterfall about an hour away (by bike) from my luumo town. It's not flowing at this time of year--just trickling down the rock Bamansa walking up the rocks to the falls. As you can see, he is dressed in full winter garb for the start-of-hot-season weather Bamansa cutting bamboo at the falls Bamansa in the bamboo forest near the base of the falls The pool beneath Ingeli. I am definitely going to come back during the rainy season when the water is really flowing At the waterfall The Ingeli waterfall (the bare cliff in the center of the photo) from up on a cliff nearby The beautiful view from the cliff above the waterfall A young palm tree out in the bu