Travels with Tavish

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

Some days ago in my village there was a baptism. The family was putting on the celebration for three children, so they killed three goats. For a baptism, men gather in the morning to greet each other, pray, and slaughter the animals. After lunch, some women from the village gather together to cook a large meal with the goats that were killed in the morning. Then in the late afternoon (around 4pm), men and women from all over the village come to eat together and pray. After putting on my Friday best and going over for the morning greeting and praying, I returned to my compound. I don't remember what I did in the late morning that day--probably sat outside and played with the little kids or read a book while laying on my host dad's bed in the front yard. Around noon I wandered into my host mom Nyuma's cooking hut to chat with her while she cooked lunch. She was catching me up on the village gossip when her son Keeba (9) walked into the hut and excitedly said to me "I