Dispatch from Niger

This doesn’t relate directly to eco-topics, but Jennifer Margulis continues to publish excellent accounts of her family’s experiences in Niger. This is her latest from Sunday’s Washington Post.

Writing about the choice to raise her kids in a developing country, she says, “I am doing everything in my power to keep them from harm. But I know that limiting their world to sanitized America is not the right way to protect them.”

It’s worth noting that I first met Jennifer when I was a confused and sheltered undergraduate at UMass-Amherst. Hers was the lone voice that encouraged me to drop out of business school, bike solo through France, and go to West Africa. She’s also the reason that I now compost, live within walking distance of where I work, and never eat fast food. I sometimes despair that we live in a culture that celebrates mediocrity (one of the disadvantages of democracy, I guess), so it reassures me to see work like Jennifer’s in the mainstream media.