2007年VOA标准英语-Mali Villagers Struggle Daily to Obtain Water

By Naomi Schwarz
Dakar
22 March 2007

The theme of the 14th annual World Day for Water is water scarcity¹, a problem that hinders development in many poor countries. In Mali, a near-desert nation where almost 70 percent of the population lives in rural areas, retrieving² water is a daily struggle that can take hours. Naomi Schwarz has this story from the VOA West Africa Bureau in Dakar, with additional reporting from Julie Vandal in Mali's Mopti region.

In a rural village near Mali's border with Burkina Faso, 10-year old Amadou Barry sits astride a camel, waiting his turn to pull water from the village well.

Nearby, many women are also waiting.

 
Mali villagers wait their turn at a water well
"A woman can wait as long as five hours and still not have access to water," says Fayiri Togola, a technical adviser³ with the U.N. children's agency. He says men retrieve⁴ water for their livestock⁵, but women collect the water for all household needs.

Water in Mali is always scarce. Rainfall is unpredictable, and usually only comes in the wet season between June and October. The rest of the year, Malians must rely on underground sources of water, called the water table. And that also presents problems, says Mattias Diassana, head of the medical center in a village 30 kilometers away.

"The water table is very deep, he says, making it difficult and expensive to construct wells deep enough," says Diassana.

The well where 10-year-old Amadou and many women are waiting is deep enough. More than 60 meters, guesses UNICEF's Togola. But he says, pulling up a bucket from such a depth is exhausting work.

Those who do not have animals, he says, are pulling this very long cord by hand. Those with animals use them.

 
Mali villager uses camel to pull water bucket from well
Amadou, for instance, will tie a cord to his camel and let it do the heavy lifting.

The water gets used for all manner of household tasks, from laundry to cooking dinner. But it is not very clean, says Togola, and villagers suffer from many water-related sicknesses, including typhoid and diarrhea.

Togola says they are working with schools to teach children, and by extension their families, to make better use of the available water.

"We have to give them techniques for purifying water," he says.

This idea is not new, he says. But they have improved it by also making more private wells, such as the ones at the health center and the school, available to the general public.

"We think children, as well as their educators, are a good way to impact the behavior of a community," says Togola.

But Ibrahima Barry, father of young Amadou, says what the village really needs is a tap with running water.

1 scarcity   

n.缺乏，不足，萧条

参考例句：

• The scarcity of skilled workers is worrying the government.熟练工人的缺乏困扰着政府。
• The scarcity of fruit was caused by the drought.水果供不应求是由于干旱造成的。

2 retrieving   

n.检索（过程），取还v.取回( retrieve的现在分词 )；恢复；寻回；检索（储存的信息）

参考例句：

• Ignoring all, he searches the ground carefully for any cigarette-end worth retrieving. 没管打锣的说了什么，他留神的在地上找，看有没有值得拾起来的烟头儿。 来自汉英文学 - 骆驼祥子
• Retrieving the nodules from these great depths is no easy task. 从这样的海底深渊中取回结核可不是容易的事情。 来自辞典例句

3 adviser   

n.劝告者，顾问

参考例句：

• They employed me as an adviser.他们聘请我当顾问。
• Our department has engaged a foreign teacher as phonetic adviser.我们系已经聘请了一位外籍老师作为语音顾问。

4 retrieve   

vt.重新得到，收回；挽回，补救；检索

参考例句：

• He was determined to retrieve his honor.他决心恢复名誉。
• The men were trying to retrieve weapons left when the army abandoned the island.士兵们正试图找回军队从该岛撤退时留下的武器。

5 livestock   

n.家畜，牲畜

参考例句：

• Both men and livestock are flourishing.人畜两旺。
• The heavy rains and flooding killed scores of livestock.暴雨和大水淹死了许多牲口。