VOA标准英语2011--Mogadishu Offers Little Comfort to Somal

Mogadishu Offers Little Comfort to Somalis Arriving From Famine

Famine is forcing Somalis by the hundreds of thousands to leave their homes in search of survival. Some are fleeing across the border to refugee camps in Kenya and Ethiopia, where international aid agencies are providing food aid. But those reaching the Somali capital are finding little if any help.
Women with scrawny children on their hips¹ stand in line for hours outside the dirt-floored kitchen at Mogadishu’s Badbaado Camp, holding a pot or sometimes just a plastic bag. Inside, volunteers man two huge iron cauldrons, scooping² out a ladle of boiled white rice into each container.
For most of the camp’s 20,000 or so residents, that rice and a bit of thin soup is all they have to survive on.
Forty-year-old Khadija Ibrahim and her six children walked most of the way from a village 200 kilometers south of the capital, in an area controlled by the al-Qaeda-linked group al-Shabab. She says an al-Shabab gunman killed her husband when he refused an order to go to a mosque³.
Khadija says the rice has little nutritional⁴ value, but it’s better than nothing, which is what they had in the famine-stricken south.
“We eat rice with no meat or vegetables. It’s not nutritious⁵, but it’s survival. We eat whatever we can get,” she said. 
Authorities say hundreds of camps just like Badbaado have sprung up in and around Mogadishu over the past three months. There may be 200 Badbaados, maybe 300. No one knows for sure.
But while aid is reaching the refugee camps outside Somalia, the United Nations and the big international humanitarian⁶ agencies have still not been able to begin food distribution in Mogadishu. It was only a week ago that al-Shabab was driven out of the city, allowing aid workers to survey the scope of the unfolding catastrophe⁷.
It will be weeks, maybe months, before a system of food distribution can be set up.
26-year-old Umar Aden has been here with his family for nearly a month. He says what little food there is being supplied by local businesses hoping to prevent a mass starvation.
“This camp has a leader who collects money from the local community and he cooks food for us every single day," Aden said.
Still for many, it is hard to understand why it is taking so long to get food, some of which has reached Mogadishu port.
Mohammed Abdallah is a community elder working with the people of Badbaado Camp. He worries that help may not be on the way in time to help many of the camp’s sick and malnourished children.
“Our requests for aid have fallen on deaf ears. There’s nothing.” He says the only thing available the cooked rice and some plastic sheeting for making tents," he said.
With al-Shabab gone, aid agencies are beginning to descend⁸ on the city. The head of the United Nations disaster relief agency OCHA is said to be arriving in the next couple days.
But aid professionals say even in the best case scenario⁹, the short-term outlook for those who have arrived in Mogadishu, and for those who may still be suffering in the famine-stricken south and central Somalia, is disturbing.

1 hips   

abbr.high impact polystyrene 高冲击强度聚苯乙烯，耐冲性聚苯乙烯n.臀部( hip的名词复数 )；[建筑学]屋脊；臀围（尺寸）；臀部…的

参考例句：

• She stood with her hands on her hips. 她双手叉腰站着。
• They wiggled their hips to the sound of pop music. 他们随着流行音乐的声音摇晃着臀部。 来自《简明英汉词典》

2 scooping   

n.捞球v.抢先报道( scoop的现在分词 )；（敏捷地）抱起；抢先获得；用铲[勺]等挖（洞等）

参考例句：

• Heated ice cream scoop is used for scooping really cold ice cream. 加热的冰淇淋勺是用来舀非常凉的冰淇淋的。 来自互联网
• The scoop-up was the key phase during a scooping cycle. 3个区间中，铲取区间是整个作业循环的关键。 来自互联网

3 mosque   

n.清真寺

参考例句：

• The mosque is a activity site and culture center of Muslim religion.清真寺为穆斯林宗教活动场所和文化中心。
• Some years ago the clock in the tower of the mosque got out of order.几年前，清真寺钟楼里的大钟失灵了。

4 nutritional   

adj.营养的，滋养的

参考例句：

• A diet lacking in nutritional value will not keep a person healthy.缺乏营养价值的饮食不能维持人的健康。
• The labels on food products give a lot of information about their nutritional content.食品上的标签提供很多关于营养成分的信息。

5 nutritious   

adj.有营养的，营养价值高的

参考例句：

• Fresh vegetables are very nutritious.新鲜蔬菜富于营养。
• Hummingbirds have discovered that nectar and pollen are very nutritious.蜂鸟发现花蜜和花粉是很有营养的。

6 humanitarian   

n.人道主义者，博爱者，基督凡人论者

参考例句：

• She has many humanitarian interests and contributes a lot to them.她拥有很多慈善事业，并作了很大的贡献。
• The British government has now suspended humanitarian aid to the area.英国政府现已暂停对这一地区的人道主义援助。

7 catastrophe   

n.大灾难，大祸

参考例句：

• I owe it to you that I survived the catastrophe.亏得你我才大难不死。
• This is a catastrophe beyond human control.这是一场人类无法控制的灾难。

8 descend   

vt./vi.传下来，下来，下降

参考例句：

• I hope the grace of God would descend on me.我期望上帝的恩惠。
• We're not going to descend to such methods.我们不会沦落到使用这种手段。

9 scenario   

n.剧本，脚本；概要

参考例句：

• But the birth scenario is not completely accurate.然而分娩脚本并非完全准确的。
• This is a totally different scenario.这是完全不同的剧本。