VOA标准英语2009年-Organic Garden Grown for Senegalese AIDS P

By Scott Stearns
Dakar
18 October 2009

 
The organic garden for AIDS patients at Senegal's main university hospital
Senegal's main university hospital has established an organic garden to provide free, healthy meals for AIDS patients.

Dakar's National University Hospital is one of the country's busiest. The research and training facility treats thousands of patients a year while conducting tests on improving antiretroviral therapy for AIDS patients.

But away from the main road, back behind the infectious disease ward¹ is a quieter spot where the lowest-tech method of improving health is organic gardening.

The small garden is bursting with produce in raised hydroponic beds, in old tires, and in rows of carefully planted crops sown in peanut shells and rice hulls² to improve the sandy soil.

Bernard Marcel Diop is a professor in the university's Department of Infectious Disease. "The idea was to give a supplementary³ meal, rich with essential minerals and vitamins in the form of a soup that is distributed free of charge to reinforce patients' immune systems," he says.

In the hospital kitchen, women pound peppers from the garden. It is part of a stew⁴ that is served between lunch and dinner at a meal known in the Wolof language as Ndiagonal (n-joe-go-nahl)

Nearly all of the ingredients come from the hospital garden, to help supplement the diet of patients in the infectious disease ward, nearly two-thirds of whom have HIV/AIDS.

Even the garden's only pesticide⁵ is organic. It is based on the oil from the Neem tree.

Professor Diop says the organic diet is far healthier than the standard rice and meat. "All the organic vegetables are better for patients' health because they are not full of pesticides⁶ or heavy metals that disturb digestion," he says.

Crops in the 1,200-square-meter garden are rotated every planting season to keep the soil fresh.

In its first year, the garden produced vegetables worth more than twice the $4,000 start-up grant from the U.S. Agency for International Development. It now produces between 200 and 400 kilograms of produce a month. Some of those vegetables are sold to hospital staff and local stands to pay the gardener's salary and buy organic seeds.

1 ward   

n.守卫，监护，病房，行政区，由监护人或法院保护的人（尤指儿童）；vt.守护，躲开

参考例句：

• The hospital has a medical ward and a surgical ward.这家医院有内科病房和外科病房。
• During the evening picnic,I'll carry a torch to ward off the bugs.傍晚野餐时，我要点根火把，抵挡蚊虫。

2 hulls   

船体( hull的名词复数 )； 船身； 外壳； 豆荚

参考例句：

• Hulls may be removed by aspiration on screens. 脱下的种皮，可由筛子上的气吸装置吸除。
• When their object is attained they fall off like empty hulls from the kernel. 当他们的目的达到以后，他们便凋谢零落，就象脱却果实的空壳一样。

3 supplementary   

adj.补充的，附加的

参考例句：

• There is a supplementary water supply in case the rain supply fails.万一主水源断了，我们另外有供水的地方。
• A supplementary volume has been published containing the index.附有索引的增补卷已经出版。

4 stew   

n.炖汤，焖，烦恼；v.炖汤，焖，忧虑

参考例句：

• The stew must be boiled up before serving.炖肉必须煮熟才能上桌。
• There's no need to get in a stew.没有必要烦恼。

5 pesticide   

n.杀虫剂，农药

参考例句：

• The pesticide was spread over the vegetable plot.菜田里撒上了农药。
• This pesticide is diluted with water and applied directly to the fields.这种杀虫剂用水稀释后直接施用在田里。

6 pesticides   

n.杀虫剂( pesticide的名词复数 )；除害药物

参考例句：

• vegetables grown without the use of pesticides 未用杀虫剂种植的蔬菜
• There is a lot of concern over the amount of herbicides and pesticides used in farming. 人们对农业上灭草剂和杀虫剂的用量非常担忧。 来自《简明英汉词典》