VOA标准英语2010年-Firewood Fuels Malians Health Care Cos

Anna Boiko-Weyrauch | Sikoro, Mali 26 March 2010

In the West African nation of Mali, villagers are cutting firewood to pay their medical bills.  But in an ironic¹ twist that is making their environment more unhealthy.

 

In the village of Kabe, about 50 kilometers from Mali's capital, Bamako, a community health worker looks over Aseitu Sacko.  She looks in her eyes and palpates her stomach.  The clinic is just a small room with a bed and boxes of medicine stacked in the corner.

Sacko brings her toddler over.  The health worker asks whether he has ever seen a doctor.  Sacko says no.  The boy has kwashiorkor, which means he does not get enough protein in his diet.  The doctor bill is almost $14, while most Malians live on a little over $1.00 a day.

Sacko more often visits a traditional healer who costs a fraction of the price and prescribes herbs.

Walking back home, Sacko says she does not have money to buy good food for herself or her son, so she certainly can not afford to go to the Western-style clinic.

In the neighboring village of Sikoro, Mam Samake also avoids the doctor.  Samake says when her family gets sick, they do not get any medicine because they do not have any money.  She says they just go out and farm like usual.  But one day Samake got so sick with malaria² she had to go to a clinic.

She says because she did not have any money to pay the doctor, she walked around her village, going house to house asking other people to lend her money.  Eventually she got what she needed.  Then, Samake says, she had to cut firewood and sell it to pay back the money she borrowed.

Samake says people in Sikoro did not go to school and do not have anything to sell, so to make money they cut firewood.

Fourteen-year-old Siraje Sacko takes a long log of wood from a pile towering over her head and whacks³ into smaller pieces.

Walking around the village, every household has sticks in large stacks in the yard waiting to be cut or in small tidy bundles tied with bark.

Deforestation

Mali consumes six million tons of wood a year. Villagers say the more wood they cut, the farther they have to walk to find it.

Mam Samake says they used to walk three or four kilometers to find firewood.  Now they have to walk seven kilometers there and back everyday.

The Malian Ministry⁴ of the Environment estimates each year the country loses 4,000 square kilometers of forest cover to fuelwood and timber harvesting.

Sahel Eco is a Malian aid group combatting deforestation.  Its executive director, Mary Allen, says the situation could be different. "They could be cutting those trees and earning a good living if there was proper management of those trees and proper management of the fuel wood supply," she said.

In other parts of Mali, Sahel Eco has helped farmers realize that they can make more money by taking care of the trees and selling their fruit and leaves instead of chopping them for fuelwood.

There are also efforts in Sikoro to provide villagers with another way to make money and provide food.

The villagers use big metal watering cans to care for crops at a community garden recently funded by the University of Southern California.  They will use the money they get from selling the vegetables to pay their bills, including doctors' bills.
 

1 ironic   

adj.讽刺的，有讽刺意味的，出乎意料的

参考例句：

• That is a summary and ironic end.那是一个具有概括性和讽刺意味的结局。
• People used to call me Mr Popularity at high school,but they were being ironic.人们中学时常把我称作“万人迷先生”，但他们是在挖苦我。

2 malaria   

n.疟疾

参考例句：

• He had frequent attacks of malaria.他常患疟疾。
• Malaria is a kind of serious malady.疟疾是一种严重的疾病。

3 whacks   

n.重击声( whack的名词复数 )；不正常；有毛病v.重击，使劲打( whack的第三人称单数 )

参考例句：

• Lizzie Borden took an axe, Hit her father forty whacks. 丽兹玻顿拿起斧头，砍了爸爸四十下。 来自互联网
• Grizzly bear paw whacks camera out of position and jettisons it downstream. 大灰熊的爪子把摄像机移出了固定的位置并且把它扔到了下游。 来自互联网

4 ministry   

n.(政府的)部；牧师

参考例句：

• They sent a deputation to the ministry to complain.他们派了一个代表团到部里投诉。
• We probed the Air Ministry statements.我们调查了空军部的记录。