VOA慢速英語:Mangrove Trees Fight Poverty in Eritrean Village

[00:00.00]From VOA Learning English, [00:02.69]this is the Agriculture Report in Special English. [00:07.15]Last Friday was the anniversary of the Japanese [00:11.16]attack on the American naval base [00:13.72]at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on December 7, 1941. [00:19.78]The surprise attack killed 2,400 Americans [00:24.19]and pushed the United States into World War Two. [00:28.86]The following year, the government ordered [00:32.38]more than 110,000 people of Japanese ancestry [00:36.89]into 10 camps to live during the war. [00:40.89]Gordon Sato was born in Los Angeles and was a teenager [00:46.58]at the beginning of the war. [00:48.59]He and his Japanese-American family were forced [00:52.96]to live in the Manzanar War Relocation Center in California. [00:58.33]He learned to make corn grow in the dry, dusty soil. [01:03.30]He later became a cell biologist. [01:07.02]He earned many honors for his research. [01:10.37]But he never forgot his experience in the camp. [01:14.88]In 1985 he went to Eritrea for the first time. [01:20.26]He wanted to see what he could do to help the people [01:24.67]in their struggle for independence from Ethiopia. [01:28.33]He noticed that camels were eating [01:31.39]the leaves of mangrove trees growing along the coast. [01:35.60]He planted more mangroves [01:37.95]so they could be used to feed livestock. [01:41.58]But at first all the new trees died. [01:45.04]Then Gordon Sato observed that mangrove trees only grew naturally [01:50.66]where there was fresh water some of the time. [01:54.18]The fresh water provided minerals that salt water lacked. [01:59.29]"I went to the area where I planted trees before and they all died, [02:03.71]and planted a few thousand more [02:08.83]by providing nitrogen, phosphorous and iron. [02:11.95]They all grew beautifully [02:14.46]and they've been growing for over 10 years. [02:17.62]They are huge trees now." [02:19.47]Gordon Sato found a way to provide these minerals [02:23.23]by putting nitrogen, phosphorous and iron [02:26.58]into small plastic bags at the base of each tree. [02:31.10]Each plastic bag had a tiny hole that was very carefully sized. [02:36.93]The women in the village of Hargigo [02:40.48]started to feed the leaves of the mangroves [02:43.69]to their sheep and goats. [02:46.05]But the animals were not producing enough milk for their babies. [02:50.92]Gordon Sato asked the villagers to grind the remains of fish [02:56.43]they had eaten and spread this fish paste on the leaves. [03:00.98]This provided protein for the sheep and goats [03:05.00]so they could produce more milk. [03:08.17]Gordon Sato called his work in Eritrea the Manzanar Project [03:13.12]to honor the memory of the Japanese-Americans in the relocation camp. [03:19.05]Today there are more than one million mangrove trees around the village. [03:24.27]Gordon Sato has also started a large garden in Mauritania [03:28.92]to grow more mangrove trees. [03:31.63]December 17th will be his 85th birthday, [03:36.04]and he is always looking for new projects and new ways to pay for them. [03:41.55]"You don't have to be brilliant to do useful work. [03:46.20]All you have to have is moderate intelligence and determination, [03:51.98]and you can make a contribution to this world."

00:00

00:00

MP3下載 文本下載