A few months back, Desalegn Godebo’s wife descended into a feverish delirium

游客2023-12-28  9

问题     A few months back, Desalegn Godebo’s wife descended into a feverish delirium. "It was as if she were mad," he said, shuddering at the memory, "she was scratching me like a crazy woman. "
    Before a new road was built through this village, Godebo would have loaded his wife onto his back and hiked six hours along narrow dirt paths to the small city of Awasa. Instead, he lifted her into a truck for the one-hour ride to town. Her condition was diagnosed as malaria and typhoid. She is well now and back home caring for their baby.
    The dirt-and-gravel road may look like a timeless feature of the Great Rift Valley (东 非大裂谷) . But it is part of a huge public road-building project that is slowly hauling one of the poorest, hungriest nations on earth into modernity.
    The people who live along it divide time into two eras: Before the Road and After the Road. Because of the road, people can take their sick to the hospital and their children to distant schools. Farmers like Godebo who had only their own feet or a donkey’s back for transport can now transport their crops to market.
    Ethiopia, an agricultural society where most farmers still live more than a half-day’s walk from roads, has been especially hobbled by their absence.
    Support for roads in Africa, particularly from the World Bank, is growing again after a decade of decline in the 1990s. Then the bank reduced lending for roads.
    Road-building is coming back in style as a way to combat rural poverty in Africa.
    While no one expects roads alone to end the chronic hunger faced by millions of Ethiopians or the famines that loom periodically, most development experts agree that they are a precondition for progress and are essential to the success of the Green Revolution, which produces abundance in much of Asia but bypasses Africa.

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答案     几个月以前,德撒林?高德宝的妻子因发烧而精神错乱。高德宝想起当时的情景就不寒而栗。他说:“她当时就像疯子一样。她用指甲抓我,简直是个疯子。”
    过去这个村子不通公路,高德宝就得背上妻子顺着狭窄的土路走上六个钟头,上小城阿瓦萨去看病。这一次就不用了,他把妻子扶上一辆卡车,一个小时就进了小城。经诊断,她得了疟疾和伤寒。现在她已经好了,又回到家里照顾孩子了。
    这条石子路可能看上去很像东非大裂谷的一个永恒的标志。其实不然,它是一项宏伟的筑路工程的一部分,这项公共工程正逐渐推动世界上贫穷、饥饿最为严重的国家之一走向现代化。
    沿路的百姓把时间分为两个时代:“修路前”和“修路后”。因为修了这条路,大家就能把病人送到医院去看病,把孩子送到远处去上学。像高德宝这样的农民,过去全靠自己的双脚,或用驴子来驮东西,现在也能把自己种的东西运到市场上去卖了。
    埃塞俄比亚是一个农业国,至今大部分农民要走半天的时间才能走上公路,因此,没有公路一直对埃塞俄比亚的发展影响很大。
    非洲筑路得到的援助,尤其是世界银行的援助,20世纪90年代逐渐减少,现在又逐渐增加了。当时世界银行削减了筑路的贷款。
    筑路工程现在又轰轰烈烈地恢复起来,这是非洲农村战胜贫困的一条出路。
    虽然谁也不指望只靠修路就能解除千百万埃塞俄比亚人长期忍受的饥饿之苦,就能消除不时出现的饥荒之灾,然而致力于发展的专家们一致认为,修路是取得进步的先决条件,也是绿色革命成功的基础。当年绿色革命在亚洲广大地区取得了丰硕的成果,却与非洲失之交臂。

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