在线英语听力室

VOA慢速英语2013 索马里侨居者回到摩加迪沙

时间:2013-10-29 13:53:06

搜索关注在线英语听力室公众号:tingroom,领取免费英语资料大礼包。

(单词翻译)

 

AS IT IS 2013-10-25 Somali Diaspora Returning to Mogadishu 索马里侨居者回到摩加迪沙

From VOA Learning English, this is As It Is. I'm Christopher Cruise.

Welcome back. On the show today we look at progress in Mogadishu, Somalia and it struggles to recover from years of civil war and lawlessness. Then, we talk about girls in Uganda. A new study shows that twenty percent of them face special difficulties and danger.

Somalis Return to Rebuild Their Country

The Somali city of Mogadishu is recovering from years of war. Many Somalis who left the country have returned to seek careers in business or politics. Avi Arditti reports about the experience of those returnees hoping to find success in Mogadishu.

The smell of coffee fills the air at a cafe in the newly rebuilt Makkah hotel in Mogadishu. The hotel is a meeting place for former Somali emigrants1 who have returned to the city.

Liban Mahti is the owner of the hotel and the small eatery.

“This is an old hotel. Not old-old, but it is from the mid-80s.”

Liban Mahti returned to Somalia from years in Canada with a plan to fix up the hotel with his family.

“During the war it got destroyed. My cousins and I and my uncle got back together and we decided2 to put back the business together and restart and see what we can make out of it, so here it is 25 years after the war. And it’s a good place and people come here to meet and gather, mainly, most of the ex-pats and some of the Somalis who come back from the diaspora, this is their little Starbucks and place to come to.”

Mr. Mahti is among a growing number of Somali diaspora businessmen who are bringing changes to Mogadishu. Business activity has been on the rise in the city during the past two years. The Somali capital appears to be rising from the ruins caused by 20 years of civil war.

Some local Somalis are angered by the return of members of the diaspora. They say all of the good jobs are going to returning immigrants who were educated in Europe, the United States or Canada.

“The local people see that they suffered through this and they have a sense of entitlement for jobs that come from the government or anything that can be done in Somalia. But sometimes the people with the better tools are the people who come from the Diaspora, so at the end of the day who is better for the country is the guy with the better tools to fix the situation.”

Many returning Somalis have entered politics.

Diaspora politicians make up the majority of the federal parliament. The legislature was established last year. Somalia’s current constitution requires lawmakers to have a high level of education. This is helpful for those who went to school overseas.

Hussein Arab Isse represents an area in Somaliland. He spent most of his life in California, but returned to Somalia in 2011.

“We bring what we can to add to the local culture here, whether its politics or anything else, social services, human rights, all that. There’s many issues when you live abroad, it kind of opens your mind up and you pick them up, and anything bad you leave behind, all the good stuff you bring back home and hopefully contribute.”

He says that for the most part, diaspora and locals have common interests for the country.

“I mean there are some tensions here and there when it comes to employment opportunities, but I think too much has (been) made out of it. I don’t see much problem.  I think we are all Somalis and we all want our country to really experience peace and good governance, so we all share that.”

The militant3 group al-Shabab still carries out attacks in Mogadishu and other parts of Somalia. But the new government has held together and business development continues. People here are hopeful that Mogadishu is moving past its 20 year tragedy.

I’m Avi Arditti.

You are listening to As It Is from VOA Learning English.

Ugandan Girls Survey

Earlier this month, the Ugandan government and the United Nations Children’s’ Fund released a study about an issue often ignored by the development community. The study found that more than 20 percent of Uganda’s adolescent girls have what it calls “extreme vulnerability.”

Uganda is the first country in the world to use the Adolescent Girls Vulnerability Index. The index measures the difficulties girls face between the ages 10 and 19.

UNICEF’s David Stewart says the changing population in Uganda makes it urgent to deal with the needs of girls.

“Uganda’s going through a sort of youth bulge4. A very high proportion of the population is going to be young, and of productive age. One of Uganda’s ambitions is to achieve middle-income status by 2040, but to do that, I think the country really needs to unleash5 the potential of adolescent girls.”

The UNICEF official says a study of social programs in Uganda found that very little is being done to help young adolescents.

“There tends to be a focus on younger children, and then on youth. But this 10 to 14 year age group, which is such a crucial part of an adolescent girl’s life often doesn’t receive the focus that it should. It sort of gets lost between childhood and youth.”

The index will be redone every few years. It measures things like education, poverty levels, and rates of early marriage and pregnancy6. But it also considers the situations of older women in the community. The women will serve as examples to adolescent girls.

The study shows sharp differences from one part of Uganda to the next. Mondo Kyateka is a youth development specialist at the Ugandan Ministry7 of Gender8. He says the index will help in making policy.

“We are thinking that with this index, it will inform government to say, ‘OK, we are sitting on a time bomb, we need to invest in these children.’ And the gains that are likely to accrue9 from this investment are likely to be very significant in terms of economic growth, in terms of social issues.”

He adds that adolescent girls can play an important part in breaking the cycle of poverty.

“We know that when we empower the girl child, then we are empowering communities. Then we are addressing a lot of other issues, like issues of nutrition, like issues of early childhood marriages, early childhood pregnancy.”

But Vivian Kukunda says many of the difficulties girls face are created by the boys and men around them. Ms. Kukunda works for the Girl Child Network a non-profit organization based in Kampala. She says to fix the problems faced by girls you must also work with boys.

“We are working with them and we are empowering them, but who is empowering the boys? If they fix the whole issue of the boys it will also help the girls, because they will stop oppressing the girls. No one is telling them, ‘you need to be a good man, you need to be this and do that.’ They don’t have that.”

For now, UNICEF has no plans to extend the index to the rest of the world. But, official David Stewart says the information is already there for other African countries. It only needs to be examined to help spread efforts to empower adolescent girls.


分享到:


点击收听单词发音收听单词发音  

1 emigrants 81556c8b392d5ee5732be7064bb9c0be     
n.(从本国移往他国的)移民( emigrant的名词复数 )
参考例句:
  • At last the emigrants got to their new home. 移民们终于到达了他们的新家。 来自《简明英汉词典》
  • 'Truly, a decree for selling the property of emigrants.' “有那么回事,是出售外逃人员财产的法令。” 来自英汉文学 - 双城记
2 decided lvqzZd     
adj.决定了的,坚决的;明显的,明确的
参考例句:
  • This gave them a decided advantage over their opponents.这使他们比对手具有明显的优势。
  • There is a decided difference between British and Chinese way of greeting.英国人和中国人打招呼的方式有很明显的区别。
3 militant 8DZxh     
adj.激进的,好斗的;n.激进分子,斗士
参考例句:
  • Some militant leaders want to merge with white radicals.一些好斗的领导人要和白人中的激进派联合。
  • He is a militant in the movement.他在那次运动中是个激进人物。
4 bulge Ns3ze     
n.突出,膨胀,激增;vt.突出,膨胀
参考例句:
  • The apple made a bulge in his pocket.苹果把他口袋塞得鼓了起来。
  • What's that awkward bulge in your pocket?你口袋里那块鼓鼓囊囊的东西是什么?
5 unleash bjewz     
vt.发泄,发出;解带子放开
参考例句:
  • They hope to create allies to unleash against diseases,pests,and invasive species.他们希望创造出一些新群体来对付疾病、害虫和一些有侵害性的物种。
  • Changing water levels now at times unleash a miasma of disease from exposed sewage.如今,大坝不时地改变水位,从暴露的污水释放出了疾病瘴气。
6 pregnancy lPwxP     
n.怀孕,怀孕期
参考例句:
  • Early pregnancy is often accompanied by nausea.怀孕早期常有恶心的现象。
  • Smoking during pregnancy increases the risk of miscarriage.怀孕期吸烟会增加流产的危险。
7 ministry kD5x2     
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。
8 gender slSyD     
n.(生理上的)性,(名词、代词等的)性
参考例句:
  • French differs from English in having gender for all nouns.法语不同于英语,所有的名词都有性。
  • Women are sometimes denied opportunities solely because of their gender.妇女有时仅仅因为性别而无法获得种种机会。
9 accrue iNGzp     
v.(利息等)增大,增多
参考例句:
  • Ability to think will accrue to you from good habits of study.思考能力将因良好的学习习惯而自然增强。
  • Money deposited in banks will accrue to us with interest.钱存在银行,利息自生。

本文本内容来源于互联网抓取和网友提交,仅供参考,部分栏目没有内容,如果您有更合适的内容,欢迎 点击提交 分享给大家。