Chapter 2
Listening Speaking
IC3 Section
IC3 | IT | TOEFL | Best Answer
Vietnamese translation of IC3
Persian translation of IC3
Language Lessons
Assessment
Water Ecology / Sinh thái học về nước
بوم شناسیِ (اکولوژیِ) آبGuiding Question: What are your sources of clean water? |
Câu hỏi hướng dẫn: Bạn hãy cho biết đâu là nguồn nước sạch? |
سوال راهنما: منابع آب آشامیدنی شما کدامند؟ |
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Skills:
In this chapter you will do these things:
English Language Skills:
- Words to Describe Household Water Supply
- Personal Vocabulary Book
- Intonation of Yes & No Questions
- Intonation of WH- Questions
- Listening to the City Water Supply Explanation
- Diagramming and Explaining Water Source for Personal Households
Vietnamese Language Skills:
- Review of Tones
- Tones and Word Meanings
- Grammar Point! Color Word Classifiers ( “Màu”)
- Combining Syllables for More Specific Meanings
Intercultural Communicative Competence
Fetching Water: Women’s Work
Inspired by Rudyard Kipling’s "Mowgli" story, Disney’s The Jungle Book follows the ups and downs of the man-cub Mowgli as he makes his way back to the human village. What ultimately draws him back to the village is the lure of a young girl fetching water.
Shanti, the young girl, sings a song that names the roles of family members:
http://www.classicmoviemusicals.com/jungbk5.jpg |
My Own Home My own home, my own home My own home, my own home
Father's hunting in the forest Mother's cooking in the home I must go to fetch the water 'Til the day that I'm grown 'Til I'm grown, 'til I'm grown I must go to fetch the water 'Til the day that I'm grown
Then I will have a handsome husband And a daughter of my own And I'll send her to fetch the water I'll be cooking in the home Then I'll send her to fetch the water I'll be cooking in the home |
It is the role of women and girls from regions where water is not yet piped into village homes to fetch the water. This role is repeated in countless parts of the world.
Discussion Questions
Read the other contributions to this section and contemplate these questions for discussion:
1. Water and food are central to human subsistence. Whose responsibility is it to secure water? And how?
2. Should there be gender neutrality in securing water?
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Water
by Rachel Schneller
(Mali 1996–98)
The following essay was the 1998 Moritz Thomsen Peace Corps Experience Award winner.
When a woman carries water on her head, you see her neck bend outward behind her like a crossbow. Ten liters of water weighs twenty-two pounds, a fifth of a woman’s body weight, and I’ve seen women carry at least twenty liters in aluminum pots large enough to hold a television set.
To get the water from the cement floor surrounding the outdoor hand pump to the top of your head, you need help from the other women. You and another woman grab the pot's edges and lift it straight up between you. When you get it to head height, you duck underneath the pot and place it on the wad of rolled up cloth you always wear there when fetching water. This is the cushion between your skull and the metal pot full of water. Then your friend lets go. Spend a few seconds finding your balance. Then with one hand steadying the load, turn around and start your way home. It might be a twenty-minute walk through mud huts and donkey manure. All of this is done without words.
It is an action repeated so many times during the day that even though I have never carried water on my head, I know exactly how it is done.
Do not worry that no one will be at the pump to help you. The pump is the only source of clean drinking water for the village of three thousand people. Your family, your husband and children rely on the water on your head. Maybe ten people will drink the water you carry. Pump water, everyone knows, is clean. Drinking well water will make you sick. People here die every month from diarrhea and dehydration.
The pump is also where you hear gossip of the women from the other side of the village. Your trip to the pump may be your only excuse for going outside of your family's Muslim home alone.
When a woman finds her balance under forty pounds of water, I see her eyes roll to their corners in concentration. Her head makes the small movements of the hands of someone driving a car: constant correction. The biggest challenge is to turn all the way around from the pump in order to go home again. It is a small portion of the ocean, and it swirls and lurches on her head with long movements.
It looks painful and complicated and horrible for the posture and unhealthy for the vertebrae, but I wish I could do it. I have lived in this West African village for two years, but cannot even balance something solid, like a mango, on my head, let alone an object filled with liquid. When I lug my ten-liter plastic jug of water to my house by hand, it is only a hundred meters, but the container is heavy and unwieldy. Changing the jug from one hand to the other helps, but it is a change necessary every twenty meters. Handles do not balance. On your head, the water is symmetrical like the star on top of a Christmas tree. Because my life has never depended on it, I have never learned to balance.
Source: http://peacecorpswriters.org/pages/depts/archives/awards/pcexpawdwin/exaw98.html
Women and Water
http://www.unifem.org/about/fact_sheets.php?StoryID=289
Women are most often responsible for domestic and community water management in developing societies, being in charge of determining sources, quantity and hygienic quality. Often they travel great distances in search of water, which limits their time for other activities, including growing and preparing food and income generating work: On average women and children travel 10–15 kilometres [1], spending 8 or more hours per day collecting water and carrying up to 20 kilos or 15 litres per trip [2]. It has been calculated that in South Africa alone, women collectively walk the equivalent distance of 16 times to the moon and back per day gathering water for families [3]. The economic value of this unpaid contribution is enormous: In India it is estimated that women fetching water spend 150 million work days per year, equivalent to a national loss of income of 10 billion rupees [4].
Water is critical for household care and nutritional health. It is generally agreed that a minimum of 20–40 litres of freshwater is required per person and day to meet minimum drinking and sanitation needs. Women also provide water for domestic livestock and poultry as well as for crop irrigation — 1,000 litres of water are required to grow one kilogram of grain [5]. Women, particularly poor women, also use water for productive purposes, including for small-scale industries and micro-businesses, often household-based [6].
When women’s access to water is restricted due to distance, time constraints or economic factors, they are often obliged to accept lower-quality water. This is a particularly frightening alternative given that 80 per cent of all illnesses are transmitted by contaminated water [7]. The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) Committee has underlined that the health of rural women often crucially depends on adequate and non-discriminatory access to water [8].
- [1] http://www.arts.mcgill.ca/152-497b/h2o/water/gwater/wfacts.htm
- [2] Bulajic Borjana, Women’s roles – a policy overview, Waterline, vol.
- [3] Maude Barlow and Tony Clark, Water Apartheid, The Nation, 15
- [4] As reported in: Jal Swaraj Abhiyan (Campaign for Water Liberation), Foundation for Science, Technology & Ecology. Equivalency: US$
- [5] According to UN Economic and Social Council Report.
- [6] Gender and Water Listserve message 10.
- [7] Population Report No.14.
- [8] CEDAW General Recommendation #24, “Women and Health.”
The Trans
IC3 Persian Translation:
Taking It Further Explanation
Near the end of each IC3 chapter, professors or instructors are asked to plan "applied learning" events, interviews, research, or service projects on- or off-campus. "Taking It Further" means that our on-campus, classroom learning are just a first step in broader learning that affects our vocations, professions, and community service.
For instance, throughout our completion of chapter 1, all participating campuses and partners to this IC3 exchange are completing "web profiles" that will be used extensively by members of each pod. This "takes further" the relationship building of pod members. Another example, at the end of chapter 2 (Food and Water Security), a language class using IC3 could link with a biology department to examine "best practices" in protecting a clean watershed. In Vietnam, this could involve the students' applied learning of water security in terms of the health of the Mekong River, upstream and downstream inter-state concerns, and the long-term viability of industries alongside fish and rice farming. Here in Virginia (USA), our students will examine our watershed, which flows into the Shenandoah River and the Chesapeake Bay, and from there the Atlantic Ocean. Or at the end of chapters 6, 7 and 10 (Domestic Economics, Regional Trade, Globalization), a class could interview merchants and vendors of one's village or city to discern their wisdom in making a living in an age of globalization.
There is no single set of learning objectives for the Taking It Further exercises. Hopefully, each participating campus and partner to IC3 can share through pod dialogues your lessons learning through this exercise. There may even be collaborative study, research, or service for certain Taking It Further ventures among IC3 partners.
Lessons and Exercises for this chapter are found in Level 1 Writing Chapter 1 in the IT Exercises and Activities for Developing Ideas Section.
Best Answers to Guiding Question:
After you have completed the Reading, Listening/Speaking, and Writing chapters 2, how would you answer the following question?
Guiding Question: What are your sources of clean water? |
Câu hỏi hướng dẫn: Bạn hãy cho biết đâu là nguồn nước sạch? |