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Views #516 | Intermediate 5

Life in Africa

Carla talks about a special time in her life.

Script
Vocab
Quiz


Carla	Todd

Todd: So Carla, you lived in Africa.

Carla: We got married in Africa.

Todd: Wow.

Carla: And we moved to Nigeria. As I told you before, we got married in Ghana, and we moved to Nigeria. And our kids were born in Nigeria. But I wanna tell you a little bit about before our kids were born, because we lived in a place, a small small village that had no running water, no electricity, we could buy fresh food once a week. That means there were no toilettes, so the people used the rocks and the bushes around the village. Maybe that's too graphic, is that too graphic?

Todd: No no no no.

Carla: And, we had to pump our water out of a well. And at night we would pump one bucket full of water, and it would be half full of silt by the next morning the kind of muddy silt would have sunk to the bottom. And then we would pour off the clear water off the top. And it was a bad drought year in 1976. And we had to, we would cook our vegetables and then drain off the water and then use the water, reuse the water to wash the dishes and even to wash our clothes. And we had just enough water to. Fresh water we kept for drinking. Washing ourselves, washing our vegetables, cooking, washing the dishes, we used, reused vegetable water. And I had, we had no electricity so I cooked a stew once a week. And twice or three times a day I had to, we had to heat the stew up again, boil it to kill all the germs. Otherwise, it would've poisoned us.

Todd: Man.

Carla: But in that year that we lived there, I think we were healthier than we had ever been before, or since.

Learn Vocabulary from the lesson

graphic

Maybe that's too graphic, is that too graphic.

If something is "graphic," it is very detailed and shows or tells everything. We usually use this word to refer to movies, photographs or stories. Notice the following:

I didn't like the movie, because it was too graphic. I like action movies, but this one had too much blood.
Her stories are always too graphic and make the listeners uncomfortable.

silt

It would be half full of silt by the next morning.

"Silt" is very fine dirt or sand and is usually carried by moving water, like a river. Notice the following:

After two years in the river the box was almost completely covered by silt.
The water in the lake was full of silt and was not clean to drink.

drought

It was a bad drought year in 1976.

A "drought" is a time when there is very little precipitation, rain or snow, for a long period of time. Droughts usually cause food problems because plants don't grow without water. Notice the following: