物語の力

マラリアサミットの映像を使った認知向上キャンペーンのようですが、作家チママンダ・ンゴズィ・アディーチェのスピーチの締め込めは英語構文好きを喜ばせますね。

2分40秒あたり

We have the science and the knowledge to beat malaria. It is doable. May we also have the will to do it.

（ウィズダム）

〖祈願〗｟かたく･文｠;〖May A do!〗Aが…しますように

▸ May you both have long and happy lives!

あなたたち2人が長く幸せに暮らしますように

幸いにも彼女のスピーチ原稿を読むことができます。日本人にとってはマラリアは遠い国の出来事に過ぎないのですが、物語を通してなら身近に感じることができます。小説はどうも苦手という英語学習者も彼女の文章ならイメージを膨らませられるでしょう。

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie on growing up surrounded by malaria

Acclaimed writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie reflects on a childhood surrounded by malaria

CHIMAMANDA NGOZI ADICHIE 

Wednesday 25 April 2018 13:04 

PART 1

I was about ten years old. My mother had brought me to the medical center on the campus of the University of Nigeria in Nsukka, where I grew up. As we sat waiting for the doctor, people stopped to say hello to my mother. The campus was a small community and everyone knew everyone else. Each person who greeted my mother would then turn to me and say, “Ndo, sorry for your malaria.’

As we sat waiting for the doctor, people stopped to say hello to my mother.（医者を待つ間座っていると人々は立ち止まって母に挨拶をした）とstop to不定詞が使われているこの文章も英語構文好きが喜びますね。

彼女の文章が大好きなのは優しさとユーモアがあるところ。数学が苦手なままなのはマラリアにかかって授業に出られなかったからマラリアのせいだというエピソードはクスッとしてしまいますね。スカイニュースのインタビューでもこの話をしています。

Living with malaria 'was terrifying'

03:19, UK, Friday 20 April 2018

Each time I had malaria, I didn’t go to school. Once, in Class 2, at the age of 13, I had a very bad case of malaria that made me miss a whole week of school. My friends came to visit bearing cards, as though on pilgrimage, and when I finally went back to school, I felt left out, bereft, because so much had passed me by. It was during that week that quadratic equations were covered in mathematics class. I missed it all. And I have, since then, never been able to make sense of quadratic equations. So perhaps the only good thing I can say for malaria is that I can’t be held responsible for my poor grasp of mathematics. It’s all malaria’s fault.

物語の力を感じるのは、問題の大きさを実感レベルで思い知らせてもらえるから。脳性マラリアの怖さについてはビルゲイツのスピーチでも触れていますが、アディーチェの友人のエピソードを読んだほうがその恐ろしさを感じることができます。

ビルゲイツのスピーチ原稿

Since I started my second career almost 20 years ago, I've seen a lot more suffering than I ever planned on. It's haunting. It's also motivating. It reminds me exactly why the work we're doing together is so important and so urgent.

One of the worst things I've ever seen, years ago in Tanzania, is a child having seizures from cerebral malaria. I didn't know if he would survive. I did know that, even if he did, his brain development would be impaired.

アディーチェのスピーチ原稿

Ekumeku was a bright, funny girl, two years older than me. She was pretty and popular and she had a skill that we children considered very exotic: she could crochet, she would hold a crochet needle and a ball of wool in her hands and before you knew it, a hat or a shawl had materialized. One day she fell sick. It was, of course, malaria. She took chloroquin tablets. Two days later she was shaking in bed. She had seizures, her skin so hot it almost burned and her eyes looked blank and she was delirious. She was talking, sentences running into one another, but nothing she said made any sense.

She was taken to hospital. She missed school for weeks. When finally she returned to school, we could tell that something was desperately wrong; her eyes were glazed, and it seemed as if a different person had inhabited her body. We were told that she had cerebral malaria. That the malaria had got to her brain. It changed her life forever. Today, I often think of her and wonder whether she can still crochet.

ベタですが、イメージを豊かにしてくれる物語に触れることも英語学習には大切なことでしょう。