Prime Time 5, Coursebook mit Audio-CD

3 Listening Listen to the second part of the story and take notes of what you think is remarkable about what Jimmy does. 4 Reading Read the text now and highlight passages that explain what type of person Jimmy is. Do these passages match with your notes? 3–4 And Jimmy?Well, I can tell you a bit more about Jimmy. Jimmy saves lives. Jimmy studies and passes exams, and passes more exams, and Jimmy becomes a doctor. And not for Jimmy the nice easy life of a town doctor in the American Midwest, oh no. Jimmy goes to the Congo. Jimmy goes to a village in the middle of Africa, a village of great poverty, a village with lots of disease and no doctors at all. There Jimmy starts a hospital, and there Jimmy saves lives. Lots and lots of lives. People hear about this, and they come from miles around, on animals, on foot, any way they can get there. They camp outside and wait until Jimmy can help them. As many as his few medicines allow. And the people love Jimmy because he has a special gift. He can cure with drugs and he can cure with his hands. He’s thin and he has white skin and he wears little round John Lennon glasses like his father before him. Well, all those Africans think he’s the strangest guy they’ve ever seen, but they respect him. They respect him and they love him. For he can cure anything, almost. He comes to your bed when no one else wants to come to your bed, holds your hand when no one else wants to hold your hand, and he talks to you gently, sometimes in your language and sometimes in his. And you don’t understand what he’s saying and you don’t know how holding your hand is going to make you feel better, but it does. And from time to time Jimmy leaves. He leaves his hospital in the hands of the African doctors and nurses he’s trained, and he flies back home to America and he begs for drugs and money to go on with his work. And he travels all around, talking to businessmen and politicians and church groups and colleges and anyone who’ll listen. And he tells them about women dying because there is no clean water, and children dying because they need medicine that costs fifty cents in the United States. And he shows them photos of hungry people and photos of disease and he shows them pictures that would make anyone with even half a heart cry. And this Jimmy, he shows all these people a photo of a girl who was brought to the hospital one night. She’d been carried twenty miles. She’s completely bald and her body is thin and her arms and legs are like sticks. Then, would you believe it! Here’s a picture of her a few months later, with a beautiful head of hair, a round face, and a big happy smile! “So put your hands into your pockets,” says Jimmy, “deep, deep down into the large pockets of the west. Because the poor are suffering. All over the world the poor are suffering, and it’s up to you to help them.” And they do! They take out their wallets, the businessmen. They open their doors, the bankers. They clear out their drug cupboards, the doctors, and they give our Jimmy what he needs to go on for another few months. And the drugs he gets, he uses to cure people. And the money he gets, he spends on cleaning the water system so there’s no more disease. And the rest of the money he spends on schools. Schools to give people an education. And one of the things he makes them teach people in the schools and the villages is how not to get AIDS. So that’s Jimmy. That’s what he does, that boy I was telling you about, the one who grew up in a bus, travelling around New Mexico. And it’s all true, because I read it in a Sunday paper some time ago. I’ve changed the names and the facts a bit, but it’s more or less all true. And if you’re still wondering why I’m telling you Jimmy’s story, not mine, then you don’t understand what I’m talking about at all. I’m talking about life! I’m talking about not just living the same old way everybody else does. I’m talking about getting out there and doing something real. Because that’s what I call living! That’s what I call living! (From Who is Jesse Flood? by Malachy Doyle) 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 55 60 65 70 75 80 85 22 Identities – what next? 2 Nur zu Prüfzwecken – Eigentum des V rlags öbv