In much of the developing world, lack of water is at the center of a vicious circle of inequality. Some women in Foro come down to the river five times a day—with one or two of the trips devoted to getting water to make a beer-style home brew for their husbands. When I first came to Foro, some 60 men were sitting in the shade of a metal-roofed building, drinking and talking. It was midmorning. Women, says Binayo, "never get five seconds to sit down and rest." On a hot late afternoon I go with her to the river, carrying an empty jerry can. The trail is steep and in places slippery. We scramble down large rocks alongside cacti and thornbushes. After 50 minutes we reach the river—or what is a river at certain times of the year. Now it is a series of black, muddy pools, some barely puddles. The banks and rocks are littered with the excrement of donkeys and cows. There are about 40 people at the river, enough so that Binayo decides that the wait might be shorter upstream. The wait is especially long early in the morning, so Binayo usually makes her first trip before it is light, leaving her son Kumacho, a serious-faced little man who looks even younger than his four years, in charge of his younger brothers. 注释： (1)vicious circle恶性循环 (2)shade n. 阴，阴凉处 (3)metal-roofed连字符连接的合成词，(带)金属屋顶的 (4)jerry n.俚语，便壶、简易的容器，文中jerry can连用，表示同一意思 (5)scramble v. 攀缘，爬行(于陡峭或不平之路) (6)cacti n. 仙人掌，cactus的复数形式 (7)thornbushes合成名词，相当于thorny bushes，荆棘丛 (8)puddle n. 小水潭，根据上下文，比muddy pools更泥泞、更小，可翻译成“泥潭” (9)excrement n. 动物排泄的粪便 (10)upstream n.河流的上游