Lesson 3 The Power of Helping Others
A Korean Chief in Nigeria
There is a Korean man who became the chief of a Nigerian tribe for making huge contributions to Nigeria’s agriculture and economy. ____ is his story.
Dr. Hahn is an agriculturist who ____ in plant breeding.
Growing up ____ after the Korean war, he knew what it was like to be hungry, and he wanted to help people in need.
In 1971, he was given two opportunities: ____ for Cambridge University or for the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture in Nigeria.
On his way to ____ for a job interview, he first stopped in Nigeria.
There, he saw the country had been destroyed by a ____ war.
More than 2 million ____ had died, and more than half a million people were starving.
Dr. Hahn wanted to rescue Nigerians from ____.
So, he persuaded his family and ____ to Nigeria.
When Dr. ____ got there, he learned that the staple food in Nigeria was a plant called cassava.
Unfortunately, cassava was defenseless ____ viral and bacterial diseases, so it did not yield much crop.
Knowing this, he decided to ____ stronger cassava varieties with higher yields.
However, Dr. ____ faced a problem: there was not much information available about cassava.
Cassava was rarely ____ or developed because it was not a cash crop.
To ____ matters worse, he had never seen or eaten cassava before.
While studying African cassava, Dr. Hahn found out that the Europeans ____ colonized Brazil had first brought cassava into Africa.
He immediately flew to Brazil to study the ____ cassava.
There, he learned ____ it and went back to Nigeria with Brazilian cassava seeds.
____, Dr. Hahn traveled to every corner of Nigeria and collected different types of local cassava to see if they were good at fighting diseases, but they weren’t.
Fortunately, he found a plant that was similar to cassava but resistant to ____.
He ____ crossing this plant with the Brazilian cassava.
After five years of hard work, Dr. ____ finally succeeded in developing new varieties of cassava.
They yielded ____ more than the local ones and could survive diseases.
Another obstacle
Another ____ Dr. Hahn faced was distributing the new varieties.
Local farmers ____ not listen to a foreigner.
To overcome this problem, Dr. Hahn visited markets, churches, and schools and ____ out the new varieties to Nigerian people for free.
He went from one house to the next to let farmers know the ____ of these new varieties.
Sometimes he planted them in the middle of the cassava field without telling the ____.
His colleagues were concerned that the ____ might be angry to find different cassava in their fields.
However, Dr. Hahn insisted that the farmers ____ think that it was a gift from God.
He was right. The farmers soon realized the superiority of the new varieties, and more and more ____ started to cultivate them.
Thanks to the new cassava, ____ people were starving.
In fact, they could even make more ____ by selling the remaining cassava.
Eventually, Nigeria became the ____ that produced the greatest amount of cassava in the world.
In 1983, the Yoruba, a major tribe of Nigeria, honored Dr. Hahn as a chief with the title “Seriki ____” or “the King of Farmers.”
In addition to cassava, Dr. Hahn developed ____ major foods, including yam, sweet potato, and banana.
Soon, other African countries ____ for his help.
Dr. Hahn traveled to these ____ to teach local farmers and scholars how to grow these new varieties.
He spent 23 years developing and distributing the new ____ varieties to the whole continent.
Although he left Nigeria in 1994, he is still remembered as ____ of the greatest scientists who fought against starvation in Africa.
Dr. Hahn once said, “If you ____ faith that what you do will benefit humanity, I believe that you must sacrifice yourself.
____ if I were to go back to the past, I would still do the same thing.”