 |
|
||||||||||||||||||
|
| 22 | Mandalay Diary 6th Jun 2001 | 02/Sep/2001 |
| 21 | Mandalay Diary 26th Mar 2001 | 02/Sep/2001 |
| 20 | Mandalay Diary 1st May 2001 | 02/Sep/2001 |
| 19 | Mandalay Diary 18th Apr 2001 | 15/Jul/2001 |
| 18 | Mandalay Diary 17th Apr 2001 | 28/Jun/2001 |
| 17 | Mandalay Diary 9th Mar 2001 | 28/Jun/2001 |
| 16 | Mandalay Diary 23rd Feb 2001 | 12/Apr/2001 |
| 15 | Mandalay Diary 1st Feb 2001 | 20/Mar/2001 |
| 14 | Mandalay Diary 13th Jan 2001 | 07/Mar/2001 |
| 13 | Mandalay Diary 4th Nov 2000 | 08/Feb/2001 |
| 12 | Mandalay Diary 4th Nov 2000 | 08/Feb/2001 |
| 11 | Mandalay Diary 30th Sep 2000 | 16/Dec/2000 |
| 10 | Mandalay Diary 10th Oct 2000 | 17/Oct/2000 |
| 9 | Mandalay Diary 6th Jul 2000 | 11/Sep/2000 |
| 8 | Yangon Diary 30th Apr 2000 | 23/May/2000 |
| 7 | Yangon Diary 27th Apr 2000 | 23/May/2000 |
| 6 | Yangon Diary 2nd Mar 2000 | 23/May/2000 |
| 5 | Yangon Diary 13th Mar 1998 | 23/May/2000 |
| 4 | Yangon Diary 2nd Feb 2000 | 13/May/2000 |
| 3 | Yangon Diary 20th Feb 2000 | 01/May/2000 |
| 2 | Yangon Diary 25th Jul 1998 | 01/May/2000 |
| 1 | Yangon Diary 25th Mar 1998 | 01/May/2000 |
| Magazine | ||||
|
||||
| News from Yangon | ||||
|
||||
| Yangon Reports | ||||
|
||||
| Essays | ||||
|
||||
| Hit Charts | ||||
|
||||
|
||||
| Magazine Top |
Drainage
Although I didn't take notice of drains while I lived in Yangon, I saw many of them in Mandalay when I moved there. Main roads are made carefully and pavements are made of concrete on the both sides. But, if you go to the back of the roads, you will see drainages everywhere. There are various size of drainages, big and small. Small bridges are built over the drainages in front of every household. After it rains cats and dogs, there are folds because of blocked drainages. The houses are like floating ones in the river.
And there are many houses that keep ducks. Ducks go along the drainages. I saw those who work while carrying their children astride their hip. It is a heavy duty for the drainages which receive wastewater used in washing faces in the morning, taking a bath and housework.
Repair work at the both sides has been carried out to the best as a necessity of an urban. When I was young, once I stepped into the ward of the rich in Tokyo I could see a lot of drainages. Drainage has various meaning; bridge, mouse and etc. and they are not very good. Although Myanmar people say that monasteries, soldiers and Chinese people are abundant in Mandalay, mosquitoes are really plenty in the city. If you pay a study visit to the town, you will see that it has something to do with drainages.
Mandalay University campus is very wide and there are a lot of trees on both sides of roads. Grass is grown to make words under these trees. There are also drainages beside these trees. It is strange to see the people cutting the grass zealously to form words. Men and women were making efforts to do so under blazing sun. They make a pile of cutting of grass and burn it when they become dry. Eradication of mosquitoes and cleaning are done superficially here in Myanmar in which scenery is taken as the main thing. In Japan, underground drainages were constructed at the cost of large sum of money 50 years ago after the world war ended. Such drainages will be able to be constructed in Myanmar if efforts are made starting from now.
While I am about drainages, I would like to tell you about toilets in Myanmar. Waste is not pumped away for it is to be used in agriculture like toilets of Japan in old times. Common toilets were used in Japan along the whole period after the war but now own toilets are used. Although compound of a house is not wide enough to dig many pits for toilets, pits are dug in other places for about once in five years.
This environ is interesting, isn't it? Because toilets are in monastery and building compounds, city development committee comes and pumps out the waste from the toilet pits when they are asked to do so.
© Suzuki Yoshio
Back