Fauna in Burma's water bodies
Individual Documents
Description:
"When the bullock carts lugging passengers and produce pulled into Yangon, coated in the umber dust of the countryside, the people on board, if not the oxen, used to be able to count on refreshment.
On many a street corner, often under a shade tree, stood what looked like a dollhouse on stilts. Inside was a rotund clay pot covered by a triangle of woven leaves. The pot held drinking water.
Cool without refrigeration, sweet with the taste of earth, nothing slaked the insistent thirst of the tropics better, according to some residents of Yangon, Myanmar’s largest city. “I only drink water from a clay pot,” said Ma Aye Aye Thein, as she sat on a plastic stool and occasionally fanned herself. “I feel hot when I drink from plastic.”
The gifted water was also a welcome reminder of the hospitality of strangers in a period when trust was in short supply. During the height of the military dictatorship that ruled Myanmar for nearly 50 years, people said the walls had eyes and ears. In those times, it didn’t take much for Special Branch, the secret police, to turn a neighbor into an informer..."
Source/publisher:
"The New York Times" (USA)
Date of publication:
2019-10-10
Date of entry/update:
2019-10-10
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Language:
more