Japan: Gotong-Royong At The Residential Area

Ah Yu told us he was going to clean the nearby ground with other residents on the first Sunday morning of our stay in Moriya. Before 9am that day, a van with a female voice through a loud speaker passed by houses to remind the event, organized thrice a year by the committee of the residential area. If only lorries passing by our houses in Malaysia could also use this kind of soft and sweet recorded voice when they were selling mattresses or buying old newspapers from us...

When Ah Yu left the house, I was going out from the bathroom. Interested in knowing people's activities, I quickly went to the place which was less than thirty seconds' walk. He was listening to instructions from the team leader together with others. He introduced me and they all welcomed me to join them.

The task was simple: to weed the paths for pedestrians or cyclists.

I was the only one who was pulling out wild plants without any hand protection. Ah Yu offered to pass a pair of gloves to me from the house. But since it was nothing compared to the quantity of weed I regularly had to remove with my bare hands in my garden in Melaka, I preferred to save his trouble.

As the participation was not imposed to anybody, some came in families

while others in individuals. Ah Yu's next-door neighbours did not turn up at all.

Degradable plastic bags were provided for the extracted weed.

Finally, a van came to collect the garbage.

The "gotong-royong" lasted about half an hour. All of us were gathered again before we left with a bottle of green tea each.

I wished we had the same activity in Paya Rumput to beautify the landscape, maintain cleanliness of our residential area, spur interaction among the residents or develop responsibility and teamwork. But when I came back to Melaka, looking at the drain in front of my right neighbours' house,

and the temporary garbage store with the open door of my left neighbours' house,

I realized we still had a long long way to go.