Charlie Dittmeier's Home Page
This graphic from Morning Brew, an interesting (and cheeky) daily take on the news, shows that the vaccines are working. Breakthrough infections–those happening to people already vaccinated–are minimal and produce usually only mild symptoms. Get vaccinated! (And thanks, Morning Brew!)
Cambodia is in a volatile and unstable situation with COVID-19. A few days ago, the WHO declared that the next two weeks will be critical for the kingdom as daily infection numbers remain high and the Delta variant becomes established. [All photos are from the Khmer Times]
DEAF is a four-letter word but not THAT KIND of four-letter word! It’s perfectly acceptable and certainly preferred by deaf people. Don’t use the terms on this poster and other terms such as “audially challenged” and “deaf and dumb.” Hearing people jump through all sorts of hoops trying to avoid the word “deaf” but it is the scientifically correct and most acceptable term used by deaf people.
Yesterday we had the funeral for Fr. Toni Vendramin, a PIME priest who was long-term missionary in Cambodia (and Bangladesh before that). He died two and a half weeks ago but because of COVID-19 we were prevented from gathering for his funeral until now. He was a good man and a good friend who would help with our English masses when I had to be away.
Maryknoll is moving to a different office building in August and today we went through the house with the landlords to check for need repairs and changes. Here Sr. Regina calculates whether our dining room table will fit into this space. It does.
A somewhat unlikely sign of progress in the development of Cambodia is this small frontloader at a sand pile on a construction site. It would be much more common to see a handful of humans–maybe most of them women–moving the sand around with shovels. But Cambodia is becoming more and more mechanized.
It’s not uncommon to see piles of shoes at a sidewalk pop-up shop. I can imagine it would take a while just to find your size but then, too, it may take a considerable time just to find the mate of one that fits. Click here to see some shoe “shops.”
After incurring only about 375 positive cases of COVID-19 in the first fifteen months of the pandemic, Cambodia now has experienced more than 72,000 cases in the last five months. Phnom Penh is almost completely vaccinated but the country has had 800-1000 cases per day for more than two weeks. A good number of those cases now are “imported,” i.e., brought into Cambodia by migrant workers returning to Cambodia after their jobs disappeared in Thailand when factories there were closed. Many of these returning workers are crossing the border illegally and it is feared that they are bringing the delta variant of the virus.
Above is a picture of 325,000 doses of AstraZeneca vaccine donated by Japan, part of a one million dose gift. This vaccine arrived yesterday.