Author: Charles Dittmeier

Water Meter

This is a corner of the front yard of the present Maryknoll office we are renting. It’s an unpaved corner where our guards grow aloe vera, bananas, pineapples, jack fruit, or whatever else strikes their fancy. The circle draws your attention to the water meter for our house, just sticking up out of the ground, a little bit near the fence, but not really trying to be out of the way.

There are no Cambodian wiring and plumbing codes–at least none that are enforced–so everything like installing water to a house is done by your brother-in-law and he puts the meter wherever he feels like it. Or wherever the plastic pipe that he brought extends to.

This is a close-up of the water meter. It’s set and half buried in a mound of concrete, out in the open where anyone can fool with it. Note that, oddly, there is a cut-off valve on either side of the meter!

Christmas 2020

We are having seven Christmas masses spread out over four days, December 24-25-26-27, to give more people a chance to celebrate Christmas with the faith community. For these masses we have reintroduced some liturgical practices we haven’t seen since March. We are saying the Gloria and starting to sing an opening and closing song and also for Christmas we are incensing the nativity set and altar at the beginning of all the masses.

I’m dreaming of a wet Christmas….

The English community had a 6:30 PM Christmas Eve mass, and when we came out at 7:30 PM, it started pouring rain. The Khmer community were supposed to have a 10:30 PM mass on this stage tonight. Will they make it? It’s still raining at 9:00 PM!
This is some of the traffic caught in the rain at 7:45 PM. Most of the moto drivers on the street have cheap plastic ponchos you can buy for 37ยข. But notice all the moto drivers up under the gas station shelter. That’s the custom here…if you’re out and it starts raining, you park under the shelter to wait it out, dozens of such riders effectively shutting down the station because no one can get near the pumps. It’s OK, though…the gas stations don’t complain!