Charlie Dittmeier's Home Page
Today was Day 2 of the climate change strategy workshop. We had video presentations from speakers in Australia and India, and then the small groups went to work again.
This is the small group on climate and health giving a report on their group discussions and ideas.
CACD, the Catholic Alliance for Charity and Development, is holding a three-day workshop on its response to climate change here in Cambodia. Today was the first day.
About 40 representatives from Catholic NGOs and agencies are participating in the workshop at the Caritas Cambodia national office.
The major presented is a local professor who is excellent. He speaks well, knows his material, and presents it in a really engaging way.
At the end of the day the group divided into four topic discussion groups. This one focused on engaging young people in climate change learning and activity.
Today was the formal anniversary celebration. It was followed by a lunch together and then the guests from Cambodia got on the road for the long journey home.
The morning started with a welcome at a pavilion not far from the church where all the people gathered. There were 30 priests present with the 3 bishops.
Because this was happening in Cambodia, there had to be a traditional dance to welcome everyone. The dancers later appeared at various parts of the mass in the church.
After the mass there were many, many photos taken of different groupings of Daughters of Charity and guests. This is a photo of only the Daughters of Charity who attended from five countries. The congregation of the Daughters of Charity was founded more than 400 years ago by St. Vincent de Paul and St. Louise de Marrilac, in France.
25 years ago the sisters of the Daughters of Charity from the Thailand Province came to Cambodia and started ministering in Battambang in the northern part of the kingdom. Tomorrow they have an anniversary celebration at the Catholic center in Battambang and today sisters from different provinces and their friends from Cambodia started coming together.
This is the residence building on the church compound where I am staying. We arrived about 2:00 PM after a six-hour drive from Phnom Penh.
At the end of the welcoming mass, Bishop Kike invited all the Daughters of Charity to come to the front to be recognized.
After the welcoming mass, the sisters and guests gathered for a great meal.
Most Cambodians do not work in offices or factories. The large majority work in the rice paddies and fields. And most of the rest work in shops and businesses set up in their homes, in the informal economy. In the informal economy, there is a lot of down time–sitting and waiting for customers. Above, the man on the left is a crossing guard, helping customers for a store get across the street. The man on the right is a motorcycle taxi drive–a vanishing breed–waiting for a fare.
“I’d like that small one on the bottom of the pile…”
Those who remember the old days in Phnom Penh–basically the pre-Covid era–will remember Friends, the NGO that cared for children at risk, kids who were deaf or blind, street children, children of fishing families living on boats.
One of Friends’trademark initiatives was the Friends Restaurant, staffed by ex-street children, the only place in Phnom Penh where you could get deep-friend tarantula.
The restaurant didn’t survive the Covid shutdowns but now a welcome sign gives notice that a newly renamed “Friends Kitchen” will soon open on Street 13.
Here’s what the locals wear when riding in a trailer pulled by a motorcycle in 100ºF weather.
This is the house I live in St 53BT in the neighborhood called Boeung Tum Pun, in the unit on the far right. It’s four stories, and Christian university students from an indigenous tribe live on the top two floors. They get up there by a metal stairway coming from the right side of the covered entrance yard at ground level.
I have the ground floor and a second or mezzanine floor. Notice the building is one-room wide, what is called a pteah lveng in the local dialect. A building like this is built for one family, with a shop or restaurant or small business on the ground floor, but landlords block the inside stairways to upper floors and add the outside external stairs so they can house two or more families in the building.