Charlie Dittmeier's Home Page
Every year I attend the graduation of the Salesian Sisters’ girls schools: two of them in Phnom Penh and one in Battambang Province. I have mass every Friday morning at one of the schools so the students and the sisters know me.
Practically every day there are articles in the newspapers about corrupt government and military officials. It is really incredible how much this is just a normal part of the body politic. Click here for more.
Today I went to the Russian Market to get a replacement suitcase for one of mine that has lost its wheels. Actually it’s the Tuol Tum Poung Market, but it acquired the Russian Market name during the period when the Soviet bloc was keeping Cambodia afloat. You can get just about anything there, from hot food to a motorcycle carburetor, although you can no longer find the AK-47s and box of grenades that the older residents here remember.
These pictures make the stifling hot market look almost spacious, but maybe that’s because there were fewer people because of the downpour outside. That’s rainwater, coming through the roof, on the floor in the first picture. The aisles, as in the bottom photo, are just wide enough for two people to carefully squeeze past each other.
This post is also a trial of a new gallery function in WordPress that allows several photos to be automatically arranged by the software. I don’t find it all that impressive.
This is our DDP co-director, Keat Sokly, at the World Federation of the Deaf conference in Paris, France today. He and I had planned to go together but I found the trip would cost me $2,500-$3,000 and I just couldn’t afford that. Sokly was able to be included in a budget with one of our partner groups. These WFD conferences are every four years and are really valuable for the ideas shared there and the people you meet.
Here is a snapshot of life and work in Phnom Penh in 2019. The established shops in the background, left to right, are one shop selling LED signs; a small restaurant in the middle; and on the right a shop making and selling stainless steel things. And then in the middle, someone attempting to make an extra buck, has set up a little coffee stand. That may be part of the restaurant operation, bring their services right out to the curb. Note the two offering burners on the motorcycle. Usually those are just steel buckets or a cheap burner set on the curb for burning offerings on the Chinese holidays, but these are a different style and I’ve never seen them made out of polished metals like this. They must be for some special family or some special occasion.
This is a real mom-and-pop shop, with mom assembling a little girl’s bike. The shop down the street, with the Giant sign, is where I bought my bicycle several years ago.
The government of Cambodia is in thrall to China. Article after article in the newspapers–and the personal anecdotes of people we meet–tell how Cambodia has been sold to China. The Chinese government gives $600 million a year to Hun Sen’s government—with basically no strings attached. You can imagine where that money goes. And you can guess why the Cambodian government does little to stop the sinacization of their country.
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Here is a link to an article that describes the incredible transition of Sihanoukville, a coastal town, into a Chinese town.
And here is another article that describes the drive for development that is displacing hundreds of people who live around the boeungs (lakes or flood plains) and is causing flooding and other disruptions because the normal rainfall now has nowhere to go.
