
Tuesday
I came to Maryknoll two days early for the board meeting so I would have a chance to go to Health Services and several other offices for small meetings. Click here to see how this first open day proceeded.
Charlie Dittmeier's Home Page
I came to Maryknoll two days early for the board meeting so I would have a chance to go to Health Services and several other offices for small meetings. Click here to see how this first open day proceeded.
Today was departure day for a trip to the United States to participate in a board of directors meeting for the Maryknoll Lay Missioners. Click here to see more about the journey.
The guiding principle in transporting people and things in Cambodia is that if it’s not dragging on the ground, you’re good to go.
Opinion is really the lowest form of human knowledge. It requires no accountability, no understanding. The highest form of knowledge is empathy, for it requires us to suspend our egos and live in another’s world.
~ Bill Bullard
Cambodians have this unshakeable belief that whatever ails you, you need an IV. You can go into a pediatrics ward and every child will be hooked up to an IV. For many Cambodians, if they don’t get an IV when they’re sick, they might as well get nothing. Here two parents ride home on their moto, with their son in between them, and he has an IV in his arm.
New sewers are being installed in parts of Phnom Penh and in some respects they are literal life-savers. Open pits and holes along the roads like this are quite common, and when the road is flooded with water, you proceed at great peril. Things are better now but I remember walking along flooded roads with a staff, feeling for holes, pits, uncovered sewers, etc.
When I was a kid I remember seeing “sun dried” on boxes of raisins. Here in Cambodian culture, sun dried takes on a whole different meaning where there are few processed foods. People buy fish, fillet them, and leave them out on the street to dry–and catch dust and street grime.
It’s lunch time with street food all around. What will it be, vegetables (boiled corn on the cob)? Or fruits?
Phnom Penh’s population is rapidly increasing and so are the problems dealing with the huge amounts of rubbish generated every day. Click here for more about that.