Author: Charles Dittmeier

Deaf Leadership Training

At the Caritas Deaf Development Programme, we have leadership training going on as a preliminary step to establishing a national association of the deaf.

Today our DLTP team met with Mariah (C) from the Philippines. She is a leader in their national deaf association and helped our group understand the differences and commonalities of deaf associations around the world.

DLTP Meeting

This week the Deaf Leadership Training Program had an all-day meeting to finalize a concept paper or proposal to be sent to be considered for funding by the Finnish Association of the Deaf. Here the Cambodian staff members of the training team and the management of DDP discuss whether to approve or not the draft version of the proposal.

Student Experience

After a carcinoma was removed from my right forearm, I needed to change the bandage every two days and it was almost impossible with just one hand. Today I asked some of the deaf students to help.

Primarily I just wanted to give them a new experience since they would not be exposed much to this type of wound. There is no Cambodian sign for cancer so I just signed there was a problem in my arm and then explained the steps of biopsy, excision, bandaging, removal of the stitches, etc. They would probably not also have a chance to see the actual stitches in someone’s arm.
Another reason for asking them to help was to affirm them. Deaf people in Cambodia are looked down upon and mostly ignored. These young people have never even talked to their own parents because their families do not know sign language. They can get the impression that they are useless, a burden on the family, and without value. Letting them help me and my thanking them gives them a sense that they are good and can do good things and people will appreciate them.

Different styles

Not all priests should offer the sacrament of reconciliation (confession). Not all priests should preside at mass. Not all priests should preach. Just because a man is ordained doesn’t mean he has the training or the skill and ability to do those things well.

Most priests (I hope) spend time preparing to preach. But those who do prepare have different styles. I know a couple priests who write out their homilies word for word. Myself, I use bullet points in an outline. The photo above shows how another priest prepared for preaching today, the 1st Sunday of Advent. His notes above would not help me but they helped him give a really good homily. Different strokes for different folks….

Heavy and Solid

Today I had to go back to the doctor to change the bandage on my arm surgery. I was only in the waiting room five or ten minutes but that gave me a chance to take some other photos of the obsession with heavy wooden furniture and “objects” like the tall wooden cylinders for which a tree was cut down.

Thanksgiving in Cambodia

Thanksgiving is different in Cambodia. Actually, it doesn’t exist here but we Americans get together continuing the tradition we grew up with. In previous years, it was the Maryknoll NGO that gathered but after the NGO closed, it’s just a ragtag group of us for Thanksgiving this year.

Actually, I should use the past tense to indicate that six of got together yesterday, Wednesday night, for a Thanksgiving dinner prepared for us by Kila (R) , a Canadian. Maryknoll NGO always met weekly on Wednesdays and we annually moved the celebration of Thanksgiving to that day so we wouldn’t have to rearrange schedules on two days of the week. We are joined each week by Marist Bro. Brian Kinsella, the director of the LaValla School for children with disabilities.
Thanksgiving is a work day here, of course, but I left the Deaf Development Programme early to go to the clinic of Dr. Sithach, a dermatologist who found a carcinoma on my forearm two weeks ago. The biopsy showed it was malignant so today I went back and he excised it.

Does this waiting room look like your doctor’s waiting room? I doubt it! Here the culture says you have made it, you are successful, if you can furnish your home and office with HEAVY, uncomfortable wooden furniture. The chairs where the woman is sitting weigh 300-500 pounds each. The smaller chairs on the right only about 150 pounds.
Dr. Sithach said he would cut out as much as necessary but as little as possible. I told him to take more rather than less, to make sure he got the cancer. Now I have to wait for another biopsy to make sure he got everything.

Training the way it should be….

This week a representative of the national deaf association of Thailand (by the fan) came to Phnom Penh as part of the training of young Cambodian deaf people to be leaders in a national association here. it is wonderful to see deaf leaders training our deaf leaders in fluent sign language. They learn so much more when their teacher is deaf himself!