Author: Charles Dittmeier

Khmer New Year

Probably two thirds or three fourths of Phnom Penh’s population leaves the city for the Khmer New Year celebrations which take place in the family home in the provinces. But the new year is also a time for foreigners to visit Cambodia and experience the special celebrations.

This year we were blessed by a return visit by Ronise Barreras who worked at DDP about fifteen years ago when we created a new job position. We wanted our students to have more than just an academic experience and Ronise came to help expose our students to new ideas and activities to broaden their understanding of the world and themselves.

Colin Allen (blue shirt) worked at DDP just before Ronise and they had met online but today was the first time we all met together in person along with Darren, Ronise’s husband. We had a delightful hour or two before I had to leave, catching up and just learning about each other’s lives fifteen or twenty years later.

Khmer New Year

The Khmer New Year will be celebrated April 13, 14, and 15, and so today is New Year’s Eve. It’s a bit late to be shopping for your roast pig for the new year dinner, but if you don’t have it yet, you better get moving.

What? Me, hot?

The last few days have seen the temperature at 100ºF. It is really hot in the deaf offices where we don’t have air conditioning. Heat is a relative entity for people here, though. Notice these two young women dressed in moderately heavy jackets, long pants, even gloves–and never even thinking that it’s hot!

Staff Training #3

The staff training concluded today with several exercises to enable the hearing staff to participate in activities led by deaf staff–using sign language but no interpreters. Deaf people routinely participate in hearing-led activities which they don’t full understand. Today the hearing people learned what it is like to participate without understanding all that is being said.

In this group a deaf man told a story and the hearing staff had to “listen” and then repeat it.
In another group, a deaf teacher showed how to make paper flowers.
Finally, before the staff from Kampong Cham Province had to leave, staff were invited to give their reflection and their learnings and understandings from the three days together.

Staff Training #2

Today was the second day of teacher training at the Deaf Development Programme. An on-going problem is communications between deaf staff and hearing staff. The deaf people complain that hearing staff do not use sign language and so the deaf are left out. There was an exercise today where three groups, each with deaf and hearing staff, worked to accomplish a goal.

Each group or team had to make a small vehicle from common items like plastic water bottles and then propel the car to the finish line. Here one team prepares to launch its car.
These two teams powered their cars with air from balloons.
After the competition, Thuch Sophy and Julie Lawler helped the groups talk about how they worked with each other.

Staff Training

As part of the Khmer New Year holiday break, DDP is taking advantage of the students’ absence to offer further training on child protection to the staff. Here the staff engage in a quick game on their afternoon break.

A Cat in the House

Last Monday morning I left my house at 5:50 AM to go mass with the Salesian Sisters across town. When I came back at 7:50 AM and went to take my vitamin pill, I found dirty spots on the toilet bowl. Some of them looked like paw prints. I found that exceeding strange. I live alone. The house was locked up. I don’t have a cat or any other pet–although the geckos are free to come and go.

I figured it had to be an animal and because there were paw prints inside the toilet bowl, I surmised that it must have climbed up on the toilet and down inside it to get a drink. But what kind of animal and how did something that big get in the house?
I thought about this all day…and then coming home in the evening, it occurred to me that there IS an opening into my living space, at the top of a blocked stairway leading from my second floor room to a third floor where some indigenous students from the provinces live. The house is four floors tall, built for a single family, with internal stairways leading from floor to floor. The landlord, though, has blocked off the stairway leading from my second floor to the third floor. That is the covering with metal grill at the top of the stairs. I use the blocked stair steps for storing old suitcases that I may need when I haul stuff back to the United States.

But the covering over the stairwell is poorly done and there is a six-inch space between the top of the highest step and the cover. It’s plenty big for a cat-size animal to get through. I didn’t think the students had a cat, though, but then the next morning I found a large cat at the foot of these stairs and when I yelled at it, it jumped on the suitcases and scurried back upstairs.

The weather was about 100ºF that Monday and I’m guessing that while the students were out, the cat went looking for a drink of water and found my toilet.

Khmer New Year Celebration

Today was the last day for the deaf students to be together at DDP before heading home for their new year break tomorrow.

Dancing is a really big part of Khmer culture and the deaf youth love to dance also, even if they can’t always hear the extra loud music that is playing.
Then they had the chance to eat the special curry meal they prepared yesterday. It was quite good!
The best part of being at DDP, though, is just being part of a community, having friends, and just feeling that you belong to something.

Khmer New Year prep

The Khmer New Year will be April 13, 14, and 15, but because our students will go home for a long holiday, they will celebrate the DDP new year tomorrow. Today students pitched in to prepare vegetables for the special dishes to be enjoyed tomorrow!