Author: Charles Dittmeier

Breakfast to Go

No Egg McMuffins but plenty of other goodies for breakfast on the run.  Note the cooking with a wood fire in the middle of the city where gas is available.  The majority of the population uses wood for cooking.  Imagine the toll on the forests when 10± million people use wood to cook meals three times a day.

Death of Jim Noonan

Yesterday morning I woke up to messages that Fr. Jim Noonan had died during the Cambodian night.  Jim was a Maryknoll priest who served in Cambodia from 1991 to 2009.  He and I lived together for several years, and he was one of the finest people and finest priests I know.  We will miss him a lot.  Here we have his picture before the altar as we set up for our liturgy with our regular Wednesday meeting today.

The Nippon Foundation Visit

Today we at the Deaf Development Programme had a visit from Ms. Ikumi Kawamata (second left) from the Nippon Foundation in Japan.  Here she is with our Sign Language Project staff and her interpreter John (far right).

Still Killing

Today the Phnom Penh Post published this photograph and a short article about a bulldozer which was destroyed by an anti-tank mine in Phnom Penh on the weekend.  It turned out the mine was in a truckload of dirt hauled from one of the provinces to be used in a construction project near this Buddhist wat.  The driver was thrown over the wall and suffered serious injuries but survived.

The last mines were put down forty years ago but they’re still killing and maiming.  We average a casualty every four or five days–after four decades.