Author: Charles Dittmeier

Christmas 2018: Culture vs. Christianity

In this Buddhist country, probably a good number of people would know that Christmas is the celebration of the birth of Jesus—but they wouldn’t know much about who Jesus is.  And the greatly larger portion of the population would associate Christmas with Santa Claus and Father Christmas rather than with Jesus.  Santa Clauses are everywhere.  They sell things.  Jesus is nowhere to be seen.

Some church groups get caught up in this cultural confusion.  At the Catholic school where I have mass on Fridays,  they contribute to the confusion with this nativity set to which a Christmas bear and Father Christmas have been invited.  Maybe I should be satisfied that at least the manger is still empty.

Another Configuration

When Maryknoll first moved to its office on Street 320 in Phnom Penh, down below my second-floor window was a little village of ten one-room units, two strips of five units each facing each other on one house-sized lot.  Access to this little community was through a narrow alley leading out to the street.

Shortly after we occupied the house, the owner of the little village moved everyone out, tore down the two strips of one-room apartments and put up a three-story metal shed in which he set up a metal fabrication company.  They made steel gates, doors, and railings and such–with a lot of banging and grinding.

Now that little plot of land is being subjected to more change.  The four-story building facing the street (behind which is the lot) is being extended back over the lot to make the building longer.  The sheet metal walls of the fabrication shop have been removed and it seems walls of brick and concrete are being extended from the existing house to make new walls around the lot below my window.  Here is a picture of a young man using a torch to cut away some of the scaffolding that held the metal walls before.

Good Publicity

Recently DDP was contacted by a local station’s producer who wanted to do a short segment on DDP and its work.  Today he came to interview a couple of our staff and one of the deaf students.  We hope to see the results on air in a few days!

The producer first interviewed our DDP director, Keat Sokly, and then he sat down with Korn Maly (pictured here), the manager of our Sign Language Project.
Then the producer filmed one of our deaf students answering questions about her experience at the Deaf Development Programme.

Advent…with signs of Christmas

At World Vision, we rent their hall and so have to set up for mass every week and decorate the room with banners, candles, etc.  When Fr. Bob Wynne was here, he made sure that the seasons were kept distinct and arranged all the changes in colors, banners, etc.  Now that he is gone, things sometimes go awry.

Here is a picture of our Advent Wreath as we celebrate the 3rd Sunday of Advent.  That’s great.  But on the pillar behind the wreath, is a Christmas wreath, a decoration that shouldn’t have gone up yet.  Today we were supposed to have violet banners hanging on all the pillars but….

Christmas 2018: Maryknoll Tree

Every year at the Maryknoll office we put up a large Christmas tree that was given us several years back by a departing family.  In the recent past, Fr. Bob Wynne did most of the work setting in up in his free time, but this year, after his return to the US, the tree decorating became a Maryknoll community event.  We ended our usual Wednesday meeting an hour early and encouraged by some cheese and crackers and chocolate candy, the tree was set up and grandly decorated.

The tree is artificial and our guard washed it down, along with some of the other decorations, before we started decorating. Here Sr. Ann checks with the guard to see what is dry and what is still wet.
Always first to go on the tree are the lights. Here Sr. Len (kneeling) and Nancy Davies (a former lay missioner visiting Cambodia), and Hang Tran string sets of lights around the tree.
“No, no, not so high! Hang it lower!”
Sr. Mary Little, Karen Bortvedt (another former lay missioner back for a visit), Hang Tran, Fr. Kevin Conroy, Sr. Len Montiel, and Nancy Davies start to hang the ornaments and snowflakes.

New English Missals

I took 400 new English Missals to World Vision on Saturday night for that community and we rather quickly got them put into the plastic covers with the music books.

Sunday morning I took 300 English Missals to St. Joseph Church and our crew of helpers joined right in to put the missals together with the songbooks in the old plastic covers.  Here they are at work.

Human Rights Day in Cambodia

December 10th this year was the 70th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration on Human Rights.  It’s a public holiday in Cambodia but that just means that the government schools and government offices and the banks are closed.  Everything else is open.

This is the headline on the Phnom Penh Post on Monday, December 10.  No one in the government of Cambodia would see the irony of the government forbidding–on Human Rights Day–a march celebrating human rights.   It would disrupt traffic, said the government flunky with a straight face.

 

To make matters worse, today, the day after Human Rights Day, the newspaper announces that Cambodians enjoy “full freedoms”—except the right to peaceful assembly, that is.