Author: Charles Dittmeier

“Cold” Weather

                                            Staff at the Deaf Development Programme

The last two nights the temperature in Phnom Penh has gone down to the low 70ºs F and all the expats are rejoicing.  All the locals, however, are complaining that they are freezing.  Some are wearing fur-lined coats with hoods.   Considering that the normal temperature is in the low to mid 90ºs, they have experienced a considerable variation and they don’t have a closet full of winter clothes.  90% of the population don’t have a closet.

The prime minister offered advice(?) about the cooler conditions:

“Please, do sports activities in the morning for health.  For the soldiers stationed at the border, you need to take care of your health and wear coats to protect yourself in order to avoid infectious diseases.”

Christmas Season 2017 #5

Every year in Advent and Lent we have a communal reconciliation service, offering the sacrament of reconciliation.   This Advent, for the first time we decided to have the service at the Maryknoll office.

Fr. Bob (at the lectern) planned this evening’s service.
These services are generally not well attended but this year we had a few more people than we did in Lent.  Using the office instead of St. Joseph Church was an attempt to make it easier for people to participate.

Education Conference

This is a conference on inclusive education for children with disabilities sponsored by the NGO Education Program.  It brought together this past week a lot of civil society and non-government organizations to look at the situation in Cambodia.

It looks like a normal organization meeting in any hotel in any major city anywhere, but this one had its Cambodian characteristics.  Cambodians thrive on noise–loud noise–and they always turn the PA systems up very high–and leave them at that setting.  Their technicians do not adjust the volume for each speaker as he or she comes to the podium.  The volume stays on high all the time.  And then speakers come up and yell into the microphones.  If we were in the United States, OSHA would require ear protection for everyone in the room.  Here the locals just consider it normal—and it is in this culture.  We foreigners consider it painful.

Planning Meeting

About every eighteen months, the Cambodia Mission Team–the members of Maryknoll serving in Cambodia—has a planning meeting to examine what we are currently doing and to examine the signs of the times and what is going on within Maryknoll and in Cambodia that might require a response.  This year we met on a government holiday when most of us could be available.

Sr. Len (on the sofa), our country representative with the government, planned the day and began with a series of questions to help us reflect on where we are at this point in time.
There was a lot of discussion, usually starting with small groups, and then time for feedback.   Here Russ Brine notes a point from a discussion of Maryknoll Lay Missioners in Cambodia.