Charles Dittmeier – Page 275 – Welcome to Cambodia, and…..

Year-round Treat

All kinds of food are sold on the street in Cambodia. Some of it is seasonal, but one offering that is available almost any time is the roasted bananas. Three or four on a skewer stick, they are grilled on a cart going around the city and eaten warm, a real favorite. Here this man is also roasting some kind of round cake but I don’t know what that is. Maybe it’s some kind of mashed-banana cake?

Night of the Big Chicken

Today was American Thanksgiving Day and we celebrated here in Cambodia also. It was a regular work day but at the end of the day we met at the Maryknoll office for a festive dinner featuring, as our Cambodian cooks say, the Big Chicken. May we all be thankful for all that we have and share it generously. Click here for photos from the evening.

Notable Quotes

“We should cease to imagine nuclear weapons as tools for us to manage, but rather as a curse we must banish.”

~Fr. Drew Christiansen, at the November, 2017 Vatican conference on nuclear weapons

Bread and more….

Here is a busy street corner in Chbah Ampov, across the Vietnam Bridge, along Highway 1 (of Vietnam War fame). These women dispense bread and gossip, probably a goodly amount of both.

Social Security in Cambodia

Several years ago, Cambodia started to develop a social security system for the welfare and protection of its citizens. It was implemented just three or four years ago with the introduction of a scheme to care for workers injured on the job, what would be called workmen’s compensation in the United States. This year a second phase is being rolled out, a healthcare plan; and a third phase, old age pensions will be introduced a few years from now.

Because the plan is relatively new and not well understood, an official from the National Social Security Fund came to Maryknoll today to speak to representatives of the Khmer employees of Maryknoll’s six projects.

The ministry actually called this meeting–a relatively rare instance of the government being proactive–but they were late for their own meeting so the Maryknoll staff from different projects used the time to get to know each other better and discuss some common issues.

When the ministry official did come, he spent 2+ hours explaining the program and answering questions from the staff who must now go back to their projects and repeat the explanation to the staff under them.

DDP Staff Retreat 4

Today was basically a travel day. We left the retreat center after breakfast, made a stop at the big market in Sihanoukville, and then headed north to Phnom Penh and points beyond (for the Kampong Cham team). Click here to see the pictures.

DDP Staff Retreat 3

Day Three was spent half at the center and half at the beach. Click here to see more of what we did.

DDP Staff Retreat 2

This full day was spent at the retreat center in Sihanoukville. Click here to see what happened on Day Two.

DDP Staff Retreat 1

This year the DDP Annual Staff Retreat was held in Kampong Som Province on the southern Cambodian coast. Click here for Tuesday, Day 1.

Website Troubles

I’m currently in southern Cambodia with all of our Deaf Development Programme staff from three provinces, for a staff “retreat,” a chance to talk about some of our values and policies and at the same time allow the staff to meet and enjoy each other. I have a good Internet connection in the building I am in at the Catholic center, but for some reason my efforts to log into and change my website have been stymied since I arrived–until just now when I found I was able to start creating this new post. I’ll see now if it goes through, and if it does then I can post some new pages.