Author: Charles Dittmeier

Sharing expertise

Today a group of speech therapists from the UK visited the Caritas Deaf Development Programme to learn about deaf people in Cambodia and what DDP does. DDP uses only sign language and has no oral training and so there are few intersections between the work of the two NGOs but it was good to talk and learn.

Actual Coronation Day

Today is the actual 20th anniversary of King Sihomani’s coronation in 2004.

This is the most frequent face of King Sihomani as seen by the Cambodian populace. He is always smiling the same tight-lipped smile. It is almost as if he had plastic surgery and cannot do anything except smile. But smiling is probably his most important responsibility as king. He has no legislative or jurisdictional power but is a symbol of the royal family and in that role he gives a human–smiling–face to an otherwise dour government.

Coronation Day

Tomorrow is a public holiday to celebrate the king’s coronation day and tonight there was a fireworks display to note the occasion. This is a view from the 33rd floor of an apartment building. The fireworks are launched from a barge on the Mekong River.

Phnom Penh Choral Ensemble

Every year the Phnom Penh Choral Ensemble presents a charity concert and they staged an exciting performance this evening at the Hyatt Regency Hotel. Here the ensemble sings the Cambodian national anthem to begin the show.
Marie Cammal is the founder and director of Sok Sabay Association, an NGO caring for children at risk of abuse and exploitation. Philip is a volunteer from the UK, attending with two of the Sok Sabay students.
The concert was quite colorful and so was the music with a basic theme of Broadway tunes.

Different Every Week

We’re still getting used to our new mass center at St. Jude Thaddeus School in Phnom Penh. We use their multi-purpose room (a former warehouse) for masses on Saturdays. They keep changing the room around each week. They have some wooden risers we use for a platform for the altar and always before they were covered in worn red carpeting and were of different heights. Tonight they were covered in green and are all the same height, a big improvement.

Trouble above

When we came to the Deaf Development Programme this morning, we found that a large section of the ceiling had collapsed in our training room. We were planning to have a large meeting there Friday so I got on the phone to arrange for us to use a meeting room at the Catholic church near us.

CACD October Meeting

The Catholic Alliance for Charity and Development (CACD) had its quarterly meeting today to develop an action plan for the environmental framework we developed several months ago.
Part of the afternoon was working in four small groups according to the mission and purpose of our different NGOs.
Even during the break a lot of work gets done.
It is really edifying to attend the CACD meetings where so many really good people, genuinely committed and wanting to serve, come together to help Cambodia develop.

Musica Felice

Today Miwako Fujiwara and her Musica Felice presented their 13th charity concert at the Sofitel hotel with a full house.
Miwako is very creative and the second half of this concert was an interaction between the Musica Felice singers and a Phnom Penh theater group. There was a story line and instead of scene changes, different rooms and settings were projected for each “act” of the story.
These events bring together a lot of friends and colleagues. L-R: Cristina, a lay missioner from Italy; Cecelia, a lay missioner from Hong Kong; Sreytin, a deaf staff from the Deaf Development Programme;, and Julie, a Maryknoll lay missioner from the United States.