Author: Charles Dittmeier

Some differences….

Many things in Cambodia are different from what you would find in the United States.

These workmen are finishing up the front of a new housing block. Notice there are four houses side-by-side. Each is one room wide and goes up three floors. Notice also that the workmen have added ramps to three of the houses so the owner can bring his motorcycle into the living room at night.

Sr. Carmel, MC / Funeral

Sr. Carmel, a Missionary of Charity assigned to Siem Reap, died April 12, the day before the Khmer New Year. We just had her funeral today because there was no one in town to certify her death two weeks ago because they all left to spend the new year in their home provinces.

The funeral was at St. Joseph Church where the Khmer people sit on the floor. Some chairs were brought in for the foreigners.
The Missionaries of Charity offering a blessing for Sr. Carmel.
After the funeral Bishop Olivier gathered with the Missionaries of Charity. The four men with him in the picture are religious brothers of the Missionaries of Charity. They do not wear a distinctive garb as do the sisters.

Earth Day

Some notes about our Earth (from the Morning Brew website):

  • Earth happens to be located in a remote corner of the Milky Way, a location that presents fewer threats, like a huge star devouring us with its gravity. The star we do have nearby, the sun, is stable and the perfect distance away to sustain liquid water (important!).
  • When the sun does send deadly flares our way, they’re not calamitous because the Earth’s core produces a magnetic field that deflects radiation.

Khmer New Year

For all its drive to be a UN-named “moderate income”country and despite all the high-rise buildings and new international airports, Cambodia is still an old-style rural homeland. 85% of the people are farmers and even the city dwellers all went back to their home provinces this week for the Khmer New Year. And there they played the traditional new year games and had the traditional new year dances just like they have for centuries. In that regard, not much has changed. [Photos are from the Khmer Times.]

This is a game similar to duck-duck-goose. Can you imagine your neighborhood getting together for a game like this on January 1st? Can you even imagine your neighbors getting together?
A tug-0-war is a traditional new year game!
And so is the Cambodian version of the pinata.

Deaf Leadership Training Program

The Finnish Association of the Deaf is a funder of the Caritas Deaf Development Programme, and they are giving priority to the development of a national association of the deaf for Cambodia. They have shifted funding to that and have engaged Colin Allen, a deaf organizations expert, to guide the establishment of an association.

Colin will train four deaf people in organizational knowledge and skills and then they will carry forward the actual erection of the deaf association. Today Colin had his first meeting with them and Sau Soknym, DDP director, began an orientation with them.