Author: Charles Dittmeier

Collaboration with Caritas Cambodia

Maryknoll Cambodia has a Memorandum of Understanding with the government of Cambodia that allows the Deaf Development Programme to operate legally in the kingdom. That MOU will end in December and today the management team of DDP met with the administration of Caritas Cambodia to see about DDP’s becoming part of Caritas Cambodia’s MOU.

June Lay Mission Meeting

Every month lay missioners from the different mission groups get together in a support and socialization group. This month they met at the Don Bosco Vocational Training School for Girls.

First, the Salesian Sisters took the group on a tour of the school, especially highlighting the new building for teaching commercial cooking, cosmetology, hospitality, and other skills.
The new building has a large commercial kitchen which can support groups meeting in the different gathering areas.
The sisters also explained the history and ministry of the Salesian Sisters in Cambodia and Myanmar.

Trip to Kampong Cham #5

Our third and last stop this trip was in Tbong Khmum Province, a good drive from Kampong Cham city. We had another delightful group of young deaf people to work with.
Deaf people seldom get to tell their story or talk about themselves in Cambodia. They cannot speak to their families because the families don’t know sign language–and the deaf people here are themselves just learning sign language. When we get together like this, we have some topic to talk about so that everyone can speak up.
Deaf people around the world are isolated, left out of the flow of ordinary life, and so even a simple gathering like these visits is interesting and engaging.
A group photo with the Tbong Khmum deaf people and the DDP staff from Kampong Cham.
Parents, grandparents, neighbors, and passersby were on the sidelines of our gathering and we included them in another photo. We want them to feel their deaf children are part of the family and are valuable and to be respected.
This young deaf woman has a hair and beauty salon where we had our meeting, and one of our Kampong Cham staff got her hair trimmed before we left.

Trip to Kampong Cham #4

Our day started with breakfast of pork and rice in this little streetside rice shop. Notice almost all cooking in Cambodia is done on charcoal braziers.

Here I am catching up with our host, a deaf man I have not seen for a long time.
Our DDP staff preparing some pictures of vegetables to be used for teaching new sign language.
Getting into the sign language lesson. These deaf people in the rural area have just been learning Cambodian Sign Language for a month or two.
Our classroom–a tarp we brought for sitting under a shelter attached to a stilt house.
After the sign language class, as we prepare to leave. The photocopies are to help the deaf people remember the signs they learned today.
A group shot of the deaf youth, our DDP staff, the deaf youth’s parents, and a few neighbors who wandered in to see what was going on.
Then it was time for a snack of a variety of fruits.

Trip to Kampong Cham #3

It took us about three hours to drive from Phnom Penh to Kampong Cham. When we arrived at the DDP office there, we had a short meeting. Sorphany (L) is interpreting for one of the deaf staff (R).
Then we traveled about a half hour outside of Kampong Cham to a village where thirteen young deaf people had gathered. They come together once a month for education and socialization, a chance to be with other deaf people and communicate. We met under a Khmer house which is in practice the main “room” for a Cambodian dwelling.
I talked with the deaf young people to encourage them to continue to meet and build up the deaf community–one of the goals of DDP–and then the DDP staff had a teaching session with them.
Back in Kampong Cham city, Soknym, our DDP director, and I had dinner by the night market along the Mekong River.
Then Soknym and I walked along the river toward the bridge. When I first started going to Kampong Cham there was no bridge and we would take a ferry to cross the Mekong.

Trip to Kampong Cham #2

I just got back from Kampong Cham and Tbong Khmum a little while ago and it’s late now so I will just show one picture from our first gathering yesterday and start a fuller post tomorrow.

Our first gathering was with thirteen young deaf adults a half hour’s drive from Kampong Cham city. It was delightful to be with them again.

Trip to Kampong Cham #1

Today Sau Soknym and took a van to Kampong Cham to some districts where DDP has set up local deaf groups with funding from the United Nations Development Program. It was quite interesting and I’ll put more about it here in the next day or so.

One interesting feature for me was the Virak Buntham bus company we used. I had never encountered them but they are the best I’ve seen, going everywhere in Cambodia and with really good vehicles and professional staff. I wish I had found them years ago! Here are two of their vans at our first rest stop.

This may be the world’s narrowest corn field, about four inches wide along a wall around a government school in Phnom Penh. A lady running a shop on the opposite side of the street plants the corn in season and then flowers during the rest of the year.