Author: Charles Dittmeier

Deaf Day!

Today was the official Deaf Day celebrations and a large number of deaf people from several provinces came together at the DDP office in Phnom Penh for a full day of activities.

In the morning a group of deaf people performed a dance based on the theme of inclusion.
Then there was a food-tasting event, with desserts and snacks and foods from different countries and cultures to give the deaf people a “taste” of things different from what they know in Cambodia.
When I arrived after the morning church service, the staff “helped” me into a Deaf Day T-shirt for picture taking.

Deaf Week Activities

Socials Coffee Day

PPC Bank in Cambodia has established a coffee shop in their headquarters as a social enterprise employing deaf people. Today to promote Deaf Week, they offered a 50% discount on all drinks and we invited our friends and supporters to take advantage of the offer.
One of the deaf staff at Socials Coffee preparing an iced Hazelnut Latte.
Some of the DDP staff gathered at Socials today.

Deaf Week Activities

Crazy Hair Day

The Maryknoll Deaf Development Programme started celebrating Deaf Week today. Our team has proposed a different game or activity for each day for all the students and staff based at our Phnom Penh office. Today was crazy hair day.

A couple of the guys got into the spirit at our Monday morning staff meeting.
Two of our interpreters were not to be outdone, but then they had more to work with. And then there are others who had almost nothing to work with!

Close to Nature

Probably the majority of humanity are feeling a closer relationship with nature these days. Slowly, unobtrusively we people have infringed upon the territory of nature and overwhelmed so much fawna and flora with air and water pollution, destruction of forests, contamination of all sorts. Now we might conjecture that nature is fighting back as so many parts of the world experience devastating fires and floods and drought as nature seeks to re-establish an equilibrium.

On a smaller scale, we might have a more personal, a closer daily experience of nature here in Cambodia. It’s very much a part of our lives. Here are three examples:




Just thirty minutes ago I was washing dishes after eating my rice and leftovers and I had my phone radio playing classical music. I couldn’t hear it, at full volume, because it is raining and the drops hitting the steel sheeting of the kitchen roof totally drowned out the music. And in the picture, the red bucket on the floor is to catch the nature–the raindrops–that are coming through a hole in the steel sheeting.




Lightning takes a huge toll on the people and cows of Cambodia. Practically every thunderstorm there are fatalities in one group or the other–or both, because daily life here is so close to and exposed to nature. In the photo are five cows killed by a lightning strike a few days ago.

We had a major power outage yesterday, caused by a faulty transformer that cut power to a large part of the country. Mechanical problems are matched by natural ones, though, as this snake on a utility pole discovered.