Author: Charles Dittmeier

Sambo

When I first came to Phnom Penh, one of the institutions of the capital city was Sambo the elephant who spent the day at Wat Phnom giving rides for tourists. That was his life until he was retired in 2014 to an elephant refuge in the mountains where he spent the last nine years of his life in peace until he died this past week.

Sambo would daily trek along the busy streets from the park where he stayed to the wat.
One Sunday I was at Wat Phnom for some event and Sambo came by. I was talking with the Australian Ambassador and some colleague offered her a ride on Sambo. I don’t like the idea of using animals that way but she needed someone to accompany her so I had my only elephant ride that day.

CACD meeting

Today we had the quarterly meeting of the Catholic Alliance for Charity and Development, the organization of the Cambodian Catholic Church’s social service agencies.

There were two main topics on the agenda today. Here Joseph from Caritas Australia presents the context of the strategic planning for CACD that is now taking place. That was followed by a reporting by Rozet on research on autism in Cambodia that has been done by CCAMH.

It’s different…

One of the quirky things about Cambodia is the placement of wall plugs. Probably the majority of wall plugs are located at eye level as part of the light switch beside the doorway. This fan plug is located above desktop level (maybe so a desk computer could be connected to it?). Most people, though, I think would prefer to have their wires under the desk rather than hanging from the wall in front of them. But Cambodia thinking is different in many ways.

Too much water…

For these two kids wading through water that was up their knees further back was fun. This was after a twenty-minute rain. That’s Boeung Tum Pun….
For this man, the water starting to submerge his engine block was too much, and he started turning around to back toward the white truck. I had been planning to bicycle through the water until I saw him turning around and realized how deep it was.

Getting Around

Here is a hybrid vehicle that is efficient and not too expensive for getting mom and dad around town. It’s not a tuk-tuk and not a golf cart but something in between. It wouldn’t be street legal in the United States but, hey, this is Cambodia.

Lay Missioner Gathering

I’m not sure what happened but somehow this didn’t get posted yesterday.

Because of rain and conflicting schedules, this month’s gathering was smaller. The lay missioners were from Korea, Italy, Japan, Honduras, and the United States, and Brother John, a seminarian from the Thai Mission Society also came and took this picture.
Ai and Tomoko from the Japan Lay Mission Movement gave a presentation about their work.
Caritas from Korea prepared a lot of really interesting and tasty foods for us!
A picture with Brother John who is from Vietnam.
A farewell photo.

Pchum Ben at DDP-2

After the monks gave their Buddhist blessing, Fr. Charlie had a Catholic blessing, showing that both traditions seek blessings but that the Catholic tradition prays to God to be with us and bless us.