Author: Charles Dittmeier

It’s still around…

We don’t have nearly the problem that many US communities have with Covid, but the number of people with new Covid infections is increasing here after almost two months with no infections. Many people are not wearing masks or taking ordinary precautions, but some shops, like these two, still block access to their customers.

Lights out…

Today our power was off at the Deaf Development Programme so our students in the Education Project met outside on the porch till the electricity came back on about 2:00 PM.

Maryknoll Living Room

Since I’ve already showed you the kitchen and dining room of our Maryknoll office in Phnom Penh, I thought I might continue with the living room. I hope these posts give you a glimpse into the cultural differences and practices we experience here.

This view is from the rear of the living room, looking toward the street and the front of the house. Note again that this is a shophouse which by definition is one room wide and three or four stories tall. It’s considered a norm for housing in Cambodia in the cities and larger towns. This living room is the room we use for our Wednesday Maryknoll mission team meetings. We rearrange the chairs and meet and then have a liturgy together (with three or four outside guests) and then a meal together.

This is a close-up of our front door. It’s different from the front door of your house in a couple ways. First, it opens to almost the full width of the room. That is so the family business, set up on the ground floor, is open to street traffic and it also allows families with a car to park it in the living room at night. There is steel grating that can be pulled closed right outside the doors. You can see its dark vertical outline at the left of the door opening. We never use that because the area between the front door and the street is closed off by the gate visible through the door.

This view is looking from the front door toward the back of the house. The passageway on the right leads to the dining room and kitchen. The little room to the left of the corridor is the Maryknoll office where our office manager works.

This room is so noisy! The area between the front door and the street is covered with a metal roof, and in the rainy season the sound of rain is not conducive to our meetings. Also, although we are on a smallish side street, we have heavy traffic going by that is really disturbing.

This view shows the small room above the manager’s office. It’s my room. In a shophouse, it allows the family to oversee the commerce going on on the floor below. The large TV is for Fr. Kevin to watch CNN and I use it for some of the meetings or classes I have to show illustrations of various points. Notice the water dispenser on the right. Most people do not drink the water from the tap. The government says it’s safe and maybe it is when it leaves the water treatment plant, but who knows what the piping distribution system is like. There is no maintenance or updating of infrastructure here.

Working Woman

There are hundreds of these carts making their way around Phnom Penh’s streets every day, especially in the morning. Their proprietors collect plastics or metals or papers or old appliances or anything they can sell to the recyclers. This lady is demonstrating perfect form. According to local custom, the carts are pulled, not pushed, and the handles are held above the head, not at waist level. It seems an odd posture to me but then I don’t pull one of these carts all day long. What do I know? The plastic bottle in her hand is fitted with a squeaky nozzle so she can squeeze it to announce her presence in the neighborhood.

Field Trip Follow-up

Last Friday the students in DDP’s Education Project went on a field trip to the National Museum in Phnom Penh. Today they had a follow-up activity to help them better understand and retain what they saw and learned there.

Maryknoll Dining Room

I figured I might as well give you the tour of the rest of our present Maryknoll office–and residence for Fr. Kevin Conroy and me. Last week I showed you the kitchen. Now here is the dining room.

This dining room used to be the kitchen and beyond the door was outside, the back of the house. That is why there is such a heavy external-type door there. Through that door is the kitchen I showed you last week (17 July). When we first moved in, we kept the windows open (behind the microwave) but immediately the rats started coming into the kitchen and into the rest of the house so now we keep those windows and the heavy door closed.
This shows the other end of that wall that used to be in the kitchen but is now the dining room. Keep in mind that this room is the whole width of the house–one room wide and four stories high. You can see a row of white tiles on the wall. That used to be a concrete counter with sink that was moved outside to what is now the kitchen beyond the door. Next to the microwave you see a black dot on the wall. That is where the old water pipe came through the wall with water for the kitchen sink. The blue rubbish bin is what I use to drown the rats and mice when I catch them on glue traps. They are alive but stuck to the trap, and I just fill the bin with water and drop trap and all into it.
This is turning toward the opposite wall of the dining room. The passageway leads to the front of the house. Notice the AC outlet high on the wall next to the passageway, with an extension cord running under the dish cabinet for the fan. AC plugs in Cambodia are generally at eye level. It may be because so much of the country floods so often.
This picture continues the turn to the right and shows the stairs leading up to the second, third, and fourth floors. Notice how steep the stairs are. That is because the house is just one-room wide and they don’t want to waste any space. Also saving space is putting the downstairs bathroom under the stairs, a common feature in houses here. A downside of that is that the bathroom ceiling has the slant of the stairs and you hit your head if you stand too close to the toilet. The filing cabinets belong to the office which is quite small.