Charlie Dittmeier's Home Page
Today the members of Maryknoll Cambodia NGO received their fifth injection of the anti-Covid vaccine. It was booster shot #3. Our first three injections were AstraZeneca vaccine and the last two were Pfizer. Will they offer protection against the B5 variant that is spreading?
Street food is very much a part of Cambodian life. Probably most of the people eat breakfast either on the road, at stalls like this one, or at work or school having picked up something to eat on the way.
Cambodia has done a really credible job of handling Covid-19. The government pushed full vaccination for everyone and people complied, making Cambodia one of the most fully vaccinated countries in the world. And in May and June and July, 2022, Cambodia went 52 days without a new infection. That ended several days ago, though, as PCR testing detected 5 to 15 new infections each day. The continuing new infections are a concern but not unduly alarming because of the high vaccination rate which makes the Covid experience generally a mild one. The handful of new infections each day is only the tip of the iceberg, however. Those are just the people sent for testing by a doctor. Many, many other people are using rapid tests and discovering they are infected, but those are not included in the government statistics.
Everyday this week the temperature has been 90º to 95ºF. That’s hot. But look at these women motorcyclists on the street today. They all have jackets with hoods–and the hoods are up, under their helmets. And three out of four are wearing gloves.
Of course, none of that is about heat. The jackets, long sleeves, and gloves are to keep the sun off their skin. Who wants to have dark skin?
Today is the summer solstice, the longest day and shortest night of the year in the northern hemisphere. The weather is really hot in many countries this year because of climate change, and it’s certainly hot here in Phnom Penh. One enterprising vendor is taking advantage of that, offering all sizes, shapes, and colors of inflatable pools. From what I have seen around town, business has been good for him!
Rats are very much a part of life here in Phnom Penh. The local people see them as something to live with but the foreigners try to eliminate them. Click here for some pictures about rats at the Maryknoll office.
One of the things the Catholic Church can do in a mission context is take the lead when new situations are encountered or society gains a new awareness. Such an area in Cambodia is autism. So much is being written about autism in the US and there are so many programs set up to work with children with autism. It’s a rather new issue in Cambodia—the awareness of autism, not children with autism who have always been there.
Many of the Catholic parishes now have programs to help children with autism and their parents, and today at the quarterly meeting of the Catholic Alliance for Charity and Development, a subgroup working on disabilities discussed an upcoming program to be presented by an experienced practitioner from Australia.
