Charlie Dittmeier's Home Page
Today I went to the airport to repatriate one of our St. Vincent de Paul clients who has been stranded here. We finally were able to get medical clearance and an exit visa for her. While I was standing in the check-in line with her–suitably distanced, of course–I saw three different young men checking into the same flight–with their stuffed animals hooked on to their carry-on luggage. Seeing three of them surprised me a bit.
Most Cambodians are less heavy and more limber than most Americans because of a more active physical lifestyle, but they still want to get exercise.
Many of the tuk-tuk drivers come from the provinces to earn money when not planting or harvesting rice but they have no place to stay and sleep in their tuk-tuks. They often gather the tuk-tuks together at night for protection and at first I thought this was such an encampment. But noticing that all the tuk-tuk seem to be the same, I’m wondering if this finance company has their own fleet for their business?
Last year this intersection had each of the four corners sequentially fenced off as these stanchions were created for a major pedestrian overpass to give students safe access to a large secondary school to the right of the photo. Then Covid-19 came. The school is closed but they could have finished the work on the overpass. For some reason, they didn’t.
Hey, Cambodia has reached the Big Time now–we opened our first 7-Eleven store yesterday. People—spacially distanced–stood in line out in a pouring rain to be part of the first-day crowd. There are plans for another 5-10 stores in the kingdom in the near future.
In the “new” Maryknoll office, I live upstairs. It’s not fancy but basically clean and certainly meets all my needs. It looks like the landlord recently replaced the sink faucets and shower heads in the bedrooms.
Look at the water coming out of this new faucet! It sprays in all directions, even over the edge of the sink so that your front gets wet while washing hands. The spray comes out with force and wets not only the sink and the person but even the wall behind the faucet.
I took off the spout of the faucet thinking there was something lodged in the opening to make it spray so wildly, but, nope, that’s the way it was designed!
From the graph, it looks like Cambodia is on the road to recovery. Not exactly. The government admitted this week that the sum of new infections in all the provinces is greater than the total for that day announced by the Ministry of Health. Thousands of Cambodian migrant workers have been coming back across the border from Thailand day and night, legally and illegally. Anything after the official announcement time of 6:00 PM just isn’t recorded.