Category: Mission Journal

An old friend…

Nineteen years ago I witnessed the wedding of Sarah Igboeli to Paul and then in 2007 they relocated to Australia. This evening I got to catch up with Sarah who was very much a part of the deaf program and the Maryknoll community and the Catholic community back in “the old days.”

Bike Repair

My major mode of transport around Phnom Penh is my bicycle, here being repaired by a young Khmer man who goes by the name of Jack. He has a little bike shop that fortunately for me is on the way I go from my home to the deaf office. For major repairs like today (getting a new sprocket and chain), I drop the bike off and come back after work. Fortunately also is that Jack is a real good man, a pleasant and caring human being.

Thanksgiving in Cambodia

Thanksgiving is different in Cambodia. Actually, it doesn’t exist here but we Americans get together continuing the tradition we grew up with. In previous years, it was the Maryknoll NGO that gathered but after the NGO closed, it’s just a ragtag group of us for Thanksgiving this year.

Actually, I should use the past tense to indicate that six of got together yesterday, Wednesday night, for a Thanksgiving dinner prepared for us by Kila (R) , a Canadian. Maryknoll NGO always met weekly on Wednesdays and we annually moved the celebration of Thanksgiving to that day so we wouldn’t have to rearrange schedules on two days of the week. We are joined each week by Marist Bro. Brian Kinsella, the director of the LaValla School for children with disabilities.
Thanksgiving is a work day here, of course, but I left the Deaf Development Programme early to go to the clinic of Dr. Sithach, a dermatologist who found a carcinoma on my forearm two weeks ago. The biopsy showed it was malignant so today I went back and he excised it.

Does this waiting room look like your doctor’s waiting room? I doubt it! Here the culture says you have made it, you are successful, if you can furnish your home and office with HEAVY, uncomfortable wooden furniture. The chairs where the woman is sitting weigh 300-500 pounds each. The smaller chairs on the right only about 150 pounds.
Dr. Sithach said he would cut out as much as necessary but as little as possible. I told him to take more rather than less, to make sure he got the cancer. Now I have to wait for another biopsy to make sure he got everything.