Mission Journal – Page 2 – Welcome to Cambodia, and…..

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.

Living Mission

Here is the latest column I wrote for The Record, the newspaper for the Archdiocese of Louisville

U.S. Elections 2024

From a commentary by David Frum, staff writer for The Atlantic

U.S. Elections 2024

From a commentary by E. J. Dionne, Jr., Washington Post columnist

Moving Time–Truck it

Today I moved all my stuff from Street 410, from the Maryknoll office building which we are closing, to a flat in the Boeung Tum Pun area. I had way too much stuff that had to be moved but our small crew got it moved within five hours. Now it is going to take WAY more time than that to sort it all out and find a new place for it in my new home.

Still moving…

Today I got a third–and I hope, final–truckload of stuff moved to my new house. I don’t know where I’m going to put it. I think these boxes–and eleven others–are going to be sitting around the walls of my room–and out on my little balcony–for months as I go through the stuff to see what will go back to Kentucky, what goes to Maryknoll archives, what gets tossed. I wish we had curbs here so I could put stuff out for people to take.

The right and duty to vote

Today I finally got my Kentucky ballot finished and tomorrow morning I will take it to the embassy and they will carry it to the US and drop it into the US postal system. That is a BIG help because Cambodia doesn’t have a functioning postal system. They have restarted sending mail outside the country (there is no incoming mail unless you have a post office box) but a letter to the U.S. takes an inordinate amount of time–and may never arrive–so a really important letter must go by courier (DHL, UPS) at $40 a pop.