Charlie Dittmeier's Home Page
People and activities in the Cambodian deaf world
When my sister Ann died, we kept her photo frame for displaying photographs and today I introduced it to the deaf students at the Deaf Development Programme. We take lots of pictures at DDP but the students seldom see them so setting up the photo frame was a big hit! Ann would be pleased!
Today the DDP director, Soknym, and I went to Kampong Cham Province to the DDP office there for a graduation ceremony for a Cambodian Sign Language class. The students were all government civil servants and it was a great pleasure to be part of a ceremony for them.
Two government holidays fell back to back yesterday and today, and to keep our resident students occupied and interested, they took a ferry across the Mekong River yesterday and today worked together to cook a special holiday dish. Here they are this afternoon grinding, chopping, boiling, frying, and combining all sorts of yummy ingredients.
Last week I was handling English and French correspondence from the prime minister and the king as they sent condolences to our bishop.about the death of Pope Francis.
Today I was overseeing the pumping out of our DDP septic tank.
Today I finished a meeting early and stopped in our DDP barbershop to look presentable again. The young deaf man on the left is a new barber trainee and he was a bit terrified to work on me, the boss! The trainer (R) was there, though, so he took on the challenge and did a good job. The worst part of the new barber trainees is that in their fear and caution, they are very slow!
Our Deaf Development Programme students went home yesterday for an extended break for the Khmer New Year. The staff continued working, with a day of training on the DDP Personnel Policy.
When we had all the students and staff together for our DDP Khmer New Year celebration last week, we also said goodbye to two our staff. Here I am listening to Sophary saying goodbye. On my right is Theary, a teacher who is leaving after only a year because of an opportunity for training in Germany.
The Khmer New Year isn’t until April 14 but our students go home for a long holiday on 8 April so today we had the DDP new year celebration. Here Mom, one of our houseparents, and Sophy (R), the Education Project manager, watch lunch for 60 people cooking on a charcoal brazier. It was so heavy they were fearful it would break the clay fire pot but all was well.
It’s still early for the rainy season in Cambodia but, these days, with climate change, nothing about the weather is normal.
These are some of our Education Project students, enjoying some after-school activities in our eating area. You can see this first heavy rain of the seasons was, well…heavy! (And it looks like the gutter on the left is clogged.)
I was leaving–on my bicycle–for a 5:00 PM mass when the rain started and I got rather wet.
Every two months I write a column for The Record, the newspaper of the Archdiocese of Louisville, about life in a mission context. Here is the latest column which appeared last Thursday. Click here.