Category: Deaf

People and activities in the Cambodian deaf world

Caritas Retreat 2024 / Day 2

Today was the first full day of content for this year’s retreat.

Probably 2/3 of the Caritas staff is not Catholic but they are extremely committed religious people, and they have a tradition of coming to receive a blessing while the Catholics receive communion. Here Fr. Will and I give blessings to the non-Catholics on either side of Bishop Ly giving out communion.
As is common in Cambodian culture, all 190 people sat on mats on the floor all day long for the mass and talks and presentations. That wouldn’t happen in the U.S.!
Each of the numerous Caritas projects had a half hour to present their goals, their target group, and to describe their operations. It was truly inspiring! Here the Caritas Center for Children and Adolescent Mental Health is presenting.
I took a photo with the staff of the Takeo Eye Hospital which was founded by Maryknoll Fr. John Barth and is where I had my cataract surgery. I was the first foreigner to have that surgery at the hospital with Cambodian doctors doing the surgery.
After lunch there was a team-building activity where objects were constructed using spaghetti and marshmallows.

Caritas Cambodia Retreat / Day 1

The Deaf Development Programme is now under Caritas Cambodia, and every year Caritas has a long retreat with all the staff to build community, share the vision of Caritas, and just allow the staff to enjoy being together outside of work. Today almost 200 project staff traveled to the Catholic center in Sihanoukville for the retreat.

Because there are so many staff attending the retreat, some of us are staying in a guesthouse across the street. This is a view from my fourth-floor room overlooking Cambodia’s only harbor.
There was nothing on the schedule today except arrival at the center and a dinner at 7:00 PM.
After eating, Soknym and Thea who drove us down to the coast took us out to one of Sihanoukville’s beaches. It was the first time I had seen the beach and town at night and it was quite impressive.

ANM 2024–#6

The last night of our meeting time, we had a dinner for all the Phnom Penh staff. Here Mano (standing) gives a little gift to Katarina Butera, the representative from the Finnish Association of the Deaf.

ANM 2024–#5

The Finnish Association of the Deaf has provided money for community development and also some money for our Education Project so today Katarina Butera visited the two DDP classrooms.

ANM 2024–#4

Today our representative and our advisor, both from the Finnish Association of the Deaf, were with us when the Deaf Development Programme met with the United Nations Development Program (UNDP). It was a really good meeting that confirmed UNDP’s commitment to working with us.

ANM 2024 — #2

In the past the Finnish Association of the Deaf and the Deaf Development Programme would meet together for a week in what was called the Annual Negotiations Meeting. That cycle was disrupted by Covid and we had no ANMs after March, 2019 until this week when Ms. Katarina Butera, our FAD representative, came to resume the yearly meetings.

Our first meetings were just the DDP management and Katarina and Colin Allen, a newly appointed advisor for DDP, and we used the meeting room in the DDP office building. Today, though, we had more staff attending for project reporting and moved our meeting to a larger room (where sometimes things like bicycles for incoming students can be stored.)

Hong Kong Trip 2–December, 2023

Day 5

Today I met with friends to say goodbye and then packed up for the return to Cambodia early the next morning.

Jenny Lam and I have known each other for more than twenty years, starting when she worked in the sign language program at Chinese University of Hong Kong. This morning we met to catch up.
Sr. Theresa Chien founded the Canossa School for the Deaf in Hong Kong and was its guiding light through its whole history.

Hong Kong Trip 2–December, 2023

Day 4

Today was the actual celebration for the 50th anniversary of the old Canossa School for the Deaf.

For the mass at 10:30 AM, all former students and staff were invited. I concelebrated with Fr. Lam who is the priest working now with the Catholic deaf community.
Many of the students had not seen Sr. Theresa (L) for more than twenty years.
The dinner after mass was a reunion for most of the students who attended. There were 7 or 8 tables like this one.
After leaving the anniversary celebration, I went to the home of Charlotte and Joseph who married after I left Hong Kong. We had a meal cooked by Joseph and then a delightful evening catching up.
On the way home, I took a wrong turn on some small side street and found myself in a Christmas season festival. The crowd is gathered because snow-making machine is spewing snow into the air.

Hong Kong Trip 2–December, 2023

Day 3

Day 2 was spent mostly in the room where I am staying, catching up on some work. Then on Day 3, December 29th, I went to Macau to see the Catholic deaf people there.

When we arrived, Rebecca met us and got us to St. Joseph Church were some of the Catholic deaf community had gathered.
The parish has always been most gracious to the deaf group, and today they provided us with a wonderful lunch–a great time to be together.
From the church we drove to the Trappistine Monastery were ten Trappist Sisters minister. Sr. Emmanuela warmly welcomed us and showed us around.
The monastery sits on a hilltop and overlooks the four square miles that comprise the whole area of Macau.
Finally was it was time to go home and we took a jetfoil ferry for the one-hour trip to Hong Kong. We had wanted to experience the bus ride across the new bridge, but because of holiday period, the waiting time for a bus was too long. These ferries are powered by two aircraft jet engines.