Category: Deaf

People and activities in the Cambodian deaf world

Annual Staff Meeting

I am sorry for the absence of any posts for the last four days. That wasn’t the plan as we headed north to the province of Mondulkiri for an annual meeting of all the DDP staff from Phnom Penh and Kampong Cham.

Here we are at 6:00 AM on Monday morning, loading the larger of two buses that were to take us to Mondulkiri.

The overall experience was quite good for the 35 staff who attended. It was a long drive each way but we stopped (too) many times so people had a chance to get out of the buses. And Angkor Forest, the resort/meeting center where we were based was quite nice and the staff were cooperative although the options and services were limited.

But then we had our difficulties, too:

  • We were so far out of town that even the telephone signals were erratic and hopes of using a data connection for the Internet were dashed.
  • For me the troubles got worse as I tried to switch a SIM card in my phone from the company that works well in Phnom Penh to one that is better in Mondulkiri, and in the process my old SIM fell through a crack in the wooden flooring and was unrecoverable. (I just got that connection restored today.)
  • Then on the trip home, the smaller of the two buses had a clutch problem. The larger bus towed it for an hour or so until a place was found that works on heavy machinery and the small bus was left for repairs. All 35 of us squeezed into the one bus with all our stuff. We were supposed to arrive in Phnom Penh at 4:30 PM but didn’t get there until 9:30 PM.
  • And just as we arrived, we were notified that one of the staff who had been dropped off in one province on the way was tested positive for Covid-19. That meant that all of us were at risk and was especially worrisome because the students for next year were to arrive the next day in Phnom Penh.

All in all it was a good trip and I will be showing various aspects here in the next few days.

Staff meeting (socially distanced)

Next week we are going on an annual all-staff meeting we use for training and explanation of policy and building a sense of community among our staff from the different provinces. Today we had a meeting at our Phnom Penh office to explain what we need to do to prepare for next week.

What’s bugging DDP?

A recurring problem at the Deaf Development Programme—and throughout Cambodia—is termites. As we were preparing for the reopening of our classrooms, we found that termites had once again invaded some cabinets and chewed on books, shelves, etc. Here two teachers discard some damaged materials.

Work day at the office

Most of our staff are working most of the time from home but the Education Project and Sign Language Project staff are at the Deaf Development Programme at least one or two days a week to make videos. Some of the videos are for our education students at home and some are for public announcements about the Covid-19 situation. The videos get posted on DDP’s Facebook pages.

Rice Donation

Here are Soknym, the DDP Program Manager, and Fr. Charlie at the Ministry of Social Affairs today where we handed over a ton of rice to the ministry for distribution to people in Covid-19 “red zones” where they are not allowed even to leave their houses to get food. There the government delivers rice to the houses every day or two. That is the rice behind us. I thought a ton of rice would make a bigger pile!