Category: Deaf

Every year deaf communities around the world celebrate a Deaf Day (sometimes a Deaf Week) to give deaf people a chance to come together and to put on programs of deaf awareness so that others can understand about deaf people.  Click here for pictures of our Deaf Day celebration in Cambodia.

Every year in September there is a celebration of Deaf Day in countries around the world, or Deaf Week as here in Cambodia.  Today was our big celebration to climax Deaf Week.  I couldn’t arrive till almost two o’clock because of the morning mass and because of a trip to the morgue for a parishioner who died yesterday.  When I did arrive, I was totally surprised because they turned the celebration into one honoring me.  Our Deaf Development Programme started in 1997 so this is our twentieth anniversary.  1997 was also the first time I came to Cambodia so my coming was included in the anniversary celebration.  And because this is the “birthday” of DDP, it became a birthday celebration for me, too, notwithstanding that I was born in February.  All the different celebrations got conflated together but the bottom line is that they had made a banner wishing me all the Buddhist blessings and they gave me a variety of gifts they had made.  It was a genuine surprise for me and much appreciated.  Come back to see more about Deaf Day in Cambodia.

On Day 2 of the visit of the funders from the Siloam Center for the Blind, their team went with DDP staff to visit three deaf youth in Kampot Province who were raising pigs and chickens and ducks.  Click here to see pictures from the day.

One of the funders of DDP is the Siloam Center for the Blind in Korea.  This week they came to Phnom Penh to visit the Deaf Development Programme and to meet the beneficiaries of their funding.  Click here to see Day 1 of their visit.

Dr. Felix Tse is a professor and administrator of a sign language linguistics program at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.  She came to Phnom Penh to explain the program and invite the linguistics department of the Royal University of Phnom Penh to establish a formal cooperation in sign language research.  Felix and Charlie have known each other for about twenty years.  Charlie studied Cantonese language at CUHK a long time ago. Click here to see more about Felix’s time in Phnom Penh.

The Maryknoll Deaf Development Programme had a farewell today for our co-director, Keat Sokly (right), who is leaving tomorrow to study in Hong Kong for a year.  He will be in a sign language linguistics program at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.  His learning will be great for the deaf community in the long term.  In the short term, we are going to miss his presence and leadership tremendously.

Today Keat Sokly, co-director at DDP, and I met Ms. Felix Yim Binh Sze as she arrived from Hong Kong where she is a professor in sign language linguistics at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.  Over dinner we discussed with Felix some ideas about CUHK starting a partnership with a local university to help sign language linguistics develop in Cambodia.

On a recent trip to Kampot Province, we visited our DDP House hostel for students in our Education Project just as they were finishing their lunch.  They take turns doing the chores and it was this young man’s day to wash the cooking pots.

Today we had to run down to Kampot Province for some meetings.  We got over to DDP House, our hostel for young deaf people in our Education Project, just as they were washing dishes after lunch.