Deaf – Page 8 – Welcome to Cambodia, and…..

Staff Training

As part of the Khmer New Year holiday break, DDP is taking advantage of the students’ absence to offer further training on child protection to the staff. Here the staff engage in a quick game on their afternoon break.

Khmer New Year Celebration

Today was the last day for the deaf students to be together at DDP before heading home for their new year break tomorrow.

Dancing is a really big part of Khmer culture and the deaf youth love to dance also, even if they can’t always hear the extra loud music that is playing.

Then they had the chance to eat the special curry meal they prepared yesterday. It was quite good!

The best part of being at DDP, though, is just being part of a community, having friends, and just feeling that you belong to something.

Khmer New Year prep

The Khmer New Year will be April 13, 14, and 15, but because our students will go home for a long holiday, they will celebrate the DDP new year tomorrow. Today students pitched in to prepare vegetables for the special dishes to be enjoyed tomorrow!

Saying Farewell

Sr. Regina came to DDP this morning to say goodbye to the staff she has worked with over the years.

DDP director Soknym spoke of his working with Regina.

These are the four Maryknollers associated now with DDP: Charlie, Regina, Naa (a former guard at the Maryknoll office, now at DDP), and Julie.

Redistribution

When students come to DDP for two years of education and a year of job training, we become responsible for almost everything. Most of them are from poor families with no disposable income so we help with even getting them clothing.

Here Sreytin, one of our staff sorts donated clothing we can make available to the youth who are with us.

Untidy is OK

Aesthetics is not a prominent concern in Cambodia. Much of daily life is still focused on survival and so details like cleanliness, order, discipline get ignored. An example is this installation of our wi-fi router at the Deaf Development Programme. This was a new building and the installation could have been placed anywhere and taken any shape. The final result on the main corridor of our building is what is easiest and most accessible rather than might look best.

Birthday Gathering

This morning the Phnom Penh staff of DDP got together for a little celebration of my birthday. Three of the staff put together a “cake” made of various Khmer foods arranged in a large cone. They were really good and much appreciated by all the staff!

Another departure

A couple weeks ago we celebrated a graduation for our education students and for a group of our job trainees. Today four of the job trainees finished their time at DDP and returned to their home provinces to set up their own barber shops.

The four barbers with the equipment supplied to them to set up their barber shops. They got barber chairs, the clippers and trimmers, and the hair washing chairs in the foreground.

This young man is packing up his supplies as the barber trainer and DDP staff speak with his mother.

Then it was time to load up vans and tuk-tuks for the ride home. We give the students bicycles to use while they are here and this man is taking that–and also an old barber chair we had thrown out (foreground).

Caritas Cambodia Retreat 2024 / Day 4b

After lunch, we started the roundabout return journey to Sihanoukville with a first stop at a huge statue of a man and a woman celebrating a marriage famous in Khmer mythology.

Not far from the statue is this bay which is the home of the Ream Naval Base, a military facility recently renovated by the Chinese. Western countries, particularly the United States, have expressed concern that the base is to be China’s outpost in the Gulf of Thailand to bolster their power and presence in the South China Sea. China denies any special role for China but the renovations created berths that accommodate aircraft carriers–and Cambodia doesn’t have an aircraft carrier.

Cambodian social media is also up in arms because the government is filling in the bay for development purposes and has despoiled the mountain hilltops on both sides of the bay, destroying the forest cover to get stone for the renovation.

Farther along the highway is this famous tree which has been left in the middle of a rebuilt highway. It is on a hilltop overlooking the sea and is known in popular lore as the place where wives and lovers waited for their seamen to return.

Caritas Cambodia Retreat 2024 / Day 4a

Today was a get-to-know-your-country day for the Caritas Cambodia staff. Most of the day was spent visiting several interesting sites around Sihanoukville.