Charlie Dittmeier's Home Page
Many, many people in Phnom Penh make their living from trash and recyclables. Using push carts, they start early, at dawn, and walk miles checking for plastics, metals, electronics, or other things they can sell to the recycling wholesalers. This woman decided it was time for a nap after selling her load to the wholesaler and climbed into her push cart.
Ms. Miwako Fujiwara is a professional musician and the organizer of Musica Felice, a choral group of Phnom Penh singers. Their series of benefit concerts was interrupted by Covid-19 but today held a concert at the Sofitel hotel in Phnom Penh with the Deaf Development Programme as one of the beneficiaries. More than twenty DDP staff attended. Most of the concert was not interpreted but at the intermission Miwako made some introductions. Unfortunately, our sign language interpreter offstage didn’t hear her name called, and when she didn’t appear I stepped in for some impromptu interpreting. (More on the concert tomorrow.)
Styrofoam is not much used for packaging food in North America and Europe but it’s alive and well here in Cambodia. There is a beginning awareness of the need to phase out practices harmful to the environment, but getting rid of styrofoam is difficult in a culture where so many people eat on the street going to and from work and school.
Every two months I write an article about life and mission in Cambodia for The Record, the weekly newspaper for the Archdiocese of Louisville. Here is an article published in this week’s edition:
https://therecordnewspaper.org/living-mission-life-in-cambodia-is-improving/
