Did you see it?
Easter…still
Maryknoll Fr. Joe Veneroso is a poet who takes the themes of our belief and theology and puts them into a form that sings their meaning to us. We are still in the Easter Season–and will be for several more weeks. Let us not forget what Easter means for us. Here is Fr. Veneroso’s Easter message:
“We stand at the foot of the cross and
Cannot help but wonder why
Undergo such sacrifice and
Unspeakable suffering and humiliation.
As if reading our unspoken thoughts, he says,
‘Do you still not see or understand?
Nothing you can do, no sin you can commit
Will ever make me stop loving you.’
And with that he bows his head and dies.
Before daybreak we rise to walk
Alongside the mourning, myrrh-bearing women.
The stone removed, our sadness devolves into despair.
An empty tomb taunts us with renewed doubts.
Grave robbers? The owner? The wrong tomb? Or. . .
‘Why seek the living among the dead?’
He says our name.
He whom we thought dead now lives again
We rush back with Magdalene
To spread the Good News and henceforth
To live for him who died and rose for us. Amen. Alleluia.”
Now, the real thing….
New “old” staff
Encroachment
I’m standing in a little street near our house where the street dead ends in a market. It’s a two-lane street but notice how a house has been built out into the street, completely taking over one lane. The house with the brick wall and the orange cooler in front is not supposed to be there but the builder of the house paid someone off or started with a little food cart there and then took off the wheels and put it on blocks and then put an awning over it and then closed in the sides and then…. until finally it is a full-blown house. Notice that once the first house was established, neighbors appeared beside them so that there are now three or four family structures there side-by-side. The Kingdom of Wonder….
Stop Covid-19 System
More than 155,000 shops and institutions have signed up to participate in the “Stop Covid-19” program which seeks to record who visits a site in order to assist contact tracing if necessary should a Covid-19-infected person visit that location. When introducing the scheme, the government downplayed any concerns about privacy but there are no restrictions or limitations on the way the government can use a person’s personal information if the person uses her phone to scan the QR code at a store.
Human Rights Watch has warned: “Cambodia’s QR Code system is ripe for rights abuses because it lacks privacy protections for personal data. These concerns are heightened by the government’s stepped-up online surveillance of Cambodians since the outset of the pandemic, putting government critics and activists at greater risk.”
Mine Awareness
Yesterday was the celebration of Easter for much of the world but in Cambodia it was the International Day of Mine Awareness. The Cambodian Mine Awareness Authority put out a fact sheet for 2020, noting 10,051 landmines, 135 anti-tank mines, and 33, 312 other ERW (Explosive Remnants of War) were collected and destroyed. Small as the numbers are, that is the good news. The bad news is that in 2020 there were 65 casualties (17 deaths). That is on average a casualty every 5.6 days from munitions put down 50-60 years ago. Still killing and wounding….
Another year…
Normally during the period of Holy Week and Easter I post here photos of our Holy Week services at St. Joseph Church. That pattern was disrupted last year by the appearance of COVID-19 in Cambodia which caused the cancellation of our services with just a week’s notice.
At that time we thought…”Next year will be different and we’ll be back together.” But that didn’t happen. Instead our Covid situation in Cambodia is much worse this year than it was in 2020, and so once again we didn’t have any liturgies to show you here.
What we do have is this:
The government is really getting worried now about COVID-19. In the first thirteen months of the pandemic, we had 375 infections up to February 20th. Since then, because of some suspected playboys and infected prostitutes who flew in on a private plane, widespread community transmission has started and as of today we have increased to 2,700 infections in just six weeks.
The government’s response has not always been the best. The upper newspaper in the photo talks about all the people in the past year who have escaped from quarantine facilities because of bribery, incompetence, or lack of attention. The second newspaper talks about a newly instituted curfew from 8:00 PM to 5:00 AM. Cambodians don’t go out at night so it may not be that effective, but then the punishment for violating the curfew is just to have your motorcycle impounded for two weeks.
You need a bag…
Rough going….
Many, many small vendors and owners of street stalls are in bad shape because of COVID-19. They depend on foot traffic on the streets around markets and schools and other busy places. But there are few people around today.
It was never very good to begin with for those informal business owners. Here are two quotes from an article in Khmer Times:
“Since the February 20 community outbreak [of COVID-19 in Phnom Penh], there have been very few customers,” he laments. “I used to earn $10 per day, but now I can make only $5.”
Cheang, owner of a small food shop
Navy says before the outbreak of the pandemic she was able to save $3 per day after paying all her daily expenses. “But, now I can hardly feed myself and my small son,” she says.
Navy, owner of a coffee and drinks shop next to Cheang’s shop
Things are really bad now, but note their average daily income BEFORE the pandemic: $10 a day for the food shop and $3 a day for the drinks shop. That’s a good indication of life in Cambodia where the large majority of the economy is in the informal sector.