Welcome to Cambodia, and….. – Page 221 – Charlie Dittmeier's Home Page

Street Signs

U.S. street sign telling you you have reached St. 105A

Street signs in Cambodia are erected and used in a different way here than they are in other countries. Click here for some samples of Phnom Penh street signs.

Trump’s wall has become a false god and a symbol of all that is not great with America. Our desire for power over people instead of power with people. Our unwillingness to be governed by our own laws. Our disdain for the faith-based principles calling us to care for one another, found in all sacred texts.

~ Traci Blackmon and Caleb Lines in Sojourners

Another Day at Work

A man reupholstering chairs from a little shop in his house, with the street as his workbench.

Staff Meeting at New DDP

Just a day or so after making the move to our new DDP office site, we had a staff meeting on the large front porch. Normally we would have used our meeting room but the staff complained it was full of mosquitoes–it was!—so we moved our first meeting in the new building outdoors and Sokly explained about some of our personnel policy.

Lay Mission Gathering

Every month a number of lay missioners from various mission communities in various countries get together in Phnom Penh in a type of support group. For the February meeting, Sr. Len Montiel was invited to speak of her many years of experience in the kingdom. She is preparing to be reassigned with Maryknoll in the United States in March.

Here Len, wearing a Year of the Pig crown, shows her goodbye gift from the group
as Miyuki (L), Lieke, and Kylene look on.

Bi Salon at Work!

DDP has a Job Training Project and one of our placements for training of young deaf women is at Bi Salon, where ten of our students are trained in various parts of the operations of a beauty salon. Ms. Kem Khemara, a local businesswoman who spent seven years in Japan, owns the salon and has been the driving force in welcoming and training our students who have done very well under her tutelage.

Last week Khemara surprised us by bringing her stylists to DDP and cutting our students’ and staff’s hair in an impromptu salon on our new front porch. It was a wonderful experience, especially for many of the deaf young women who seldom if ever have their hair cut like that, and we sincerely thank Khemara and her staff for their generosity with their time and their talents!

Kem Khemara (L) cutting a student’s hair in an impromptu beauty session at DDP.

DDP students waiting their turn for a haircut.

Khemara and her stylists with DDP staff and students after an afternoon of cutting.

DDP’s New Home–7

Once the trucks were unloaded, the staff were eager to get settled in their new offices and work spaces. Click here to see the different offices.

DDP’s New Home–6

Click here to see the unloading of the trucks at the new DDP office site.

DDP’s New Home—5

On moving day we gathered at the old office and loaded two trucks that made multiple trips to the new office. Click here to see the activity at the old office.

Notable Quotes

A quote from two conservatives, Jonathan Rauch of the Brookings Institution and Peter Wehner of the right-leaning Ethics and Public Policy Center, from an article they wrote for the New York Times:

The most troubling — and from our point of view the most disappointing — development of the Trump era is not the president’s own election and subsequent behavior; it is the institutional corruption, weakness and self-betrayal of the Republican Party. The party has abandoned its core commitments to constitutional norms, to conservative principles and even to basic decency. It has allowed itself to be hijacked by a reality television star who is a pathological liar, emotionally unsteady and accountable only to himself. And it has embraced presidential conduct that, if engaged in by a Democrat, it would have been denounced as corrupt, incompetent and even treasonous.