Charlie Dittmeier's Home Page
I had planned to do a more extensive spread of pictures here today but everything today–giving a talk for Mother Teresa’s sisters and a meeting with new St. Vincent de Paul Society members—took longer than expected and I just ran out of time. Next Sunday, for sure.
I did run across this young man hauling empty (I’m guessing) foam coolers through the streets this morning. With a little ingenuity and a lot of tape, you can secure some big loads to motorcycles.
You may have read about the dam collapsing in Laos the week before last and sending a whole lot of water south in the Mekong. That water has now arrived in Phnom Penh and combined with the normal rains of this season has raised the water level on our riverfront quite high. Normally these tourist boats, moored in the same place, would be out of sight with the river level about 15-20 feet lower.
Transparency International rates the countries of the world according to how people perceive corruption in different areas of business, civic, and social life. TI is now rating 180 countries and Cambodia is 161 on the list. That means there is a LOT of corruption in Cambodia.
Example No. 2: Our Deaf Development Programme needs to take one of our students across the border to Thailand for medical treatment she can’t get in Cambodia. I asked our social worker to find out about getting her a passport. The answer comes back that the Ministry of the Interior can’t give her a passport now because the minister is away and the minister has to deal with the girl because she is deaf. What the h*** does being deaf have to do with having a passport?
The probable answer is: [1] the passport office person really is that incompetent that she thinks a deaf person needs something different to get a passport, or [2] someone in that office sees this as an opportunity to make money off a young deaf woman who needs medical care.
Transparency International rates the countries of the world according to how people perceive corruption in different areas of business, civic, and social life. TI is now rating 180 countries and Cambodia is 161 on the list. That means there is a LOT of corruption in Cambodia.
An example: I was talking to our business manager about filling in a new, long government form about taxes. He spent hours on it and took it to the tax office and they rejected it and told him to do it over. He took it back, reworked it, and resubmitted it only to have it rejected again. When he asked why, the official told him: “You can’t do this. You have to let me do it.” In a free translation, that means: You can submit this as many times as you want, but it’s never going to be accepted until you let me do it for you–and you pay me.
On 14 August, Kaitlynn Himmelreich finished up her two months of research with the deaf community here in Cambodia and got on the plane to return to her student life in the US where classes begin next Monday. Kaitlynn adjusted well to life in Cambodia and was really able to integrate with and communicate with the deaf people wherever she them. Here she is presenting to Charlie Dittmeier a thank-you card acknowledging the good experiences she had in Cambodia.
I know many people have, at one time or another, entertained ideas of serving in mission in another country. But then school or careers or families intervened and the mission idea was put on the shelf. At some point, though, you may discover you can take your mission ideas off the shelf to see where the mission call leads you.
Maryknoll Lay Missioners offers orientation, language training, and support in mission placements in Asia, Africa, and Latin America to people from their 20s to their 60s–or maybe a little higher? If you’d like to learn a little more about Maryknoll mission from Karen Bortvedt, the Maryknoll Lay Missioner recruiter, she will offer a webinar (a seminar on the web) on August 15 at 10:00 AM EST. If you would like to take a peek, send an e-mail to join@MKLM.org for login information. This webinar–and more to follow–are just to give information.
Cambodia doesn’t observe many traffic rules. One exception is attaching warning flags to loads that stick out the back end of a truck or tuk-tuk or motorcycle. It may not even be a law here, but locals put out those warning flags. Click here to see some examples.
Many people have seen the movie The Killing Field and many have visited the killing field near Phnom Penh, the site most people know of. There are actually about 300 killing fields, though, spread throughout the country. There is such a large number of these fields because the number of Cambodians killed by the Khmer Rouge was great. It is generally thought that the Pol Pot regime was responsible for the deaths of perhaps 1.5 to 2 million people. The killing field that most tourists visit is the orange dot along the river, immediately south of Phnom Penh (next to the row of three yellow prison dots).
DDP has become quite well known in the deaf world since 1997 and many deaf people–individuals and groups–come to see us. This past week, Hosanna Church in Busan, Korea visited. They are a deaf congregation and we had a good visit.
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““A church without charity and mercy is no longer the church of God.” ~ Pope Francis |