Another Farewell from DDP

Last week two young men with multiple disabilities left the hostel at DDP for a new home with another NGO which we hope will be better suited to care for them. I hated to see them go because they have been moved around before but this new situation should be better for them.

Farewell

Last Friday was Russ Brine’s last day at the Deaf Development Programme and we had a little Covid-conscious farewell for him. Russ was our finance manager and worked mostly with Neang Thary, our accountant. Here she offers him a goodbye gift.

A rodent problem

This is the dining room in the “new” Maryknoll office we moved into a week ago. This used to be the kitchen (see the water pipe still sticking out of the wall beside the microwave) but for some reason they moved the kitchen through the door and outside, under just a tin roof. We used to keep this window and door open but found rats can enter the outdoor kitchen and then hop through this window and door into the dining room and the rest of the house.

This is the kitchen now, outside. Notice the door with no glass or screen so that cats and rodents can easily come in. There is enough room for them to squeeze under the door if they don’t want to jump through the door.

This is a window on the side wall of the now dining room. We asked the landlord to put screens on the windows and he did. They are plastic screens and as soon as the first rat heard we had moved in, he chewed through the plastic (see the corner) and started going through the food in the dining room. As a consequence we now keep the windows closed and locked.

To try and reduce our rodent problem, I have set a rat trap in the now kitchen, hoping to catch whatever might come under the door in the background.

One half of a bridge

Last year this intersection had each of the four corners sequentially fenced off as these stanchions were created for a major pedestrian overpass to give students safe access to a large secondary school to the right of the photo. Then Covid-19 came. The school is closed but they could have finished the work on the overpass. For some reason, they didn’t.

They’re here!

Hey, Cambodia has reached the Big Time now–we opened our first 7-Eleven store yesterday. People—spacially distanced–stood in line out in a pouring rain to be part of the first-day crowd. There are plans for another 5-10 stores in the kingdom in the near future.