Today, when traveling to Kampong Cham province to negotiate rental agreements for buildings for our new project starting in January, we stopped in at the DDP classroom in Kampong Cham town. The dwindling numbers in these classrooms are one of the main reasons for the new project which will bring in students from remote districts and provide a place for them to stay during their education at DDP.

We have had ongoing problems with our computer network at the Deaf Development Programme ever since we installed it. Sometimes they seemed to be caused by the ISP, sometimes by the network routers, and sometimes by the computers. And maybe quite often by the computer USERS! Today one of the technicians from Pacific Systems came to investigate slow Internet download speeds. It turned out there was one problem with the ISP but he also suspects one of our routers is bad so that will be replaced tomorrow. Here the technician is on the phone with the ISP technician and then is in another office on another floor trying to get things configured correctly.

We are lucky at the Deaf Development Programme that our students are highly motivated. They come to us about twenty years of age, after watching their younger brothers and sisters go to school over the years while they stayed at home and worked in the rice field. But even for motivated students, the end of the day is welcome. Here deaf students pick up their bicycles and head home at 4:30 PM.

Every time we get a new staff member at the Deaf Development Programme we must teach him or her Cambodian Sign Language so that deaf people are fully included and can participate equally in the activities of DDP.  Currently we have four new staff and—luckily—we are also training a group of deaf people to teach sign language.  Part of the training of the new sign language teachers is sharing their language with the new staff every afternoon.

Staff members who are born deaf, grew up in a deaf culture, and are native signers are extremely valuable for the DDP program, and DDP is fortunate to have both Tashi Bradford (pictured here talking with Charlie Dittmeier) and Justin Smith who recently rejoined the DDP staff.  They are able to serve as role models for the deaf youth of Cambodia and can help to interpret and explain various difficult situations that come up with the deaf youth here.

Tashi Bradford (facing camera) is DDP's resident sign language linguist. She is helping to promote the teaching of sign language in Cambodia, especially by training deaf people as teachers. Here she speaks to four of the DDP staff about teaching sign language.

Cambodian people love to play chess and the DDP students love it, too.  A visitor to DDP, Rita Bocher, brought three chess sets with her from the United States, and today the students put them to good use during their long lunch break.

26 of the 34 staff of the Maryknoll Deaf Development Programme work in our five-story building in Phnom Penh.  No one enjoys running up and down the stairs so internal communications have long been a nuisance. Now we are experimenting with a staff mailbox system for distributing messages and papers for the staff. Stephanie Linder, an advisor to the job training project, took responsibility for making the mailboxes happen. Youra, one of the DDP guards, helped her assemble the plastic boxes which will be placed on rattan shelves in an area near the one stairway.

Last week four different students living in our hostel for deaf youth studying in job training centers woke up with extremely swollen arms or legs.   The painful swellings all had what looked like a bug bite in the middle but it was obviously not a mosquito!  Two of the bites were so bad and continued to swell and hurt so much that we took the students to the local doctor.  When asked what might be causing the bites, the students mentioned seeing centipedes, usually coming up out of the drains in the bathroom floors, so I asked them to catch some for me.  This is one centipede they turned over to me.  Whether this variety of bug is actually causing the problem, we don't know, but we have sent the photo to the website What's That Bug to see if they can help identify it and recommend an antidote if others get bitten.  The problem is compounded because although we provide beds for the students, culturally they prefer to sleep on a thin reed mat on the floor.

 
Martha Dittmeier Reed, Charlie's sister, gave him two simple chess sets to bring back to Cambodia where chess is a national pastime.  The students at the DDP center in Phnom Penh quickly took advantage of this new fun option, and now everyday at lunch time there are impromptu matches between students. Charlie was worried the deaf people would not know how to play since they are not exposed to so much of the culture that is available to hearing people, but many deaf students, both boys and girls, already knew the game and have started teaching the others.