One year ago we had no idea that we would be in Cambodia now. I remember that we felt stuck on New Years 2019. We had wanted to apply to an Occupational Therapy position working with Agent Orange victims in rural Việt Nam – despite some significant concerns about the girls – but the previous…
Month: December 2019
ផ្លែស្វាយ | Mango
It’s the most wonderful time of the year… Ripe mangoes from the Cambodian countryside have started to show up in the market! I was fairly ambivalent to mangoes before traveling to Việt Nam in University. That’s when I discovered that the mangoes that I’d been eating in North America were poor representatives of their species….
Christmas Duck Disaster
We had the YAMEN participants over for Christmas day dinner. We have two volunteers from Kenya and one from Indonesia. I had planned to roast duck (my first) for dinner…but it did not go so well. As I roasted two ducks for dinner one of them began to emit a putrid stench. This became worse…
ODOV Proposal Revisions
On the Thursday and Friday after Christmas, I headed out to rural Prey Veng province with our new Planning/Monitoring/Evaluation Coordinator Visal to meet with one of MCC’s long term partners, the Organization to Develop our Villages (ODOV). ODOV was, originally, MCC Mesang until it localized in 2004. The file cabinets seen in the photo above…
Flowers of Cambodia 2019
Following up on Flowers of Cambodia from ’06 – ’09, here’s a compilation of flowers we’ve seen since returning to Cambodia. I want to highlight a few of these. I think this may be the tallest Orchid that I’ve ever seen. It was at a restaurant in rural Prey Veng province. This was on a…
First Vacation to Kep
We had our first family vacation since joining MCC last week. It was great to get away from the city and be alone together as a family. Kep is a southern province on the border with Vietnam. It was a popular French resort town during the colonial period. There are many gutted and abandoned villas…
O Tannenbaum
Our Christmas ornaments arrived from Maryland just in time for the holidays. We put them up in the kitchen window as our tree had already been decorated by the MCC Christmas Party committee. Our team here have their own traditions and it will be fun to see them blend together in the coming years. It’s…
SDGs Cultural Performances
On December 12, Charlotte and I attended a Cultural Performance event on the Sustainable Development Goals. I was interested to see how they would adapt traditional performance art to this subject matter. Churning of the Ocean of Milk The first cultural performance told the Hindu myth of Samudra Manthan. In this myth, Devas and Asuras are…
Cambodian Labour Law
I don’t often talk about my work because it’s largely administrative. It’s more interesting (and photographic) to share what other folks on the team are doing. But I thought that I’d give you a quick snapshot into one of my current projects. It helps that Catherine decided to read my Cambodian Labour Law book for…
Baking Christmas Cookies
There’s a well deserved (but not universally true) stereotype that Mennonites enjoy baking. So, perhaps it’s not too surprising that MCC Cambodia has for many years owned two small gas ovens. I’m not sure of their origins but I know that they are the only household ovens that I’ve seen in Cambodia. All that to…