The first case of COVID-19 was diagnosed in Cambodia on January 27th, 2020. It’s been a long two years of caution, disruption, and uncertainty. As leaders here, we’ve tried to walk the line between modeling appropriate precautions and being calm and reassuring. This month, for the first time in a over a year, we started…
Author: Charles
Chhin Ya’s Garden and Fishpond
In rural Mesang district, Prey Veng province Mennonite Central Committee partner Organization to Develop Our Villages (ODOV) supports rural Agricultural Cooperatives across 90 villages in adapting sustainable agriculture practices, healthy food preparation, conflict resolution, gender and domestic violence prevention, and organizational capacity. In a recent interview, one farmer told ODOV about how life has changed in her…
Action Alert: Stand up against violence in Myanmar (Burma)
I wanted to share this action alert from the MCC advocacy office in Washington, DC. This line of advocacy is the one supported by our partners in Myanmar and, while the results are uncertain given Russian/Chinese support for the military coup, the fruit of witnessing for peace and justice often appears in unexpected ways. Please…
The Soul Nourishment Show
Tune in to Family FM 99.5 at 1PM Monday through Friday to listen to the Soul Nourishment Show featuring Neema Atieno. Family FM 99.5 is a ministry of MCC partner Voice of Love Cambodia. Neema is a participant in MCC’s YAMEN exchange program from Kenya and is currently serving with Voice of Love Cambodia as…
Several Vaccinations this week
This week Crystal and I received our first COVID-19 booster shot. We could have gotten it back in August but decided to wait until it had been six months since our initial dose. It ended up taking longer than that because we were vaccinated by the Military, not the Ministry of Health, and had some…
Chikungunya and slow recovery
The Doctor said that it could take up to six weeks to recover from Chikungunya but I was optimistically thinking that meant that I’d be at 70% and improving for most of that time. That has not been the case and I’m still not at 100% eight weeks later. I am getting closer to ‘normal’…
Chikungunya?
I’ve been feeling increasingly under the weather this week with a sensation like the chills and aching muscle/joint pain. I thought I was stiff from taking the girls to school/study group on the moto everyday (they’re not small anymore) but yesterday afternoon I broke out in a fever and very quickly a rash spread across…
Our Avian visitors
This morning we had a call scheduled with “Uncle” Lance and as we were about to start the video chat there was a whoosh from our coconut tree. Of course we thought back to our simian visitors a few months ago and rushed to close the doors upstairs…but there we saw that our visitors were…
Shopping with the girls at the local market
During our first few months in Cambodia I was taking the girls to shop at the local market but once COVID-19 broke I started to avoid the market crowds in favor of our local grocery shop (which is run out of a family’s house). This wasn’t a waste as the girls started coming with me…
Catherine can now eat a full bowl of Kuy Teav by herself
Two years ago I gave you an introduction to គុយទាវ, or Kuy Teav, the iconic Khmer rice noodle soup. It’s a traditional soup known throughout the region by various names including Hủ Tiếu in Viet Nam, Kway Teow in Malaysia, and Kuai Tiao in Thailand. I’m writing today to give you a quick but very…