Charlotte turned six last month. Per her request, she had fried chicken for her lunch (at school) and spaghetti for dinner. The Area Directors were in town for our first country program review and joined the festivities. As parents, we enjoyed that Charlotte asked for birthday gifts like yoga mats and bean bag chairs. (Okay,…
Author: Charles
COVID-19: For such a time as this
What a whirlwind the last weeks have been. It feels like the world has been suddenly and fundamentally changed. The disruptions. The cancelled plans. The disappointments. The uncertain future. The distanced relationships. The livelihoods interrupted. The fear of disease. The fear of death. We don’t know what the world will look like after this. Indeed,…
COVID-19: Outline & Update
The first diagnosis of COVID-19 here came in January. Cambodia made news around the world later in February when it allowed the MS Westerdam cruise ship to come to port here after four countries turned it away. Initially, the official response to COVID-19 here was to focus on maintaining a positive relationship with China. There…
Why Mennonite Central Committee?
To me, Mennonite Central Committee is more than an institution. It’s more than a collection of people. It’s more than relationships. It’s more than history. It’s more than methodology. I think of MCC as part of a movement. A movement that’s far greater than but well exemplified by MCC. At the heart of this movement…
Happy New Years 2020
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…
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…