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…
Author: Charles
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…
Rural Primary School Teacher Coaching
Early in December we went on field visits to three schools in rural Prey Veng province. I shared a bit about the breakfast program, now let’s get into teacher coaching. It is difficult to be a teacher in the countryside. The pay is low, supports are few, and absenteeism is common. Some teachers routinely skip…
Documentation Center of Cambodia
Last Thursday I visited the Documentation Center of Cambodia (DC-Cam) with Annaliese. She’s a SALT participant working with long term MCC partner Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies at the Cambodia Peace Gallery in Battambang. She scheduled the meeting with DC-Cam’s Information Technology Coordinator, Morm Sophat, to ask DC-Cam for recommendations on archival databases, how…
Fred Kauffman
This morning I received an email from MCC Cambodia alumni Carol Buhrman letting me know that Fred Kauffman had passed away suddenly. Fred had a long history with MCC and with the Mennonite church, but we feel a special warmth for him in Cambodia. Fred and Minh were the first MCC Cambodia personnel. They arrived…
ផ្លែខ្នុរ | Jackfruit
For the North American readers, have you ever chewed Juicy Fruit gum? Did you ever wonder what the juicy fruit was? It’s Jackfruit – which isn’t that juicy but which has a sticky resin. We have a small Jackfruit tree at the office that recently had some ripe fruits. The office day guard – who…
Rural Primary School Breakfast Program
This was originally a Global Family program that I was put in charge of implementing during my first term in Cambodia. MCC had a breakfast program at a Primary School just outside of Phnom Penh previously but they wanted it to move to a rural location where it would help more vulnerable students. There’s a…
The Girls’ First Visit to Pea Reang
This week I went on three field visits to MCC education projects at rural Primary Schools in Prey Veng province. Crystal and the girls came along to one of the Primary Schools in Pea Reang district. I’ll be sharing more about the work MCC is doing in Prey Veng in a later post. I got some…