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We entered the AIDS hospice in Phnom Penh expecting to see people reduced to skeletons wheezing for their last breaths. Instead we were greeted with smiles and bows from people who sat or reclined on their beds, weary perhaps, but healthy-looking, less downtrodden by their disease and more grateful to have gotten a clean bed in the breezy, open hospice.

Ed, a jolly Mary Knoll priest who oversees Mary Knoll’s AIDS/HIV programs in Cambodia, explained that ever since the administration of anti-retrovirals (powerful anti-HIV drugs) the survival rate for people coming into the hospice has grown considerably. Currently almost all the residents living their are expected to make a tenable recovery and return to normal life. In fact most of the staff at the hospice were themselves former residents.

Thanks to Peter’s initial contact with Celina, a model world citizen and Mary Knoll volunteer in Phnom Penh, we were able to visit many Mary Knoll sites. The city of Phnom Penh itself burgeons with non-governmental organizations. Our association with Mary Knoll proved most fortunate, as the programs we visited gave us great insight into Cambodia’s struggle with development and the Mary Knoll volunteers and priests themselves could not have been more welcoming.

It so happened we arrived in Phnom Penh in time for birthday week at Mary Knoll. That is the week when birthdays are celebrated by the Mary Knoll community at the weekly Wednesday mass at the Mary Knoll house. FBR went in its entirety. I was excited to attend an English mass, but the company and food afterwards made us all feel right at home. My favorite part of the evening, however, came when the lights dimmed and two Sisters marched into the room with cake. Cake?! I struggled to control my urge to grab the whole thing and dash into the street to feast on cake by myself in the gutter.

After it was cut up I even lingered far away, lest I give my appetite for sweets away. Finally I allowed myself one piece, and discovered real ice cream accompanied the cake. I stood by the wall indulging in cake and ice cream that exceeded my wildest expectations. Then I noticed people getting seconds. I waited, and waited. Soon I became convinced seconds for me would not be an intolerable burden on my hosts’ hospitality. I grabbed a small seconds, but soon found myself being encouraged by a couple of Sisters to eat even more. Great Scott! After fourths everyone else had obviously lost interest in the cake, and the servers were eager to clear the table. I felt I had no choice but to help them out…

This trip has sometimes been a struggle. There is not always cake, and the ovens in which I can bake things are few and far between. One Mary Knoll site we visited, however, really made my struggle for decent dessert seem laughable.

Celina and Charlie (another priest) work with a project teaching deaf children how to sign. It is the only such operation in Cambodia. When they explained their work to me, I realized for the first time what it really means to be deaf.

When children or young adults arrive at their school, they are sometimes as old as twenty. For twenty years, these children have had no exposure to language and have been completely unable to communicate with anyone other than by gestures. Our written language, completely caught up with the spoken language, is of little help to them. Think of trying to learn French in the written form if you have no concept of what a language is to begin with.

Because of the lack of previous work with the deaf in Cambodia, the Mary Knoll program worked to develop a sign language for Cambodia. Language, whether spoken or not, is culturally dependent. Gestures and associations with action are just as if not more liable to take on cultural specific meaning, so of course it makes no sense to force everyone around the world to learn American or British sign language. Celina, for instance, can fluently sign in Cambodian, but only knows American sign language from some courses she took in college.

We climbed the steep stairs onto the second level to visit a classroom. The kids, all of them teenagers, smiled and squirmed nervously as we came in, just as you might expect in any Asian classroom. With Celina and Charlie translating, we had a quick question and answer session. Some kids stood shyly over their desks, but others, one girl in particular, signed question after question to Celina, often interrupting her signing to communicate directly with us in carefully chosen intuitive gestures we easily understood.

The warmth and intelligence I felt in the classroom, and indeed, all through the rest of the Mary Knoll projects and volunteers, made me glad to know that such organizations operate in the world. From the HIV sufferers given a new lease on life by the hospice, to the children given the gift of language by the school for the deaf, Mary Knoll improves the quality of life for many people, often those most neglected in most societies. Now, whenever I eat cake, I will think of Mary Knoll, and remember to be thankful.

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 1st, 2008 at 10:25 am and is filed under Jim's Posts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.