This week has been particularly busy for me. After the passport fiasco, which took all of Monday to resolve, I was looking forward to a chat with a co-worker who manages the Deaf Community Center to ask him to help me recruit sign language models to video. Instead the staff at DDP and several students, supporters and clients were invited to a meeting to discuss the upcoming visit of a Thai delegation from a disability organization that has offices throughout Asia.

As it happens the delegation was here to talk with Deaf people about their needs and wants and to begin a conversation about community organizing here. I say begin, but as it happens this same group minus two important Deaf members were here in 2007 having the same conversation. Two days of workshops ensued with two Deaf Thai leaders facilitating the conversation. Deaf people from three distinct organizations joined this workshop. DDP had about 15 participants who used Cambodian Sign Language. Krousar Thmey, the local K-12 school for the Deaf sent six or seven teachers and students. They use an American Sign Language descendant so frequently they needed the services of one of the hearing teachers who signed (note I did not say interpreted... more on this later) into Signed Khmer. (Think a sign language imitation of spoken Khmer.) Then a third group of about six came from an organization that services the province adjacent to Phnom Penh. None of these Deaf people knew a formal sign language or spoken language of any kind. They served as a model for most of the 49,000 Deaf people in Cambodia who have not had contact with either Krousar Thmey or DDP.

The meeting was held in a hotel ballroom, several sumptuous breaks and lunches provided with hotel staff dressed in suits and tailored uniforms to serve our every need. (More about this later.) The conversations were facilitated in Thai sign language with two Thai sign language interpreters voicing. That voicing was then interpreted into Thai and re-interpreted into spoken Khmer by a Thai-Khmer interpreter born in a disputed region of what is presently Thailand called Kampuchea Surin. By the name of the area you might guess that the inhabitants are Khmer (Cambodian) and that they speak for the most part both Thai and Khmer. The Khmer interpretation was then re-interpreted in to Cambodian Sign Language by DDP staff. One of the Thai delegation was a liaison from a Japanese funder who spoke passable Khmer and Thai but not enough to understand either of the spoken interpretations. She did however speak fluent English and of course Japanese. (Are you confused yet?) So I provided a Cambodian Sign Language and eventually a Thai sign language interpretation into spoken English for the two days of the workshop and a third day of leader meetings.

I'm exhausted just writing about the experience. Imagine the Thai Sign Language and Cambodian /Sign Lnguage interpreters who had to sign or voice everything said in every language. Occasionally hearing members of the delegation would describe objectives of the workshop activities and the information needed from the Deaf people so both sign language interpreter teams would be working simultaneously. See the picture above. The woman is interpreting to the audience at large in Cambodian SL and the man is intepreting into Thai Sign. Only the Japanese funding representative, myself and one of the Thai sign language interpreters could use all of the spoken languages. (Mind you when I say I speak Thai and Khmer....we're talking I can ask where the bathroom is and when dinner will be ...not much else.) When spoken Thai or Khmer was used I interpreted from the Cambodian Sign Language into spoken English. Any time a Cambodian Deaf person spoke I interpreted, but I kept getting tripped up by the ASL variant used by the Krousar Thmey delegation. Most of the time I had to pick my jaw up off the floor by these ASL variant-fluent Deaf people talking about events in their lives (or more likely events fromthe experiences of the hearing teachers who coached them... more about this.)

What an experience! On the third day of this working group the leaders held a meeting in spoken English ---- my head hurts ---- so I was elected as the DDP interpreter. (Imagine interpreting into and from a language I only have known for six months... ay yay yay!) At times the Thai sign interpreter had difficulty negotiating the voicing into her fourth spoken language, so I backed her up as well. Needless to say, I am taking the day off to work on my real project videoing Deaf people modelling classifiers in Cambodian SL.