The idea for the Cambodia Project was mooted in 2008 by Loh Mei Lin and Kamarul Azlan Rahman, lecturers of MARA College Banting and MARA College Seremban respectively.
In 2009 we made Cambodia as our first destination. We chose Kampung Chumnik, a rather backward village 5-hour bus ride from the capital Phnom Penh as our focus. Kampung Chumnik had a population of 8000, 80% of whom were Muslims from the Cham ethnic group. Electricity was non-existent and water had to be pumped untreated straight from the nearby Mekong river into individual houses for a small fee.
Now the Cambodia Project is conducted by Permaibudi and volunteers comprising medical doctors, dentists and general volunteers to conduct medical and dental checkups as well as the circumcision programme since 2018. Permaibudi also provide aid and assistance to the hard core poor in the village.
We started conducting free medical treatment for the people in Kampung Chumnik in 2010. Initially our medical only consisted of a couple of volunteer doctors, assisted by our students who were going into medicine when they leave college.
The medical team went into a new level when Dr Azri Fickry came into the picture in 2018. Since then Dr Azri himself headed and formed the medical team. He is now joined by about 12 medical doctors each year, many of whom are specialists in their fields.
We are now able to expand the scope of our medical treatment and provide free medical services to hundreds of patients each year.
We started providing free dental care for the villagers in 2018. The team is headed by Dr Syasya Fickry, who was herself a student volunteer in our very first trip to the village. She ropes in her dental friends to volunteer for the dental team, many of whom were former student volunteers to the village when they were in KMS.
Each year 10-12 qualified dentists form the dental team, bringing something new to the villagers where dental care is often neglected due to the high costs involved.
The dental team is an integral part of our programme and they are also the most cheerful and happening bunch of young people that the villagers, especially the children, adore.
When we first visited Kampung Chumnik, the villagers requested that we provide circumcision for their children. Proper circumcision procedure was not in place in the village then and the cost was also exhorbitant.
We managed to get Dr Andi Berlian Tanwir, a specialist in the business from Pekan Baru , Indonesia to join us in Kampung Chumnik. Initially it was Dr Andi alone doing the circumcision but over the years he has roped in many more of his colleagues in providing this important service in the village.
Our circumcision programme is now run by Sunathrone Indonesia, owned by Dr Andi and is very popular in Kampung Chumnik and the nearby villagers. Thus far, we have managed to offer circumcision to thousands of young boys in the Krochmar district.
A key component of our community service work in Cambodia is servicing the hard core poor. Each year we were there we would always find room to provide basic food provisions for 30-50 families depending on how much we could afford. Each food pack would normally be worth RM100-120.
And the way we do it is that we would identify these families through the assistance of the village heads. We would then carry the provisions and go house to house to distribute them. The reason for this is to allow our volunteers to witness firsthand the living conditions of the poor people in the village
Another reason is that many of these people are old ladies in their 70s-80s who live alone and would not be able to make it on their own if we were to distribute the food packs from a particular centre.
Our projects are totally voluntary. All the team members pay for their own expenses including flight tickets, transport, food and lodging etc.
They take about 4-5 days of their annual leave from their work and private practice to take part in this charity work.
In the kampung they roughed it out in rented kampung houses, sleeping on wooden floors with only a thin mat. They also have to share one bathroom among the 10-15 of them.
Our volunteers are just absolute gifts from heaven!
The people in Kampung Chumnik are the Cham. In fact, all the Muslims in Cambodia are Cham.
The Cham people originated from where Vietnam is now. History says that people from southern China invaded the land of the Cham and pushed them southward. After a series of wars and over the years the Cham people left their homeland and migrated into Cambodia where they settled in what is now called Kampong Cham with the permission of the Cambodian King.
In the 70s, the whole country was ravaged by Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge. The Cham people were also not spared. In the aftermath the whole country was in ruins. It would take the Cham people a few generations to get back on their feet. And the most basic thing to do is to develop their people through education.
