Thursday, 9th of August 2012: The 4th day of Cambodia Relief Mission ‘12

We departed as early as 6.30 this morning, heading first to the nearby mosque to meet up with other 15 IMAC volunteers as today was really our first day of carrying out the ‘3 combo’ i.e mobile clinics, khitan and health education/games simultaneously. Alhamdulillah, we were really grateful for the extra helping hands from the IMAC.

After almost an hour finalising and arranging things, 2 vans-full with volunteers and medicines left the mosque to head down to Krahom kor village. The journey which took about one and a half hour  brought us deep into a small village and as we went deeper, the road was no longer tarred and unpaved while the air was filled with dust whenever our vans and other motorcyclists passed by. The houses at the roadside were also very basic-yet looked peaceful while some were already a bit shattered. We knew that IMAC had chosen the right village.

We arrived at the village’s main mosque called Sultan Ashaibani Mosque at 9am and were welcomed by the villagers, eagerly waiting for us and we could also see some boys already wearing their ‘kain pelikat’ , getting ready for khitan. 

More and more villagers came from all walks of life

About 40 boys prepared for khitan. 1 somehow managed to escape at the end!Huhu

We quickly set up the place according to the 3 groups that we had been initially assigned to which were the mobile clinic, khitan and health education/games teams.  For khitan, we were given a room but with no electricity-no working fan and no lights. Still we managed to open 4 tables and there were mainly a total of 2 IMAM and IMAC volunteers for each table while others organized themselves into preparing the surgical equipments, ready-to-go local anaesthetic injections, preparing medicines and a lollipop to be given away to each boy.

                           THE bed.                         

Packaging painkillers & antibiotics

IMAM & IMAC volunteers working hand in hand as Tok (and Mak) Mudin ;)

As for mobile clinic, we opened 3 stations i.e registration & taking blood pressure, consultation with doctors and drugs dispensation counters.  Alhamdulillah as many as 235 villagers came for it. 

Chim lo’o: blood normal

Capet: doctor

Aw-kuhn: thank u :)

These were some of the basic Khmer words that we used to communicate with the Cambodians-along with other possible body languages we could think of just to get the message across.hehe

Paracetamol & multivitamin were the ‘hot stuffs’ at the drugs dispensation counter 

 

By noon, we had a short break to perform our Zohor prayer and a local family was very nice to allow the girls to perform the prayer at their own house. We also used the opportunity to go to a nearby village to buy some medicines as we ran out of them.

Getting to know the locals during our afternoon break

Some were intrigued by the iphone games.hehe

The other team had also managed to educate and cheer up the kids by teaching them how to brush their teeth and demonstrate proper hand wash.

Time for some games! :)

And colouring contest too

Not forgetting, some donations to the mosque and to the villagers

We hope that the visit had benefited all who came and what was given, taught and shared would go a long way. We were also honoured to have such a warm welcomed by the villagers and we sincerely apologized for any shortcomings. Wallahualam.