The Walls Are Up!

A Hostel for the School Children

A modest single storey hostel, 5m x 18m in size is currently being built behind the school building at Botein. It can accomodate about 40-50 students who come from Vietnam. It will be completed by April 2011, insya Allah.

Kaum Zahid

The 'Kaum Zahid' of Cambodia practises an esoteric version of Islam. They believe in Alah and His Messenger, Muhammad. However they pray only once a week and fast only for three days in Ramadan. They are only obliged to practise Islam at the age of 40 (the age when Muhammad became a prophet). They constitute about 5% of the half million Muslims in Cambodia. (The 95% majority of Muslims in Cambodia are Sunnis. They practise the Shafie school of thought in Islam). The Kaum Zahid claims that they are the original Cham Malays who came from Vietnam to Cambodia. The community is concentrated at Kampong Chnang.

Modest Homes for the Poor and Destitute

Modest homes for the poor and destitute. There are just too many of them.

Cham Malay Children

Nature of Education

The educational syllabus taught at the schools is officially recognised by the Cambodian government and comes under the auspices of the Office of the Mufti of Cambodia. Currently only religous education is taught at the schools but discussions to integrate it with the National Education programme are in progress. Under this proposed integration Khmer teachers will also teach at the schools built by the Office of the Mufti.

Quest for Self Sufficiency

In an effort to be self-sufficient to support the educational and social programmes of the office of the Mufti of Cambodia, several hectares of land at Ratnakiri province are cultivated with rubber trees. The rubber trees can be tapped in about 3-4 years.

A Second School

We have built a school with 8 clasrooms at Poti'in, the hometown of the Mufti of Cambodia. The student population is about 400. Currently there are 8 teachers for both the primary and secondary levels.

A hostel which can accomodate about 50 students is currently being built near the school. There are about 120 students from neighbouring villages and from across the border from Vietnam who need accomodation. I will update pictures of the hostel in due course.

A second school with 5 classrooms is currently being built at Roka Pram in the district of Tbung Khmum. There are about 800 Muslim families living in the village. About 500 students and 10 teachers require the new school.

Please do not hesitate to contact us at isa.kamari@gmail.com  or sukmaisa@singnet.com.sg if you would like to contribute or know of someone who can help. Thank you.

The Quest Resumes

This blog is created as a mirror of the blog 'Quest of the Cham Malays' http://questchammalays.blogspot.com/. I could not update the first blog due to technical reasons. However there are ongoing projects in Cambodia which I want to share with you.

All the projects mentioned in this blog are managed by Sukmaisa Concept Powerhouse. We are located at 37 Lorong M, Telok Kurau #03-02, Candeville, Singapore 425316. Tel no: +65-63465504. email: isa.kamari@gmail.com or sukmaisa@singnet.com.sg