Homes for Sudan HS4S: Week Six: Mayo Building Workshop hosted by Mayo Women’s Association

This was a week of firsts, seconds, and lasts.

First visit from Dr. Abdelgadir from University of Khartoum,
and the long awaited first business class

First visit from Dr. Abdelgadir to start his long awaited business class.

The team immediately demonstrated how smart and engaged they are.

The professor gave them a test to determine if they have ‘entrepreneurial’ potential, then the class requested instruction on market identification, feasibility studies, and business plans.

First business class: the ladies of Mayo demonstrate their accumulated knowledge on business and have multiple questions for their professor

First visit from the AECOM DC and Khartoum folks working on the USAID/TEPS
(Toward Enduring Peace in Sudan) projects. They were pleased with the team's progress.

Ustaz Hooman explains the dome to Khartoum based Dr. Abdalla (director of AECOM)
and Mr. Mohammed Elamin, and DC based ladies Ms. Manar and Ms. Muriel

HS4S director continues her habit of passing the camera to some of the crew to take pictures, this time Abeer Abdalahi gets some camera credits.

Abeer takes her first portrait shot of Ustaz Hooman

Abeer takes her first portrait shot of Aaron from For A Purpose

Abeer takes her first portrait shot of
Engineer Mubarak from NOHS

Abeer takes her first portrait shot of Bushara from Mayo

Mohanned Nady, Director of NOHS makes his
first visit to Mayo

Mr. Mohammed Nady takes a turn with the shovel after visiting
NOHS engineers Mubarak and Mujtaba

Team has second meeting with Ustaz Hooman to discuss the accuracy of the window placements

Lila poses for her second portrait

The 'Engineers' and Earth-builder Aaron pose with Ustaz Hooman for the first picture
on the first stages of his built in bench co-designed by the team

The team said good bye to the blue mixer: the merchant broke the agreement and refused to
maintain it, so we said Allahyibarikfik to him and decided to end our quest for a mixer

USAID/TEPS gave a small going away lunch for their undergraduate intern Reem Awad, who has been a great help to the project. We said thank you and farewell.

Our awesome team continues to amaze us! After their classroom instruction on the dome during a rainy day last week, four of the trainees came back with some 'on paper designs' of their individual house ideas.

We had purchased some iron beams for the second floor this week when the management found itself out of money. We still needed to pay for the water and the transport of some of the materials. The team all dug in their pockets to collect the money to fill in until we could get some more! Now we are definitely family, and the class owns the project!

The crew allowed Raha Faridi (visiting Khartoum with her man Ustaz Hooman) to take some amazing portraits:

Councilman Abdlrazeg from Mayo

Rohab Germa from Dalu

Mohammed Issa from Malam Project in Darfur

Lila Khamis from Mayo's Dalu for Development

Amjed Mussa from Mayo

Bushara Ahmed from Mayo

HS4S’s director met with with the UN Environmental program this week. They were hesitant about the housing method because they thought it was too expensive. We replied that it is much longer lasting than the cheaper kinds, and why are we relegating the returnees to cheap houses – they should be going back to something better than they left behind during the wars!

If the Darfur people want something, they will find out how to get it… like a nice safe house. Everyone needs to climb out of the 'poverty mentality' - including the international community and work toward a prosperous peaceful future.

One of the UN engineers pointed out that the 'superadobe' will not crack with the shifting cotton soil like the concrete walls in Khartoum. Next week will see a very advanced example of this with the rising dome!