BHA FAMILY TRIP 2009 _ Umrah Pilgrimmage _ Part 1

It has been a long while since I made my first entry into the webblog world.
so it is about time for a second one.


We, the office, arranged for a special trip to the holy cities of Makkah and Madinah in Saudi Arabia between June 4th and 16th, 2009 for selected staff and their spouses to perform the Umrah. It was a wish that we had since 2002 for the senior staff that they would be offered to perform their Umrah [small Hajj] as a token of appreciation from us for their dedication and sacrifices, especially so when the firm hit a dip in business in 2004 - 2005, and they stayed and fought with us to regain our foothold.
It was a long dream which finally became reality 7 years on. We hope to make it a regular bi-yearly event, God willing.

BHA Entourage @ KLIA

The trip was also an opportunity to see what was happening with the city of Makkah since the power that be over there bought over many of the real estates and in 2008 [1428Hijrah] started the major demolition of almost half of the buildings surrounding the Haram Mosque in Makkah, where the "much-faced" Kaabah building is located, to make way for, by the look of pictures circulating in the internet, flashier accommodations and amenities for the pilgrims.


Lets hope so. It is about time and the right move to give a once over to the holy place. The city badly needs a major make over to accommodate the continuous influx of pilgrims from around the world.
Millions congregate there yearly, if not monthly [and up to the unofficial figure of 6million pilgrims [?] visited the holy city during the Hajj period, i.e. double the quota, for at least a week in a year if not for a month].


In Makkah, the older accommodations there were basic apartments and some even look and feel dangerous. The old accommodations, mainly apartments, each housed hundreds of pilgrims in multi-storeyed buildings, and I believe were built before the building codes came into existence, which had a single narrow staircases and often doubled up as stores. The unitary lift in each building may not be as old as the building itself, and also looked like being shorn in as an afterthought, looked well worn and often aged ungracefully.


The holy city of Madinah, in contrast, has been transformed quite dramatically since the early 2000 and have the modern hotels and infrastructures. I noticed the difference with the city between my first visit there in 2002 and my second in 2008. In 2008, work were still going around the Haram or better known as the Masjid Nabawi, the Prophet Muhammad's Mosque. It would have been interesting if we could go around the city to see development progress there as well during this pilgrimmage but time was not on our side.


Badrul Hisham Architect / June 2009