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LITTLE GIANT: THE LARGEST CLOCK EVER CONSTRUCTED IN THE WORLD

Born in Mukalla in 1971, Hani Mohammed Bajalla is passionately in love with his birthplace and praises it a lot. “When you’re on a long trip and then you return to her, your heart immediately dances in eagerness. And why shouldn’t it, when nature is within her and she is tranquility, peace, love and compassion?” he said.

Since he was young, the idea of honoring Mukalla with a recognizable landmark has been in the forefront of Bajalla’s mind “Don’t you think this beautiful city deserves all esteem and gratitude? Mukalla is where I was born and raised within her quarters. Today is a time of thankfulness and appreciation.”

While surfing the internet, Bajalla finally found the best gift to return the city’s esteemed favor. “While I was looking at the giant magnetized clock of Big Ben, a number of thoughts struck my mind. Why not build a clock like this in Mukalla to be one of the city’s most famous landmarks in addition to Khour Al-Quwaizi Fort” he added, commenting on the early stage of the project. After a short discussion with himself, he made up his mind to honor the city with a clock.

This clock is designed to be a lighted clock 60 meters in diameter, thus exceeding the world’s current largest clock in Tehran. Mukalla’s clock will list the city in the Guinness Book of World Records as hosting the largest clock in the world.

Having received an electrical engineering diploma from Aden’s Industrial Technical Institute in 1991, the 36-year-old father of a son and two daughters rolled up his sleeves and consulted his professors at Hadramout University, as well as his colleagues.

Bajalla said he chose his monument to be a clock because in the past, Yemenis in general and Hadramis in particular succeeded in business and their calling from Allah when they utilized every moment in life. “It’s a beautiful gesture to the people to pay attention to time so as no single moment is shed in vain and to make use of every single valuable moment in our lives,” he added.

At first, he decided to design a small, lighted clock “because I knew very well that designing a large clock was a complicated task requiring much effort.” He later discovered that he had the ability to make the small clock larger. “Ideas breed other ideas. The persistent thought of building the clock led me to design the world’s largest clock, which I think will make Mukalla stand out among Yemen’s cities.”

For Bajalla, every project has an aim, and whenever that aim is noble and its purpose great, the inconveniences disappear.

Regarding the importance of his project to the city, “Mukalla is a beautiful city and the clock will make it more beautiful. When people from every corner of the planet hear that the world’s largest clock was installed in a Yemeni city called Mukalla, they’ll come to Yemen, which will jump-start tourism,” he said, adding that it will be located atop the city’s highest point so as to be visible to all of its people, visitors, those coming from the sea and fishermen working in the evening.

After much hard work and many sleepless nights thinking about how to make the clock, Bajalla wrote a 200-page research document on it. Not waiting for the clock’s birth, the overachieving engineer chose to name the clock “Little Giant,” noting that he has hidden reasons for choosing that name.

His in-depth study contains four chapters, each with circumstantial information regarding the project from the idea’s origin to modern technological developments.

Release link: http://yementimes.com/article.shtml?i=1025&p=lastpage&a=1