Homemade youth plane in South Sudan

Father passed away, his studies were unfinished, but George Mel, the boy from South Sudan, did not give up on his dream of building an airplane he cherished from childhood.

"I am passionate about becoming an aviation engineer since I was young. I love making aircraft," said the 23-year-old boy from the southern Sudan city of Judal.

"When I was a kid, I always tried to fly. I used curtains and attached metal to make it look like a wing, then climbed onto the roof. I wanted to try it. If I could fly like a bird, I would have fallen, and I almost broke my leg, " Mel recalls.

George Mel and the plane in the yard.(Photo: Mading Akech)

Despite his failure, Mel set his goal to learn as much as possible in this science. He attended a high school in Uganda, but was preparing for the graduation exam in 2011, the father died, leaving him with a heavy tuition burden. With no other choice, he dropped out of school and returned home.

Even so, Mel tried to learn about aviation. Mel said that losing a father is very sad, but it seems to help him have more time to conquer what he wants.

When she was out of school, Mel had more time. He began to spend time, mind for experiments, immersed in dreams and determined to make it possible. The boy searched and collected materials, assembled them together to form an aluminum airframe, then bought a small gasoline engine to supply energy. He turned a garden chair into a pilot's seat, completely assembled the plane.

Around the end of 2013, South Sudan remained submerged in a civil war for power. Mel continued to build aircraft, even when conflicts occurred around the place of residence.

"I didn't stop. I locked myself inside the research center and only focused on the work. A lot of people left this place but I didn't go anywhere , " he said. In fact, the "research center" was his room, where the bed was right next to the broken pieces of the plane.

Mel's workplace and residence.(Photo: Mading Akech)

"You can see wooden propellers and a remote control plane (UAV), or what I care about. This is where I sleep, the same place I studied , " Mel introduced the workplace. his. Sometimes, amateur researchers also smuggle home-made materials through the fence so that neighbors cannot see them. Because if they saw it, they would talk and say that he wasted money on things.

By completing a flight, South Sudan's air force arranged for Mel to work at the IT department. Now he hopes to receive a scholarship to study engineering in aviation.

Mel has not been allowed to test his ultra-light aircraft but can only test it in his yard. Even so, he is determined to fulfill his ambition to fly, for himself and the future of the country. In the tail on the first plane, Mel printed the national flag with the words "We have the future".

One of Mel's goals was to build a remote-controlled agricultural aircraft, but in the long run, he still wanted to design and build aircraft the size of aircraft people were using. ."I am full of hope. What happened has already happened, we still have to keep going, continue to live ," the boy said.