In the Laughter of Children, Hope
By Katie Woosley
Christian Academy of Louisville

Hawa is a charmer. She teases her brothers incessantly and then squeezes them with her compassionate hugs.
Surrounded by students from Kentucky’s Governor’s Scholars Program Hawa knows no stranger, slamming her little body into the arms of unsuspecting scholars. The three-year-old steals the hearts of all around her.
Ali and Mohammed, the two oldest boys at eight and seven years old, are inseparable. At the Fourth of July carnival hosted by the GSP at Bellarmine University, the boys rotated from prize-winning games to snow-cones and s’mores while spouting off witty comments to scholars nearby, leaving satisfied by their accomplishment of making someone laugh.
Two-year-old Kamal is shy, but always on the move. During the Fourth of July carnival, wobbled from one activity to the next as fast as his little legs could take him. Ubah, his mother, followed close behind. Kamal enjoys his freedom to run, but his sprints usually end in the embrace of a family member.
Sharon Ash, the family’s advocate at Habitat for Humanity, describes Mohammed and Ali as “alert, curious, bright, and energetic.”  She claims Hawa is the family’s “little princess.”
According to Ubah, little Kamal has “no fear and doesn’t listen.”
For the 360 rising high school seniors who were attending a five-week residency at Bellarmine with the Kentucky Governor’s Scholars Program, these four kids brought home a lesson more significant perhaps than anything they would learn in the classroom. For all their energy and joy, these four kids have never experienced the comfort and security of a home that they can call their own.
Until now. This year, the GSP partnered with Habitat for Humanity to build a house for Omar Muse, his wife Ubah Adan and these four kids who were such a hit at the Fourth of July festival. Every Governor’s Scholar at Bellarmine went to the Habitat worksite on Louisville’s West End, put on a hard hat and got to work. It’s called public service, but hanging out with those kids and their happy, hard-working parents made it personal.
The experience of building the house, alongside Omar and Ubah and the Habitat volunteers, was a life-changer. It was a blessing not only for the family, but for the scholars too.
“My passion in life,” said Aris Cedeño, the Executive Director of the Kentucky Governor’s Scholars Program, “is to work in the service of homeless.”

The Muse family crowds under an umbrella during the dedication.

Aris had two requirements for the potential Habitat family: There had to be females in the household, since 60 percent of the Bellarmine scholars were female, and it had to be a “family with children.”
Habitat for Humanity then proposed the Muse family. In addition to their four children, Omar and Ubah are awaiting the birth of their fifth child. And Ubah’s two sisters, the teen-aged Asha and her youngest sister Hana, will also be living with them in their new four-bedroom home.
Hana, a pretty, soft-spoken 12-year-old, said it’s “fun to live with my sister. I think of her more like a mom,” Hana, who has been living with Ubah since 2010, is excited to finally move out of an apartment into her home. She has moved five or six times since 2006. In this new home she will have a bigger room which she will share with Hawa. She doesn’t mind sharing, though, because they get to have bunk beds. Hana dreams about swinging and gardening in her backyard. She wants to grow a tomato and cucumber garden.
Ubah said she sees a difference in the children as they plan how they will “own” the house, “planning their own things” and “their own room.”
Throughout the building process, Omar and Ubah took the children to the worksite every night so they could view the day’s progress.
Now the children will be allowed to “stay at the same school” with the “same friends,” a luxury the parents could not guarantee while living in apartments.
And now, proclaimed Ubah, who escaped a life of constant fear in war-torn Somalia, “They feel free.”