Naybor, owner of a land survey firm in Buffalo, N.Y., was the featured speaker at a gathering of the Alaska chapter of the National Association of Women In Construction (NAWIC) March 10 at the Millennium Hotel in Anchorage.

And they got an earful.

She regaled the crowd of women engineers, bankers, builders and contractors with stories about her adventures in Africa. It was there that she established an international chapter of NAWIC in Johannesburg, creating 400 jobs for local women; built a school and orphanage in Malawi; and had her car stolen at gunpoint in the countryside. But Naybor takes the unusual in stride. She also holds graduate degrees in forestry, humanities and literature, and is a certified scuba and karate instructor. In 1985 she became the 12th woman in New York state to receive a professional surveyor's license. She later spent ten years as a consulting expert for the National Council of Examiner for Engineering and Surveying.

"A lot of the construction problems you see here are the same as we have in Buffalo. Hey, it's good and cold," she said.

Naybor also sees common problems when it comes to making affordable housing available in African and Alaska Bush communities. "It's a village to village thing. We can work together and help solve problems," she said.

But the situation in many areas of South Africa is dire, she said.

"A small house costs $10,000 and the average family annual income is $2,000," she said. "But they charge 50 percent interest, and you can only get a mortgage for five years, maximum. It's impossible."

Working with international groups including Habitat for Humanity and NAWIC is helping to turn the problem around, she said, but there is still plenty of work to do.

"In South Africa about 30 percent of the construction jobs are held by women, and they apologized to me for such a low number," Naybor laughed. "In the Zulu culture, women traditionally build the houses and the men tend the cattle and goats. And women now can do anything, from working in basic construction trades up to business ownership."

Naybor's presentation coincided with the Alaska NAWIC group's celebration of March 7 through 13 as "Women in Construction Week."

Tamie Taylor, past northwest regional director of NAWIC, said the Alaska chapter is a "small but intense" group focusing on education and finding opportunities for young people.

"We do a lot of promotional projects to get construction into the grade school levels," Taylor said. "We have a design-build program in the middle school grades and we have a CAD drafting project.

"We're trying to get the kids, the next generation coming up, interested in the industry. And we are working to change the image of construction, showing that it's not just a fall-back job, it's a well-paying career," she said.