The Kindness of Strangers

A fragment from a letter of Ferenc:

Ouch! I have to write... I don’t feel like it at all. After our daily twenty-something miles I hardly have the strength to put up the tent. And after that I just hit the tent’s floor like a sack of potatoes. Nights are hot and suffocating, I bath in my own sweat. The scratches, the insect bites burn and ache like hell. I’m sleepy and I’m tired, I’d have to rest but I cannot get to sleep. The questions in my head don’t let me. Who will wake us in the middle of the night this time: the ranger or the sheriff? Today no one let us a private spot to stay for the night. So we sleep in a public park. The people around here are timid. There are still good folks who want to help, but more and more are and look scared. And even more when we ask them after sundown. They often say no. They don’t feel safe with us in their backyards.

But anyways, our major concern right now is different: what will we eat tomorrow? Our money is almost gone. We’re not allowed to work here, but even if we would be, there’s no time for that. We have to leave the States in about 45 days. Some 850 miles to go. We’ll walk tomorrow, that’s for sure, but our strength is almost used up.

Yesterday I sat down with my brother to talk about the future of the project. We chatted without tension. We remembered the most difficult stages of our walk. The starvation in the Africa... The last five months of hobo life in Spain. We don’t want to give up, but we have to decide soon. We would need a regular sponsorship. At least something that covers the food. 400-500 dollars a month. Without this kind of support it’s impossible.

This mail is scary. Scary because it considers about abandoning the tour. Scary because it meditates about hunger. Scary because it’s about 400-500 dollars a month.

Let’s try to help them together. We started a new sponsorship plan. The Burger Plan.

Burger is one of the simplest forms of meal. It’s uniform, it can be purchased in gas stations, diners, canteens. It’s unexpensive: 1-1.5 bucks a piece. Let’s calculate with one for each of the brothers. Make it 2.5 dollars a day for them. It’s one meal, a skimpy one. We’d like to ask for one skimpy meal for WorldWalk a week. That’s 10 bucks a month. It’s not much. Doesn’t seem like much. But it would secure their survival. It would help them survive if that sum was there to plan with. Half a year, six months, six times 10 bucks. This is what we ask for. Please, participate in the Burger Plan.

The Burger Plan is a PayPal subscription. 10 dollars a month for six months (cancelable). There are seven days in a week, so we need seven burger sponsors. Seven sponsors a month. Not much. Doesn’t seem like much. But will there be seven sponsors among us? You can find the current status of the Burger Plan at the top-right corner of the blog, just below the miles counter. Seven burgers. The saturated ones are covered, the dimmed are to go. Click on a dimmed icon and you can invite the guys six burgers in six months.

The Last Straw

Due to regulations Ferenc and István have to cover the U.S.A stage in 90 days. They need to walk 25-30 miles a day to achieve that goal. Sometimes in thunderstorms, heat, suffocating moisture. This is a lot. A lot, but it’s not impossible. Achievable but it drains their strength and energies. They have to make up for it.

Food is cheap in the U.S.A. It’s cheap in the supermarkets. But they don’t have the chance to look for supermarkets while walking 25-30 miles a day. In smaller villages or in the middle of National Parks there are no supermarkets. Mostly, they have to do with canteens and gas stations. And these are expensive, damn expensive.

by FERENC IVANICS
Unfortunately, while planning the U.S.A. stage we missed these two hard facts. We had made some research, we planned our budget accordingly, but we didn’t expect to eat up our bank account at this speed. Next week we will bite into the last 100 bucks we have with ourselves. It might last until we arrive in New Orleans, it might run out on the way. Me made a mistake, even though we tried hard to organize the U.S.A stage, and even harder to gather the means to follow our Peacetour. Right now all we can do is hope that our readers can help us out this time. Please help!

When we were preparing for the African stage we worked for it on a private construction, we didn’t want to arrive at an unknown continent exhausted, weak, without proper reserves. We saved up the money spending it on the most important stuff only. After reaching our goal, Dakar, we had to leave Africa, without the help of our friends we couldn’t have made it back to Europe.




We wanted to work before the American stages as well, but due to the economic crisis we didn’t manage to get a job this time. Overcoming our bad feelings and putting aside our principles we started to beg for money on the streets. Finally we collected the money needed to begin the U.S.A stage. With the help of others we managed to collect it.



But it ran short and it’s almost gone. Right now we don’t know what to do, we are not allowed to work here, we’re tourists. We cannot beg here, there’s no time for that either, we have to go on. We’d like to ask everyone again, please, help us, every dollar, every euro, every pound, every peso helps. A buck more means one or two miles more. That’s how it is: we need to spend like US$20 on food daily, we’d like to ask for your support. You can donate by clicking on the Donate button. Thank you all in advance!

Update: Many thanks to Carolyn Tester (Musings by the Creekside) for her instant help.

Sponsors and Support

The WorldWalk-Peacetour project started as a low budget experiment but quickly turned into a no-budget enterprise. However this wasn't the intention of Ferenc and István, the walking brothers. The project gained some media attention in Hungary and Serbia, Ferenc and István visited television programs, featured articles in newspapers.

But actually, as the brothers started to walk, the attention of the mainstream media quickly faded and then disappeared. They managed to arrange a series of excluisve articles in a Serbian newspaper, a few sporadic articles in German and Hungarian newspapers and online media, but that's all.

WorldWalk-Peacetour, Ferenc and István Ivanics are planning to walk around the world in six years, spreading the word of peace in local communities.

(No) Sponsors

WorldWalk-Peacetour managed to survive the last one and a half years without major "activity" sponsorship. Without the help of companies dealing with trekking-equipments, energy or sport drinks, blister patches, sun protection creams, international bank accounts and debit cards, etc.

They have walked some 5200 miles (8300 km) so far, from Palić, Serbia to Dakar, Senegal. They plan to continue their walk in North America.

More Difficulties

With an expired bank card and a constantly moving "target" it became more and more difficult to deliver the support to Ferenc and István. In Africa, as a temporary measure, we used Western Union, a clumsy and expensive way to get the money to the brothers, though it was effective enough.

Of course, the team were guilty, guilty by thinking that as the miles-count increased the sponsors would show up. Well, they didn't. The support came from the municipality of Budapest, from the Alliance of Vojvodina Hungarians, from the Hungarian Embassy in Morocco and from (not so) many individuals along the way and in Hungary, Serbia, Germany. And of course there were those restaurants that gave the boys a hot meal, a place to spend a few hours without worries about the next day. The Hungarian speaking community wasn't growing fast enough to sustain the project and without a proper international community-space, the worldwide community did not even exist.

The WorldWalkers have plans to visit three more continents, North and South America, Australia and Asia, before returning to Europe again.

What Are Our Goals?

We'd like to build an international community, to make the WorldWalkers well known around the world. What they have achieved so far is quite something, what they plan to achieve is almost unequaled.

The boys don't want to give up, they will fight for it, working hard to raise funds to follow their Peacetour. But they're exhausted of the often inhuman conditions, they need something to raise their spirits. If you can help, please, contact us. If you can give them publicity, do it, link to their site, to this blog, post about them in forums or on your blog.

If you work in any of the areas mentioned before (or in an airline with transatlantic, transpacific flights) and can help them, please do so. If you live near Málaga, Spain, and you think you can give them shelter, food, work, please contact us. Soon we'll try to allow small donations to be made through PayPal, too. So, if you can think of a way to help István and Ferenc, don't hesitate.

Back in Spain: In a Difficult Situation

When István and Ferenc arrived in Dakar and met their goal by walking through the Sahara desert and arriving to the westernmost point of mainland Africa it was obvious that there was a problem. How to cross the Atlantic Ocean, how to follow the peacetour? After literally eating up their budget, they decided to return to the closest European country, to

Return to Spain

The project have been permanently in financial difficulties, and even though this is a big step backwards, without money there wasn't really a chance to travel from Africa to the United States. The WorldWalkers decided to backtrack a bit, and they just arrived in Spain a day or two ago.

After a couple of days of hitchhiking they arrived at El Aaiun, where they wasn't able to get another ride. They spent three very long days at the edge of the city, battling the cold winter winds there when finally a car stopped to give them a lift. The driver took them to the next major city in Morocco and paid the a bus ticket to Casablanca. In Casablanca they were lucky enough to find another car to Tanger. There they got some financial support from a friend in Hungary (through Western Union), so Saturday evening they left Tanger and thus, Africa.

What's the Plan?

Now they're walking to Málaga, were they will be trying to find a temporary a job, just like in Motril a few months ago, to raise enough money for the trip to North America.

Meanwhile they need to get a new bank account with a Mastercard/Visa card, to be able to receive donations directly from the web community of this blog. They hope that in a month or so they can leave Europe. In the meantime the background team is working hard on the web content, and is trying to build up a massive Web2.0 community to support the project, at least as an active audience.

István and Ferenc in Szeged, Hungary (July 16, 2007)



István and Ferenc near Dakar, Senegal (November 3, 2008)

How You Can Help Us

Please, subscribe to this blog, join the WorldWalk-Peacetour Community group at Flickr and forward this message to your friends, leave your comments, shout something in the shoutbox, recommend this blog as a Blogger Blog of Note. Spread the word. The more we are, the more we can help.

First of all they are looking for a job in or near Málaga, Spain, so if you know anybody there who can help, please, contact us using the contact link above. The brothers appreciate any mundane help as well, a hot meal, a place to spend the night, to take a hot shower. If you work in the local media you might help by giving them any publicity. They speak German and English quite well. If you need any PR material in Spanish, you can contact us as well.