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.