Hungarian Sense of Humor in the Sahara Desert

Walking and backpacking around the Earth gives the Ivanics brothers many surprising and funny experiences. This one has its special taste of Hungarian humor.

by FERENC IVANICS
So we just left Dakhla, and were walking south along the road to Nouadibou, Mauritania. We were many thousands of miles far away from home, we were very proud of ourselves for we had managed to walk all this distance, but of course we were feeling a little bit homesick, too. In Africa we hadn’t have too many possibilities to contact our Hungarian friends due to unreliable internet cafes and not-existing contracts between African and Hungarian cell-phone service providers. So we felt a mild but permanent hunger for Hungarian words.


My brother, István spotted a really small building next to the road. Its shape looked familiar, but we didn’t really understand why. As we came closer and closer we were able to read the spray painted caption on it: FRISS LÁNGOS. We knew immediately why it looked so familiar. These types of small buildings are often used in Hungary to sell a special Hungarian junk food: lángos. So the caption FRISS LÁNGOS means that they sell fresh langosh there. We laughed out loudly, took a photo and walked on.

A couple of miles later we found a signpost, which informed us that we reached the Tropic of Cancer. Although we didn’t have any GPS’s with us, of course we knew that it had to be somewhere around there. However we expected something more than a simple signpost; though in Africa it’s not really important what you expect. On the signpost we read the message in two languages: English and Hungarian.


Holy crap, what’s happening here?! Hungary is a small country in Central Europe, we don’t have any close relationships to Africa or Western-Sahara. How come so many signs show up there in Hungarian? The answer is quite simple: Hungarian teams of the Budapest-Bamako Rally had made these jokes in Hungarian. They had left these jokes for fellow Hungarian folks. And... for you.

Brotherhood for the Mentally Challenged in El Aaiun

WorldWalk-Peacetour covered more than 2000 miles along the western coast of Africa. It was a real culture shock sometimes, but not necessarily in a negative sense. Quite often they learned from their relationship with local people.

by FERENC IVANICS
As I was looking for a dentist in Málaga, I saw a beggar on the street, his knees bent backwards, but he wasn’t disabled only physically: his eyes were telling me about a mental problem, too. I gave him a couple of cents and thought about the guys in El Aaiun...


El Aaiun is the largest city in Western-Sahara, about 200.000 people live there. So it’s a rather small city judged from our western point of view. You can hear many bad things about living in Africa, or living in the poor areas of Africa, and you can be sure, Western-Sahara is poor enough. But these poor africans treat their mentally disabled fellow-beings with profound empathy, in a peaceful manner, with compassion.

Whem we were in El Aaiun we often spent our spare time in Cafe Roma. The locals welcomed us kindly and we chatted with them for hours, so we learned a lot about their lives. We can’t forget the way they treated the mentally challenged. These people aren’t allowed to be full members of the company, they are not able to take part in the conversations, but they were accepted, the healthy members of the company shared their coffees, teas, cigarettes and tables with them. And at least one person was always keeping them company. They tried to bring them back into ordinary life.

Once a very confused man arrived. He was mumbling constantly, but his words made no sense. A member of the company stood up and tried to ask him, where he lived, what was his name. It wasn’t easy, but he was repeating the questions for an hour or so, and finally he was quite sure about the name and address of the confused man. Than he called a taxi and paid the ride home for the man.


We found the tact, attention, thoughtfulness and respect that was shown by the people of El Aaiun really humane. This is far less common in our western culture. We know the principles of solidarity with disabled people, but instead of treating them in a peaceful way, we build special institutes or train professionals to take care of them. They can’t take part in our everyday life. I think the example shown by our friends in El Aaiun is a good example of brotherhood and friendship and is one of the very essences of peace.

DoveHand: Two Symbols of Peace in One Sculpture

This is Ave quiromántica (Palmist Bird) by José Seguiri. The sculpture is a homage to Rafael Pérez Estrada, a poet, writer and graphic artist. It is based on one of his paintings Paloma Quiromántica (Palmist Dove). But what’s the message?

by FERENC IVANICS
We were just walking in the center of Málaga and stumbled upon this sculpture. We were amazed by it, we thought it was an omen. We’d been feeling quite hopeless and frustrated for a couple of days: no job, no money, dirty, smelly clothes. The flyers we had distributed didn’t give the expected results, some people found us and the WorldWalk-Peacetour interesting, but many of them were insensitive or dismissive. What’s more, the local police warned us that the distribution of the flyers can be illegal. So we were in trouble, in a very bad mood, and then came the dove...


Finding it in our worrying conditions was a like a wink of hope. We were just standing there with our eyes wide open, enchanted for a couple of seconds or for a minute, we lost our sense of time. This sculpture features a dove and a hand. Both are very strong symbols of peace. In the holy books of Christianity, Islam and Judaism there’s a story about Noah and his ark. After the Great Flood Noah sent out a white dove, and it returned with an olive branch in its beak. This meant that the flood was over, there was peace between God and his creations. That’s why the dove—with or without an olive branch—is a symbol of peace.

And the hands. We were thinking about handshake and giving a hand. Handshake is a peaceful gesture that says: I don’t have any weapons. Nowadays we shake hands to welcome each other, to confirm our arrangements and to express our respect. Respect, compromises and open-heart, these are essential ingredients of peace. Giving a hand means helping someone. If you help someone, you feel her or his problems, you are together with her or him in her or his trouble, you are fully empathic. Empathy, co-working and helping each other, this is the way we could bring peace and harmony.

But a hand as a symbol has a more archaic meaning: act. So you can interpret the message of the sculpture the following way: acts are necessary to bring and keep peace. Many philosophers and psychologists think that in our material world acts are more effective, more fruitful than thoughts and ideas. Peace doesn’t need complex thoughts, but simple, clean and nice acts. But I think the message of this sculpture is deeper. A hand, particularly a clean hand, symbolizes the clean and rightful, truthful acts. That’s why peace and truth cannot be separated. Tha fact, that there is no peace now is caused by lies. Lies rule our world, we are permanently lying, not only to each other, but to ourselves, too. We can call this phenomenon existential-lying and until we can’t overcome this existential-lying in ourselves, we can’t bring peace. That was the message of the scuplture for me and my brother. And that’s why we won’t give up, we’ll keep on walking to share that message.

The (Not So) Surprising Enemy: Blisters

When you walk thousands of miles it’s inevitable that your shoes wear down badly. When you buy new shoes, even if you check carefully if they fit, while you break in your new shoes, blisters might appear. Are there any tricks to avoid them?

by FERENC IVANICS
As we were planning the WorldWalk-Peacetour project we tried to find all the problems that might occur. We grouped them into classes: our body, our health was one of those groups. We went over every possible pain, injury, disease and we tried to be prepared. At least to be prepared with knowledge. Many times we couldn’t afford to pay for vaccination against tropical diseases such as yellow fever, but we learned the symptoms and knew the emergency treatment.

So, we thought we were ready, the protecting knowledge was in our heads. Of course we knew that we would have to endure pain, muscle strains and small wounds. We were expecting to have back and shoulder aches, and leg strains. But we never thought about blisters. If you walk 15-20 miles a day you will have a close relation with your socks and trek shoes. And this strange engagement brings many compromises, with blisters as a side effect.

If you ask me, what was the first thing we had problems with, I will show you my little toe. And I’m quite sure, my brother, István would answer you the same way. While our backs and shoulders were suffering from backpacks weighting 65 pounds, during the first few hundred miles in Hungary and Austria blisters were our most terrific enemies.


First of all, why and how do blisters appear? There are factors that raise the probability of having a blister on your feet. If you walk hard you sweat, especially your feet. You wear your trek shoes and socks for many hours, so the sweat can’t dry. Walking hard heats your feet, too, so your feet are wet and hot. Heat and moisture soften your skin, and its layers can slide on each other, so a gap is created, and this gap is filled with a watery fluid. Friction—the result of walking in shoes and socks—speeds up the production of such gaps. And those gaps are called: blisters. If your shoes fit badly, the friction is stronger, more blisters appear.

We tried many techniques, but time was the only solution. First, we tried to drain the blisters. We made a small hole on the blister, and let the fluid drain from it. It’s a fun activity in the dark tent before turning in, or at the camp fire. But it doesn’t really help when you walk 15-20 miles the next day as well. You can try to protect the blisters with a bandage. Maybe it is a better way to treat or prevent blisters, but we weren’t totally satisfied. Then we tried to dry our blisters at the camp fire. No socks, no shoes, just our feet as close to the camp fire as possible. It’s a nice feeling on a chilly night.


So, our conclusion is: bandages can help sometimes, but only time can solve the problem. Time spent without shoes and socks helps heal blisters. Time spent walking helps your feet adapt to your shoes and helps your shoes adapt to your feet. But still, when we buy new trek shoes it’s not only an expensive experience, it’s a painful one as well...

Biodegradable Supermarket Bags

Environmental harmony is part of the WorldWalker brothers’ peace-concept. You cannot really live in peace with your neighbors without living in peace and harmony with your environment.

by FERENC IVANICS
Yesterday I went to buy milk at a supermarket. It was a challenge to find “plain” milk among the ones enriched with calcium and vitamins, but finally, I managed to grab one, so I walked to the cash desk.

Tere was some trouble with the credit card of the Lady in front of me, so I had plenty of time to have a look around. Right next to the cash counter there was a cardboard box full of plastic bags, with a panel hanging above it, apparently with some environmental protection related text on it. I went to have a closer look and I realized that I had already seen this before on an advertizing, “plastic” bags made from potato starch. Its texture is slightly different than that of the traditional plastic bags, but the obvious benefit is that these bags do compost. You can throw it to the organic trash pile and it will disintegrate. Probably the dye on the bag is organic as well.


So I had two choices: take a traditional plastic bag for free, or pay 5 Euro cents for the biodegradable one. I’m a gardener, so I chose the compostable bag. I hope people won’t interpret the benefits of the potato starch bags as: “I can throw it away anywhere”...

From Senegal to Spain: A Tale of a Hitchhiking

When there’s no current updates on the WorldWalk tour we’ll try to dig something up from the archives and share a story or two written by István or Ferenc. All these retrospective posts will have this visual mark and a short introduction.

So, you might wonder what is a hitchhiking story doing in a walking tour’s blog. But as you might have heard, after the African stage WorldWalk-Peacetour was forced to take a winter break due to financial reasons, and common sense dictated them to get back to Europe the fastest way they were able to come up with.

by ISTVÁN IVANICS
So, this is how it all happened... Soon after we arrived in Dakar we started to realize that it was impossible to find a cruiser or freighter heading towards North America, there was no choice, we headed back to Europe. After walking through the Sahara desert we were not that stupid to walk all the way back, so our only chance was hitchhiking. It’s fast and cheap.

Dakar—Rosso—Dakar

We started hitchhiking at 1 PM and a young French couple picked us up almost instantly. They had a truck converted to a caravan, but they had to drop us off after Thiès (60 mi), because we were stopped by the police for the third or fourth time there, the truck had a cabin for only three passengers. It was almost dark by then.

Next morning we tried to get a lift for hours, and got one to St. Louis (120 mi), we walked to the city border and continued hitchhiking ’til dusk with no luck. On our third day a Frenchman and his local colleague took us to Ross Béthio (35 mi), there a taxi passenger picked us up and we were at the border in no time, we arrived in Rosso at noon (30 mi). We spent the next 6 hours at the border just to find out we had to go back to Dakar for the visa. Can you believe it? When we entered Mauritania from Morocco we bought our visa right there for some 20 Euros, but you cannot buy visas at this border. Our 250 miles in the pocket were converted into 250 miles to go in an instant (or 500 miles :). We were quite angry, disappointed and exhausted.


So, we were on the roll again. A taxi driver stopped by us and stuffed our backbacks in the trunk of his car and us into the full cab (with six passengers already inside it) and on we went. For a few yards or so. Then the gearbox broke down and we had to stop. I guess that was the shortest distance I had ever traveled as a hitchhiker. :) We soon got tired of hitchhiking and walked 3 miles to the next police post. We were contemplating the local scenery from the shade while our friends got us a car that took us to St. Louis. That’s fine service...

We started the next day still in an angry mood, but soon another Frenchman gave us a lift to Thiès, he was driving like hell. While we were walking through the city we tried to get our next ride, that’s how we managed to stop Adjid (a French businessman with Moroccan origins who lives in Dakar). This gentleman took us to Dakar and gave us the keys of his yard shed (with a room, shower and TV). We can’t thank him enough, by then we were at the edge of bankrupcy.

Dakar—Nouadhibou

In Dakar the visa cost double the amount than at the Moroccan-Mauritanian border. We spent a week at Adjid’s place, still trying to find a ship heading for America. Then a monetary help from our Hungarian friends helped us buy the visas, and one of Adjid’s colleagues gave us a ride to St. Louis with a night stop at his place in Thiès.

For obvious reasons (last time my brother waved good bye with his middle finger to the officers) we didn’t want to cross the border at the Rosso border station, so we chose a smaller nearby crossing point. After spending our last night in Senegal we crossed the border on foot, to discover that the paved road ends in Mauritania. We spent the whole day watching the local wildlife waiting for cars, but none came. Right in the moment when we were heading off to find a campsite a miracle happened. As we discovered later, a tad unpleasant miracle. We spent the next 60 miles sitting on melons and bags at the back of an open pick-up. With 70 mph on a dirt road and the night falling. How’s that for a comfort? After a stop in Rosso we arrived in Noaukchott (130 mi) late at night.


We spent that night at Auberge Sahara again, and the next morning we found out that winter winds in the Sahara are very-very cold. After an hour of shivering, as a lovely surprise Tomy stopped by us with his truck. Tomy is a very kind man from Jo'burg, South Africa with a Bud Spencerish look. We had met him in September, in our 12th day in the Sahara he helped us out with some dried turkey, beef sausage, soda and some money. So, we traveled the next 210 miles with him, and spent the night at an iron ore charting camp (where he was working), took a shower then ate some pizza and drank some whiskey-coke. Next day one of his colleagues dropped us off near the Moroccan border.

Nouadhibou—El Aiaun

After some two hours we got a lift to the border, and the officers let us cross the neutral zone walking. It was like a Mad Max movie scenery, the desert all around us with burned out car wrecks everywhere. We spent the night on the Western Saharan side of the border. Our hopes of getting a ride were quite low at that moment. All the cars were full of people and junk. Our thumbs were getting tired, but at 3 PM a French hippie couple stopped and gave us a 190 miles ride to their camp near Dakhla where we spent two nights.

After this break our luck seemed to run out, after a whole unsuccessful day we spent the freezing night near the road, taking cover from the cold wind behind a stone wall. Next day, almost the same, until 4 PM, when a Spanish caballero, Juan gave us a lift to Boujdour, where we spent the night in the very same cheap motel we had stayed four months before (on a sanitary stop due to diarrhea :). Next morning we continued with Juan to El Aiaun. There we said good bye to him (and he drove on to Spain!). If only we knew by then. But we weren't sure if we were going to go to the Canary Islands or to Continental Spain.

We bought ourselves new pairs of jeans, had a tea with old friends in town, and were having discussions online about where to go next. We opted for Málaga, bought some food enough for two days, walked through the border between Western Sahara and Morocco and spent there two whole days, hitchhiking. The third day, with circles around the eyes, right after dusk we said to ourselves: Enough. It’s over. We can’t go on like this.

El Aiaun—Tangier

But then fate picked us up from deep shit and cleaned us in a heartbeat. Why? A Moroccan guy stopped (he was with his girlfriend and his mother), and took us to Guelmim (240 mi) and as if it was perfectly common, payed our coach tickets to Casablanca (some 470 miles), hugged us both and went on. In a quarter of an hour we were traveling, unbelieveing. Next morning at 9 AM we jumped off the vehicle with smiles attached to our faces.

And the miracles went on, from Casablanca to Mohammedia (10 mi), to Rabat (50 mi). Then just as we were getting ready to turn in for the night, another car stopped, two Moroccan guys gave us a lift to Tangier (140 mi). Some 30 miles before Tangier we saw the first rain in more than half a year! And it was an amazing great a storm. The driver payed our stay in a hotel so we spent our last night in Africa in a luxurious way.

Algeciras—Málaga

Another monetary help from a Hungarian friend helped us buy ferry tickets and the next afternoon we were getting off the ship in Tarifa, Spain. We took a bus to Algeciras. It was raining like crazy, so next morning we walked to San Roque all wet, smelly and not quite happy with the situation. We spent two days in San Roque, trying to get a lift but it was hopeless. They helped us in the pensioner’s home with a fair amount of cheese and milk-rice, then we took off and walked to Málaga in four days. We gave up hitchhiking on the third day. It was impossible, you were able to see it on people’s faces. We arrived to Málaga on the verge of distress.

There’s more... Click to read the rest of this article.

Article About the Ivanics Brothers in ‘El Mundo’

January 8th, an article was published in the Málaga edition of Spanish newspaper, El Mundo. Unfortunately the Málaga supplement does not have an online version, but anyways, it's great to see the interest of the local media.

We’d like to thank to Inma Mejías for having a word with the boys and for writing the article (and to Jesús for taking the photo).

New Year, Old Trouble

Another year passed. The first full year on the road, on the paths of the Earth for the WorldWalkers, Ferenc and István Ivanics. With 5200 miles and two continents behind their backs the Peacetour came to a stand for the second time. The brothers returned to Spain and put up their “camp” at the edge of Málaga, Spain, thinking about what to do, how to raise funds to follow their mission.


Though the background team is working on making the support of the online communities stronger, it’s not a process that leads to success in an instant. But the boys wouldn’t want to just sit there doing nothing, so they started to distribute their flyers on the streets of Málaga, looking for a temporary job, media attention or small donations of food. They practically beg until they get a job and they're not happy about it, but it’s not easy to find one in the middle of a financial crisis and the holidays. During these days they “cruised” the streets of the city, wearing their backpacks and the publicity on their backs, to raise some attention (and they got some unrequested attention from the local police as well).


As the holidays pass they will try to contact the local media, they have a small statement written in Spanish. In a few weeks time a Hungarian magazine will feature a shared article about globetrotters and they will mention WorldWalk-Peacetour as well. Let’s hope that will bring our first sponsors.

Roaming the city center they stumbled upon an art exhibition in one of the pedestrian streets of Málaga, the Calle Larios. Renovated engines of old cars: Flying Horses, The Sculpture, King of the Road, Mythical Races, Glamour, Fire Power, Belle Époque, Art Nouveau, Eldorado, Copper Tower, Silver Jewel, etc. Click on any picture below to see the extended version.