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AOE Egypt update - March 2008
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Greetings from Egypt. We've just been to mouth of the Nile, and now from Port Said we are heading South. Lately expedition life has been tough. The Morocco/Algeria border was closed even to a camel; we backtracked to Tangier, then by ferry over the Straights of Gibraltar to Algeciras in Spain. In a race against time, a dash up the Spanish coast to grab the night ferry back across the Mediterranean to Oran in Algeria where we faced the threat of fundamentalist attacks. With heavy security on board it was back to the other side of the frontier - all this effort and all this time, a detour by land and sea of close to 1500 km for the sake of getting around a 100 meter-wide border post. This is the nature of traveling Africa's outside edge.
Ancient Carthage, Leptis Magna, Cyrene are behind us now as are modern day cities with exotic names like Calabar, Point Noire, Libreville, Conakry, Nouakchott, Casablanca, Tangier, Algiers, Tunis and Tripoli. At Tobruk, where there are hundreds of tombstones carrying the springbok emblem, we placed wildflowers and a South African flag at the base of a gravestone of an unknown South African soldier.
Although we are out of malaria areas, our humanitarian work continues. One of the greatest moments of the expedition was taking learning materials and soccer balls to children and spectacles for the poor-sighted elderly in the Saharawi refugee camps in Southern Algeria. It's a place where temperatures reach a scorching 57 degrees C in summer and plunge below freezing in winter.
Sandstorms, called siroccos, and flash floods rip through the camps destroying everything in their path. Here, nearly 200,000 refugees are struggling to survive in this inhospitable part of the great Sahara Desert. We gave out piles of learning materials and best of all for the kids, footballs. At the hospital we distributed spectacles to the poor sighted. The president of this little country in exile, Mohamed Abdelaziz, endorsed the expedition Scroll of Peace and Goodwill that we are carrying to all the countries around the outside edge of Africa with these words:
"I warmly welcome these great adventurers of our dear sister South Africa. We in the Saharawi Republic salute and commend this initiative that promotes peace on the continent and helps to eradicate disease... With your great journey you have united the sons of our continent, and shortened the distance - please continue this great effort."
By now the sweat-stained pages of the well-traveled Scroll have gathered over five thousand signatures and messages, to include endorsements by presidents, kings, ambassadors, paramount chiefs, and government ministers.
Kingsley Holgate and the Afrika Outside Edge team |
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Mission and Values
