One month on the road – the analysis

It’s been a bit over a month since we left Helsinki now and we’ve had a mixture of activity and laziness but we’ve seen and done quite a lot, all things considered. So far, we have been zipping around Egypt, getting used to the new lifestyle, waiting for replies from 1% Fund projects and our Sudanese visa application for the trip to really begin. Our route has been mainly determined by a process of joining the dots between various projects sponsored by the 1% Fund. Before we went the question had come up of how we’d fare together – back in Helsinki we’d have gone our own ways to work, seen friends and so forth. On this trip, we’ve been attached to each other pretty much the whole time. I’ve always thought that a long trip like this is the ultimate test for a relationship – without total communication and understanding there would undoubtedly be disaster and any faults, exposed 24/7 instead of bit by bit and under more intense circumstances, could cause much bigger rifts than they would do at home.

The first month, all in all, has been our easy start. After 3 weeks in Sudan we will enter Ethiopia and the hunt for the first project sponsored by the 1% Fund will begin.

The 1% Fund, our raison d’être in many places across Eastern and Central Africa over the next year, is an NGO run by retired UN workers to which those who sign up give 1% of their salary, used to finance development projects across the world. I visited the organisers in Geneva in August to finalise the details of what M and I would do for them, and we have a list of several dozen projects financed over the last five years to visit, look at, talk about with local people and prepare a report to send back to Geneva. The reports in turn would be put into the projects’ dossiers and would be used when considering other projects from the same local NGOs. A totally non-profit organization in which no-one receives a salary, it’s a very worthy NGO which, as we will hopefully see, makes a difference in small communities across the world and for which we are very happy to give our time and efforts. Our first projects may be in Ethiopia if we can make contact with them, although we are definitely going to visit some in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Madagascar and the Democratic Republic of Congo amongst others.

Awards so far :

T’s “Natural Selection” Award for mass reproduction goes to Egyptian cats. They’re everywhere and, quite honestly, if they can survive the Cairo traffic, they deserve all the awards they can get.

T’s “Questionable Interior Design” Award goes to the United Arab Emirates for uniformly placing its toilet roll holders in such a bizarre position near the floor of the wall behind the toilet that it’s impossible to reach, unless you’re Nadia Comaneci or some breed of snake.

T’s “Ridiculous Amounts of Food Served” Award goes jointly to every Indian Restaurant in Oman for serving the entire annual rice consumption of Equatorial Guinea with every meal.

T’s “Nice Story” Award goes to the guy who runs the minimarket across the road from the Shams restaurant in Dahab for trying to sell me a packet of cigarettes for twice the going price on the basis that all other L&M packs in Egypt were fakes and therefore cheaper. This was done with a completely straight face.

And finally, T’s Lookalike Award is deservedly given to Mohammed from the Boomerang Hostel in Luxor who, I believe, is actually Yannick Noah.

M’s Persistence award goes jointly to all Omani taxi drivers for whom “no” is not an acceptable answer. A refusal is generally met by a bemused look, and they will drive 10 metres to catch up with you and ask again. “Where are you going ?” – “We’re walking” – “Walking?!” – “Yes”

M’s “Dude Where’s My Board” award goes to an American guy from Dahab Hostel who backed up his floppy blond hair and bandanna by being totally incapable of finishing any sentence without including the words “weed” or “waves”. The runner up prize in this category goes to the Australian guy who declared that he didn’t like Aswan because “the drug culture isn’t a patch on Thailand’s”. A worthy reason to travel halfway around the world if ever there was one.