Day 61-76, January 3rd-19th

Incidents in Sidi Barrani

The third team is going through Egypt. On the way they are celebrating the 113th birthday of Kazimierz Nowak. Traversing a few more than hundred kilometers long sections they arrive to Cair.

The Egypt part of the Kazimierz Nowak’s route starts with exhaustive interviews that the participants of the next lap are giving to: Nile TV, Nile News Channel and some newspapers.
The third team under the motto „40 centuries and two (wheels)” is composed by: Magda Kowal from Wrocław, Piotr Tomza from Kraków, Paweł Pachla from Wałbrzych, Piotr Romejko from Warszawa and Teofil Mroczek – a polonist from Cair. In several days Sebastian Woitsch – a German living in Egypt who already made a bicycle trip from Leipzig to Cape Town – will join the group of Poles.

The delivery of the stick takes place on the libyan-egyptian border. From this moment instead of a Libyan in an off-road car they are accompanied by an Egyptian tourist police car. However even the attendance of the officers doesn’t ensure them safety.
While entering to Sidi Barrani the group is surrounded by the children coming out from school. They are making photos with their cell phones and – as it turns out in a while – they are not only greeting them. Some bottles and stones start to fly, and the cyclists with the helpless officers hardy manage to escape this „frisky” school troop. As yet it is the only one unpleasant incident on the Egyptian relay route, usually they meet gestures full of friendship and hospitality. In the night they celebrate the Kazimierz Nowak’s birthday. If he was alive, he would be today – the 11th of January – 113 years old.

In the next days they accelerate. They ride 120, and even 140 km a day. They are in a hurry, because in Alexandria they have a meeting, they will hang another Nowak’s commemorative plaque. Like Nowak, they are documenting their route with seals.

The plaque is hanged on a honourable place on the Polish Consulate wall in a several-million city.
- Even though during the Egyptian revolution the foreigners were removed from here by the president Naser, Alexandria is still perceived as the most liberal city in Egypt. Women move without restraint on the streets and in different means of transport, some even without headscarfs. What a big contrast comparing with El Sallum or Sidi Barrani, where there was impossible to see a woman – says Piotr Romejko.

Which way to Cair?

We don’t know unambiguously from Kazimierz Nowak’s relations which way he took to get from one Egyptian big city to another. However he mentions that the way was good. If it was so, it’s very probable he took the so called Agricultural Road.
- Today also it’s not so bad, but surely there are more cars passing this way, and the trains riding exactly along the road are an additional attraction –Piotr Tomza notices. – And the truth is – the conditions are no more so contemplative as in the desert surrounding of the Mediterranean Sea. The ears are swelling because of the engine roaring and – what is the most arduous – the sound of fancy, too loud hooters.

Palm trees are shooting up on our left and right, the fields are cut by canals and narrow roads for donkeys. The day of the arrival to Cair the cyclists pedal 146 km. Tired they immediately fall asleep in Teofil’s home.

The next day they are supposed to hang the second Nowak’s commemorative plaque in Egypt. The building of the Center of Mediterranean Archeology of Warsaw University. Prestigious place. However it turns out that it’s too prestigious. Despite the university permission, the seals and signatures it turns out impossible.

- Probably it’s the Egyptian institutions that specializes in towering formal obstacles– start to irritate the afrykanowaka.pl’s participants.

The situation is not better with pursuing the Kazimierz Nowak’s traces in Cair. The street numbers are different, only several pre-war buildings and lots of new ones do not allow to find the places visited by the polish traveler in the 30’s.

Just the next day they will arrive to a place where the Kazimierz’s route led him to arrest. But it’s a story for the next relation.