SNA (Tokyo) — Nuri Funas, an ordinary citizen of Libya, has been traveling the world on foot with a message of peace. The SNA interviewed him at the Libyan Embassy in Tokyo recently during his stop in the Japanese capital.

Transcript

Nuri Funas: My name is Nuri Funas. My age is 38 years and 4 days. I am walking from Libya to Tokyo. I don’t live in one place. I move every day, all the time, for a message of peace around the world.

The idea was so small. The first two years were just inside Libya, because before I go outside I needed to know Libya first. So that took like two years, because Libya is like two or three million square meters. I needed to go everywhere. At the same time it was a good experience, because if I could cross the desert, that meant I could do any hard land anywhere. So then I started in Egypt. The population of Libya is just five million people. For the first time in my life I saw 100 million, 90 million in Egypt. It was so crazy to see Cairo.

The history of human beings is a little sad. To be clear with people you must come from the heart. Even sometimes I’m meeting dangerous people along the way. When they know the way I’m coming from, they become friends. So for normal people we must just send a message of peace. Everyone has a small space for peace, because we’re all fighting. We’re all fighting to survive in life.  We’re fighting for work, for our families, for the future. People in the hospitals are fighting; people fighting for love. We’re all fighting. But this fighting doesn’t have to take away our peace. It can be like “peaceful fighting” with no guns, with no fire, with no one hurt, with no human being… We have a big space for that which some people don’t know about. Americans know. European people know, because they showed me the way. And Arab history knows. Because all this shows me the way for the “adventure gate”—to make peace with the adventure gate. And all the world loves that. We have a space for that. So I used this way to come here to Tokyo.

There are five kinds of dangers: from animals, wild animals in Africa; from earthquakes and the land, like volcanoes and all this stuff in Southeast Asia; from human beings dangers like street mafias; from the weather, from the sky there will sometimes be dangers. But for me all this provides options, because I am a survivor. I don’t need to be scared. Dangers mean you are scared, but if you are scared you can’t move. You’ll be done.

If I have five kids, I will send one to North America, one to Latin America, one to Europe, one to Asia, and one to Australia. It will be another moving message. The whole of experience comes when you wake up in the morning. It’s so important to teach these kids, when you find yourself with you health okay, and you’re safe in the place you wake up. This is a big plus for starting a good day. Don’t let anyone lie or make a joke about it. These two things are so important when you wake up in the morning: health and safety. Then you will have a great day.

I’m coming here to have experience of the peaceful way in Japan. They made it and have moved on. In Libya, we need that. We need to move on. We need this peace for the country and forget everything else.

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