Over the past few days, the PCMA UW Research Center in Cairo has faced the urgent need to fly nearly 40 of its employees and associates back home to Poland. This operation succeeded, and on Wednesday, March 18th the whole group landed in Warsaw. At the same time, the PCMA UW mission in Ethiopia also had to come to a halt and its members needed urgent transport home. This unprecedented action could not have been successful without the help and cooperation of many individuals and institutions, to whom we are greatly indebted.
I would like to thank the Polish Embassy in Cairo and the Polish Embassy in Addis Ababa for help in organizing the #Lotdodomu campaign. I also thank the Ministry of Science and Higher Education, especially Grażyna Żebrowska, for their support, the Chancellery of the Prime Minister, as well as the authorities of the University of Warsaw, above all the Vice-Rector for Scientific Affairs, dr. hab. Maciej Duszczyk. A big thank you for organizing our transport home goes also to LOT Polish Airlines, to the employees of the WhyNotTRAVEL office – Piotr Trentowski and Izabela Matuszczak, as well as the Tobi Group Jakub Wieczorek from Bielsko-Biała for road transport in Poland.
I would also like to thank all Egyptian and Ethiopian collaborators of the PCMA UW and of our archaeological expeditions who have greatly facilitated the preparations for this sudden voyage. Thanks are also due to the employees of the PCMA offices in Cairo and Warsaw, especially Katarzyna Szczepkowska and Anna Południkiewicz, who worked tirelessly to arrange transport home for everyone.
But I also take this opportunity to thank our colleagues, the members of the Egyptian and Ethiopian missions – we made it work, because we all worked together!
Acting Director of the PCMA UW, dr Artur Obłuski