https://youtu.be/FonNSNB3kxI

This may just start getting ever so slightly monotonous, but I have to reiterate …. it’s fucking freezing and seems to

have been only freezing for ever, with the prospect for more freezing to come. Oh how I miss the tropics!!

Right now, everywhere you go, who ever you speak to, day or night, rain or shine,…. and

to be honest there’s been a hell of alot more of the latter than the former, there’s one topic of conversation. “El Barr’d”. The cold!

That’s all anyone talks about. It may be couched within the normal salutations of daily

life; “Kidair? La Bass? Muzien?”…. and the rest.

But within seconds we all cut to the chase. “Kidair El Barr’d?” “Ooooh… El Barr’d!!” “Oohh, Barr’d Buzeeeeeeefff!” And so it goes…. on, and on, and on…..

Just like the cold. Never ending.

I’ve never worn so many clothes. Every day. Morning till night, I’m on no less than 2 thick woolie jumpers. And when the sun goes down, it’s all hands to the winter wardrobe. Anything. Everything. As long as it adds warmth. Layers are apparently all important.

Layers? I look like the fucking Michelin Man’s been camping out at Mac Ds!!

And as I shiver and swear my way through the winter, it makes me

wonder why I’m doing this. I earn no money from it and haven’t done for years. Infact I may never do!! It only costs me money, which I seem happy to fork out, simply for the pleasure of it. I sleep in a building site and don’t get me started on the sanitation situation… and I’m a man who loves his sanitation situation.

Along with my hard earned and increasingly diminishing funds, I also readily invest all the time I can to waddle about in the mud and cold, desperately trying to express myself in poor Deriga, trying to explain things I barely know anything about, but with a sense of conviction and hope that I’d otherwise only confer to some sort of ideological zealot.

And with the blind conviction of said zealot, I seem happy to do so for as long as I possibly can, in the hope of achieving a dream. A dream I can barely explain to other people before their eyes cloud over and they give me that look of….. nutter!

What, I ask myself, does this tell me about me and my philosophy of life? …. Or am I really a nutter?

I’ve recently applied for a few jobs but haven’t got any of them. Not one. And the only interview I got, told me that ultimately I was too expensive. This stopped me in my tracks and made me think. Think because, whilst the money is important, if I’m honest, I also miss the work.

The challenges. The use of genuine expertiese. The problem solving

with people who’s problems need solving. I miss the places I work. And I miss the sense of fulfillment I get from doing a job I hope that I do well and which, by doing so, improves the lot of others, possibly less fortunate than me.

I reflected upon all the the various factors that made me apply for the work that I strive to do outside of Morocco and I realised the significant and yet only partial role that money had in them all. It opened my eyes to the fact that for me at least, in what I choose to do, money is only one factor amongst a host of others and that I knew that on balance, I wouldn’t choose to work for money if those other factors were not included in the equation.

Of course this also reflects something of a charmed existence, but one that I have also selected. Worked towards. I chose to work in international public health, not for the money, but for the satisfaction and physical and intellectual challenges the work gave me.

It was more important to be part of a process of community problem solving than personal financial gratification.

And ever so much like developing the farm, it took me years to get the qualifications and experience from being in some of the more challenging parts of the world, to be able to realise my dream.

That I live in Morocco, is because I love the country. The freedoms I perceive here, away from a world dominated by consumerism, north of the Mediterranean. Here, in part because for me at least, money is less of a daily burden, less of an interminal occupation, I am able to relax and be the person I feel I am. To express myself in a way that I can’t conceive of doing in the north.

I appreciate that this has it’s costs, as my daily phone calls to Finn represent. But i also feel that they provide an

important lesson for him. A lesson that says, find your dream and live for it and appreciate that money is a means of fulfilling this, rather than an end in itself.

And I think that that is why I am happy to spend my time, money, energy and efforts on this project. Because it is a dream. It is a means of self expression. It offers me so many more benefits in realising the values and goals that are important to me.

It offers me a freedom to be me and in doing so, offers me a way to express myself, as the human being I want to be, with an engagement with the world as I see it.

It offers me freedom. Not to make or spend money, but to be the person I feel that I am and who I dream that I want to be, whilst hopefully enabling me to make a positive contribution, doing the least harm possible, to the world I live in, at a time of looming crises.

So humdoolillah for the cold and rain, because Spring is on its way, when hopefully we, I, will be able to bask in the luxury of a life chosen to live.

But then maybe I’m just a nutter!!!