We are Michael and Jolandi, two South Africans, living in the United Arab Emirates. Over many glasses of wine, we have dreamed of a life unencumbered by the demands and restrictions of corporate life, and as we grew older, realized that unless we make a decision to take the plunge, we will find ourselves stuck in the same rut, ten years from now. Not wanting to risk a life of regret, we have purchased a 3 ha piece of land in rural Portugal, and are planning to, over the next couple of years, set up our life, so that we can move there. We originally aimed for December 2019, but realised that a dream like this needed a lot more patience, time, and money than we initially expected. Throw in a pandemic, and things got even more messy. Despite all of this I (Jolandi) moved to Portugal on 9 October 2020, while Michael is still working in Abu Dhabi for the time being, as a regular income will allow us the freedom to build more infrastructure, pay off an apartment, and set up our life in a way that will provide us with a bit of financial freedom.
“Looking forward you constantly acquire moments of arrival, moments of realization, moments of discovery. The wind blows your hair back and you are greeted by what you have never seen before. The material falls away in onrushing experience. It peels off like skin from a molting snake. Of course to forget the past is to […]
“You are not guaranteed a long life, so make it a good life.” I slow down to a crawl behind a little old lady in black walking with her donkey, where the little village peters out into a patchwork of small parcels of land. On a previous occasion she had a dog with her too, […]
There is a reason many Portuguese people build houses and other buildings without permission from their local municipality on their land. We’ve heard various stories, but it seems that the general consensus is that it is a simpler process to be fined and then to legalise it than to attempt the legal process like we […]
“No matter how sophisticated our choices, how good we are at dominating the odds, randomness will have the last word.”– Nassim Nicholas Taleb The first two weeks of February continued the drab, grey, rainy weather that set the tone for winter this year. Water oozed out the soil, first turning our little access road into […]