The Freerange Hooligan, Unleashed!
Thoughts on Creative Self-Sufficiency
I found a stone house online this past week. It’s in a small village somewhere in central Portugal, and since the advertisement was posted recently enough, I have a suspicion that the photographs truly reflect reality. The house is built from granite stone (unlike the picture that I have picked for illustrating this post!) with…
I don’t go to my local police station often, even though it is situated a block from where I currently stay. Like hospitals and courthouses, I find police stations depressing places, filled with people who have had bad things happen to them, are about to have bad things happen to them or are supporters of…
“If you’re brave enough to say goodbye, life will reward you with a new hello.” -Paulo Coelho I saw an interview that one set of ex-pats did on YouTube with another – a man and his wife on his sister and her husband – about moving to Portugal and thought that it would be an…
After feeling extremely sorry for myself for all of 20 minutes, I started weighing my options: pros and cons of staying versus leaving and the different countries that make sense to me. I wrote earlier about the rudeness of some government employees. That specific country (which I won’t mention here or ever again!) has been…
Time for an update, methinks. I have come to the realization that all of the house restoration and backyard farming videos and blogs that I have been following were made by people coming from G8 countries. Maybe they weren’t rich themselves, but their backgrounds gave them access that I – coming from a country in…
EDIT: I was wrong – buying a property would make the application process easier, but it has to be a habitable property, and I suspect to a certain value, as well. So buying a €6500 fixer-upper won’t pass muster. Back to the drawing board…
Like many life adventures, this one was born from frustration. I felt caged in and desperately needed to escape. Make no mistake, South Africa is a beautiful country, and my roots here go deep, but it also has: Unnaturally high levels of violent crime Extremely corrupt politicians Failing infrastructure Bankrupt Utility Services and Municipalities Bias…
With the “Botswana Idea” now well and truly in the circular file, I have decided to revisit my original plan to take my dream to Italy. It’s still a massive elephant, in many respects. Imagine discovering that your dream house has half its back wall and a big chunk of its roof missing! To…