Leaving the Concrete Jungle

Hello!

When do you know it´s time to move on? Is it when you realise that you don´t know the names of any of your neighbours and if you needed help, they would probably ignore you? Is it when it dawns on you that your job is to make money for other people, who don´t want to know their neighbours? Or is it when things you take for granted like water, no longer comes out of the tap and the money you get paid is worth less and less each month?

Living in São Paulo, Brazil´s largest city, we thought we had it all. We had good salary jobs and a nice apartment. We ate out in fairly expensive restaurants and on Saturdays went out dancing with our friends. We were living the Brazilian dream, which is a copy of the American dream.

Something was missing, so we got a cat and then our apartment seemed too small. We moved to a house and were delighted to have a small garden, but on hot summer evenings when we wanted to sit out there, the neighbours played their music so loudly that sitting inside seemed like a better option. In the middle of the night, when cars went past, the house would vibrate from the funk carioca music blaring from the megaspeakers. Each day we seemed to wake up feeling more exhausted.

Soon after we moved in, water rationing started. Offically this never happened and we were never notified about it. The mismanagement of water by SABESP (Companhia de Saneamento Básico do Estado de São Paulo) is another convenient cover up in Brazil. However, from 6pm each day the water would be turned off and some days it did not come back on again. We bought water butts and collected rain water from the roof. It was too dirty from pollution and rubbish to be used anywhere else but the bathroom, but it helped.

Then, one day our house got broken into. We were surprised as all our windows already had bars, but they kicked in our front door until it fell off the hinges. We bought a new stronger door and had a steel gate installed. We were living in a prison.
Squeezing onto the metro to get to work, I looked around at all the tired faces of people like me going to jobs they no longer wanted to do. How is it possible to feel so alone in a city of 11 million people?

Our holidays at this time were spent trying to catch up on sleep and get as far away from the city as possible. We discovered a small town high up in the mountains in rural Minas Gerais, about six hours from São Paulo. The air was clear, there were rivers and waterfalls to go swimming in and the people seemed friendly. It was always hard leaving. Could we also live there and have a more meaningful life?

After two years of planning, we made it and I have started a blog to share my experiences of trying to live a self-sufficient and more responsible life on a small farm.

P.S. There are no bars on the windows!

This is also the first post on my blog: https://paradiseregainedsite.wordpress.com/2017/04/30/first-blog-post/