Health vs Wealth

I’ve just come back from a week in Morocco. Part of the holiday involved a two day guided trek through the mountains with our luggage aboard Nellie the mule; (a strange name for a Moroccan mule, perhaps more for our benefit than the mule!)

We stopped overnight in a remote Berber village. The houses were made of earth, there was one light-bulb hanging from the ceiling of each room, no heating and the only washing facilities were the small tap on the wall beside the squatter toilet; even when given its morning rinse with water from the stream, this was not a nice place to linger.

Dinner was a tasty tagine, filled with fatty lamb and vegetables. The bread was unleavened and everyone dipped into the food with their fingers; there were no plates, knives or forks. Afterwards I slept fully clothed (it was cold) under a couple of heavy blankets.

At first appearance, this way of life is primitive if not squalid. The family we stayed with did have a TV in one of their rooms and also a Nokia phone, to save the stroll down the earthen track to the shop where there was a payphone. What struck me above all else was that the people here were extraordinarily content.

TV and the occasional trekking tourist clearly illustrated the material comforts of life in nearby Marrakech and beyond. Teenagers here wore jeans, T-shirts and if they were lucky trainers too. The basics of life that I take for granted, central heating, power-shower, dishwasher etc were totally lacking. The washing machine was a bucket and board on the roof of the house. Others did their laundry in the stream that ran through the village.

Our guide Abdou summed up the philosophy of the place. He sees overweight, unfit Europeans almost every week of the year as he introduces them to his traditional way of life. He said that all the material wealth in the world was of no value if you were not healthy. People here don’t drink and few smoke. They go to bed soon after dark and get up early to work at their self sufficient lifestyle. In their villages of 3-400 people, they know and respect all of their neighbours. People have time to talk and as we walked, everybody we passed stopped for a chat. Contrast this with Holborn tube station at 10am on a Monday morning, when people spew forth in their thousands onto Kinsgway like wet cement out of a pipe; grey, cold and miserable.

Who has the best life? The London commuter or the Berber who only strays from his village once a week to go to the market in his nearby town? Whose life most closely matches that for which we are best suited, physically and psychologically? Who complains the most about his lot? Who takes the most Prozac?

Like you, I don’t want to give up every material comfort to live a basic, back to nature, existence. That’s too big a step to take. However, I return to the UK determined to seek greater simplicity and to listen more closely to my instinct. Simple is good and striving for more ‘stuff’ does little for your long term health.