The earthquake in Morocco and the events of the past few days here in Marrakech made me think about needs, happiness and wealth in our world.

When is you rich?
What is wealth?
When is your wealth enough for you?

After I spent two days on boxes and blankets outdoors on the street in Marrakech, I felt solidarity with all the people here and happy! We had ourselves. We had everything that luck means. And yet it feels like a trip to an unreal world. In a few months I will go back to Germany in my beautiful home and these experiences will be a thing of the past. But be burned into my heart unforgettable. Many will continue to spend the nights outdoors and live a life in the subsistence level.

Two days after the earthquake: the art of survival of the Moroccans

Today the second day has been over since the earthquake on September 8, 2023 in Marrakech. The third night is on. Two nights sleeping outside are behind us. My two Moroccan friends and I, like many other people, did not spend the night repeatedly in their houses.
Everywhere they sleep on traffic islands, on the side of the road and in free places.

The last night was damp and cold. This time we hadn't found any boxes that protect us from the cold earth. These boxes are like is mat. They totally warm. When we were totally wheeled and tired into our apartment this morning, we fell exhausted and wheeled to bed. We slept almost all day. 

The moment when the earth trembled

It is amazing how you react when the house trembles.
I stopped rooted. Then I packed my passport, my money and my laptop. I was very quiet. Only when all the lights went out and Hamid took me by the hand and we ran down the stairs, did I realize what it was:

an earthquake! The 6-story apartment building wiggled for 30 seconds. The whole street was full of people. All lights from the houses were out.

Maddo called Hamid and me: run !! Let go!

Review:
Now we sat, like many other people on the street on boxes and waited. It was said that there should be further quake at night. All houses were dark. The streets clogged with cars.
We were lucky. We are in the new town. The medina, the old town, has lost a lot of facade. We sat on a piece of lawn on the side of the road. With many others. Suddenly all people were chased away here. The lawn should be poured. WHAT?? A foreman ordered the other worker to do his job in a harsh tone! To do this, people have to go!

The facade has to be right?!

The big annual meeting of the World Bank Group and the IMF will soon take place here in the city of Marrakech. The work must go on. With the head pulled in, the man follows the command of his foreman and asks the people to go down from the lawn and spread on the sidewalk. An insignificant little story, an observation. And yet she tells a lot.

We are now looking at shattering pictures and videos from the medina, where a lot has been destroyed and people run through the streets in panic.

From one moment to the other, everything can change. Other things are important from now on.
But people help each other here. To see that is again nice.

Opposites. Two sides of the medal and life continues

Towards the evening we accepted an invitation to Gueliz, a modern beautiful district in Marakesch. We met three friends there. My wish to go out here, before I started my trip to Morocco on September 2, had fulfilled.

Somehow blatant. This district is opposite the medina. Very European. Southern European. Sophisticated. I enjoy the ambience and society very much!

One of the friends speaks excellent, perfect English. He lives with his English wife in London. The conversations are very interesting and I get to know new things. Slept outside in the morning and today in this incredibly beautiful chic bar. We enjoy it and drink beer.

On the way there I see from the car how people with their families are facing roads and squares again.
Some even cook.

After the varied detour to the bar to Gueliz, it continued shortly before midnight. We drove to another friend who had cooked for us. An extremely delicious dish! Again with a lot of bread. (I urgently need a bread break! 😂). Then it went home. The next friend came to visit. It is now 2 a.m.

Here in Morocco this is normal in summer to turn night into day. Almost like in the Ramadan era.
I adapt. What else makes no sense. It is good to be thrown out of the routine.

I wonder if you can enjoy yourself so many in view of the misery?
How to laugh a lot. At the same time, we reflect on our feelings of what is happening.
There is empathy, compassion and situation comedy at the same time.
One said that he was all alone at home and did not understand what the rumpling meant.
He thought about what to wear. In retrospect, this thought is so absurd, but if you have never been confronted with a stamp in your life, how do you know that?

Tomorrow we want to take money and buy food for those who are very affected. Everyone wants to help. Me too. I am glad that there is something I can do for people.
On the other hand in Europe, people ask me how they can help. They send us money so that we can provide more help. It's so nice!

Almost everyone who has a car buys food and brings it to the people who are so affected by need.

Tomorrow is a new day. I look forward to it. It is a different kind of joy. One that I have not known since then.
One that feeds on it to do something for others.

I didn't even ask myself the question in view of the situation. My original plan was to explore the north of Morocco. Instead, I will soon go to the Wüstendorf Mhamid, which I have known for 12 years. Probably for longer. But who knows? Plans are ideas in Morocco.

I want to stay with the people who mean a lot to me.
As always, I find out how the plans change. Constant. That's why I don't do any more!
Everything comes as it should. This is life. This is something we can learn from the people in this country:
to adapt to the circumstances at any time. Everything else just doesn't make sense!

To help each other is in the blood of the people here

We drive to a large department store outside the city. What I experience here touches me a lot! All people in this department store buy for the disaster victims in the very destroyed atlas area. The cars are fully loaded and the road in the atlas is crammed with cars that drive to the people in need as in a caravan and take the arduous path into the Atlas Mountains.
We drive back for 5 hours and 5 hours. Before that, we found ourselves at a privately organized collection point to find out which villages have not yet received any help. Some also come here to give up their purchased things. With the knowledge that you can trust this organization.
We'll eat something yet to continue strengthening.
So if you can't and may not eat meat, you are unlucky. There is only meat and bread!

After eternal curves and broken streets, we arrive late at night with two fully charged cars.
We are waiting in an empty place in the middle of the village. After a short time the place fills up. We are the first to bring food. There are only men on site. I stay in the car and watch the action.

You wish you a roof over your head

The question is: when does the roof fit?
The events of the past few days here in Marrakech made me think about needs, happiness and wealth in our world.

When is you rich?
What is wealth?
When is your wealth enough for you?

I look at shit walls of pigeons. Upwards is my view of a piece of heaven.
For some, this would be declared as a descent.
For me it is a piece of heaven on earth.
I have everything that makes wealth for me. A roof over my head, a hot shower, dear caring people around me, who serve me the best home cooking and although I do not understand the language, our laugh together, hand and foot understanding and translations of English -speaking friends are enough for me to understand.
But translation is not very needed. We are so much connected to our hearts and the eyes and the many hugs speak their language.

That remains if you cannot communicate verbally: the heart ♥ ️ 

I get to know more and more unusual people through the man here and experience a Morocco outside the tourist norm and learn:

We are all the same !!!

After the nights outdoors on the street in Marrakech, I felt solidarity with all the people there. We had ourselves. We had everything that luck means. And yet it feels like a trip to an unreal world. In a few months I will go back to Germany in my beautiful home and these experiences will be a thing of the past. But be burned into my heart unforgettable.
Many will continue to spend the nights outdoors and live a life in the subsistence level.

🙃 I know times when, despite the overcrowding beauty around me, I felt empty.
Feeling rich is an inner state.

I could rent the hottest accommodation here and I would definitely enjoy this.
And yet I live in a quarter in the Neustadt, where real life takes place.
I loved my surroundings. And I love drinking my morning café opposite the front door,
shopping and feeling a bit at home.

Salam Aleikum! 

Value awareness

To have got away with life. To have been lucky enough to not be one of the people who have lost life earlier gives me a lot of thinking about values.

I love beauty, aesthetics, great bathtubs and decorative clothes. But knowing that this is not the happiness of my world makes me free. Freedom to feel at home in one world as in the other world fulfills me. This is my freedom. No longer to be needed and yet to take it, if I feel like it, is my personal luxury. 

Many here do not have the choice to play with life and take what you need.

My way of life.
Again and again I deliberately travel with less. Formerly in India, today in Morocco.
Consciously perceiving and appreciating the little things of joy triggers abundance, liveliness and adventure.

A 1000 € handbag is nice. But honestly, how long will you enjoy it?
How long will your conquest give you abundance?

And what comes then? 

And then? And then?

When are you fulfilled?

The man who exchanged his lamborgini with a VW bus

I once met an old, very vigorous man in Hollywood 30 years ago.
We drove from La to New México by VW Bus. There he employed 3 women who made hammocks.
He told me about his old life in Hollywood:
he bathed in champagne, had no end, women, money in abundance. He was rich in stone.

But at some point he felt so empty.

He told me that if the happiness of a newly bought lamborgini in red can only make him happy for an hour, he began to ask questions about life. He noticed that the "kiks" of more and bigger, became too boring for him. He decided on a new life. He left almost everything to his wife, divorced and settled in New Mexico. From then on he lived there.

He was my second spiritual teacher. I only knew that later. At that time I lived in New York and I was visiting a friend in Los Angeles. Slept in the waterbed, drank champagne on the terrace in the whirlpool, heated up the motorcycle on the back seat of a super -rich model on the coast and looked at me villas in Malibu and went to play casinos.

Does it sound cool? Was it too! But you know really cool.

Yesterday I was on a farm, 30 minutes in a village near Marrakech. There a man with his girlfriend lived on 3 sqm. His garden and house was made of garbage. Old tires were cut open and were used as flower pots. The bank in his house was built from bottles. Plants were set everywhere.

I had to think of Bob today.
On how little you need to be happy.
To go to his choice, where others are eagerly striving for today
.

Bob, he said, was one of the happiest people I got to know.
I fascinated his decision and courage for a life that would be called a descent.

It is not the case that I hear success and money! On the contrary. I enjoy asking me in it too.
I see it as a game. And I see money as a wonderful option.

After these events, life will occur to me here, more precious than ever. Because I cost these feelings of humility, gratitude, to have the joy of helping others in need, share love, and that is all other bullshit!
Thanks for this rich experience!
And thanks for these people, who I can get to know everyone here!

You think you need Europe?
No, Europe needs you !!

My conclusion

Morocco always shows me how heart connections work and how to be intuitive.
Not everything I have ever experienced here since 2012 was pink!
Honestly, I have to say that I went through here through strong life -changing, transforming processes.
They were so necessary to learn to trust my intuition and never reveal me and my heart again.
It is often like this in life: the change only happens when we find the lowest point in life at our personally.
Today I say: I'm through!
I listen to my heart, follow my impulses, trust my intuition and no longer question it!
Since then I have encountered wonderful people and situations.
Because my energy has become completely different.
Inside and outside. Above as below.

These events here have led me to special people.
With their way, they showed me how you can live with little and with a lot of money and, above all, what really matters in life:

a roof over my head, heart and connection!

Thanks Morocco!

Information on this:
longing for origin - desert travel