wonder, wander.

“See there,” our guide, Wilson, says with a nod, gesticulating towards something in the distance. We crane our necks, and I squint bringing my hand up to peer through the sunlight but see nothing, though I nod in agreement.

“Alligator.” he says simply, and I find myself gulping, swallowing the knot that I did not notice had settled in my throat. I tighten my life jacket around me.

The Great Zambezi is flanked by Zambia on one side and Zimbabwe on the other - two rocky walls majestically guarding the winding river. Throughout the afternoon, our journey down the Zambezi is peppered with stories the waters have seen, of political rife and mythologies.

Wilson shares his adventures battling rapids all over the world, and I wonder what sort of person he must be, to want to daily test his fate in predator filled waters, harsh rapids and jagged cliff faces. I wonder if he’s numb to the adrenaline or if he even knows what fear is anymore. Perhaps it is precisely this he wishes to challenge.

He elicits a purposeful calm as he instructs us to paddle navigating each rapid and punctuating the succession of each passing with a hearty laugh.

Later that night when we meet him over drinks at the village backpackers hostel, we hardly recognise him without his Oakleys. It is then I’d notice the remains of a deep gash running down the right side of his face, lining his nose like a river channel. Immediately I imagined him wrestling an alligator on one of his many trips down the Zambezi, fighting it off like some sort of African Alligator Dundee.

It was at rapid number 19 that it all changed; we had watched the previous boat go down and (for some unidentifiable reason) wanted to experience our boat capsize.

Wilson tugs at the safety lines as we pile back onto one end of the raft, beckoning it to flip.

It was then it happened.

I remember taking to the air and feeling myself falling in slow motion, like a blunt knife cutting through the thick of life. Plunging into the icy waters of aloneness, the opening words to the ‘Hail Mary’ immediately spring to mind. I reach my hand up desperately, trying to grab through to the surface. My ears and eyes, assaulted by a flurry of bubbles - precious breath escaping my mouth and nose. My eyes, widen in terror.

In the swirling of currents, and with the deafening echoes of my heartbeat coupled with muted effervescence of the bubbling water around me, I contemplate for the first time, that this must be what it feels like to die.