judge me by (some of) the
companies I keep

LESSONS FOR LIVING

Masiwa's Journey

as told by Stef du Plessis

Masiwa and I - well, proverbially speaking - have been places since last we spoke. The 3,000-odd delegates from Great Eastern Life loved his tales at their conference in Singapore - as did the 200 managers from their Malaysian operation at their Kuala Lumpur meeting. We've shared his wisdom with almost 50 audiences here at home since January - and opened an office in Sydney. Busy, busy, busy.

Often too busy to smell the flowers? to make that call? to stop and help someone who has lost their way. Don't have to look hard to find them - they're at every street corner. I'm starting to believe that we are the custodians for those whose path has been more rocky than ours. After all, that's where we were until someone else paused for long enough to help us back on track - well, some of us, anyway. I for one.

Busy. Huffin' an puffin'. And we think that tomorrow it will be better. After the deadline. After the budget. After we write that big case. After the rush. After. After...

Slow down. Breathe. Watch the sun set tonight - you can do so from almost anywhere. Mind you, perhaps not from prison though. Which is where many of us are - in self-imposed prisons. We hold the key - but refuse to unlock the door.

Anyway, I'm rambling for a change. Back to the sunset - In my study, I have a wall filled with photographs of sunsets, which I've taken all over the world. Before we go any further, let me just point out that you don't just get to take a great picture of a great sunset. You have to be in just the right spot, at exactly the right time.

The sun disappears in a matter of minutes. Very short minutes, if you're still panting up the hill to get the shot - or trying to get your fingers to do what your brain wants them to do in a desperate fumble to change spools. Although most people who see my sunset collection marvel at the spectacular sceneries that I've been fortunate enough to capture on film, I've never managed to get the perfect shot. I'm waiting for that one moment, when everything will finally come together: I'll be at just the right place... the clouds will be just right - the rays will fall perfectly through the gaps - illuminating just the right spot in this canvas of colour...

I've been looking for the perfect picture for a long time. I've sat for hours in remote locations, waiting for just the moment - and then, regardless of how picture perfect the shot turns out, it's always a disappointment. The people who see the final framed result on my study wall marvel at the colours - while I think: -Perhaps next time??

A while back I added a photo to the collection. It's not a great shot, but not bad. Definitely no awards riding on this one. Sure it's a pretty picture. But technically, it's not great. The aperture setting was wrong, and the picture is grainy. The balance is wrong - the scene is "heavy" to the one side. The colours aren't great. And I should have changed the angle, so that the log in the foreground could have been cut out of frame. Now that I look at it, I also realise that if I'd waited just a few moments longer, the fire in the sky would have glowed even more radiantly through the cloud streaks.

It all happened like this: Masiwa and I had come across the spoor of a small pack of wild dog. It was late afternoon already, almost dusk... they were moving fast, so we knew that they were getting ready to hunt. This is what I'd been waiting for ? an award winning moment in time: a wild dog kill - an endangered species - against the backdrop of a majestic sunset!

I'd never witnessed a wild dog kill - few people have. But I knew that it was gruesome: unlike other predators who kill their prey first, and then feed, a pack of dogs go into a feeding frenzy, attacking the animal from all angles, while it's alive!

We lost the spoor, found it, lost it. Found it. Lost it. We could hear the bleating of a herd of Impala not far off - it sounds almost like a bark. We changed direction, and soon picked up the spoor of the dogs again. By now, they had split into hunting pairs. But the sun was fast setting - if these dumb hunting dogs didn't get it right - and soon, they'd spoil my chances of getting that picture. Masiwa could see that I was becoming very irritable. All he said was: -Darkness comes too soon for the hunter -. Then he patiently turned his attention to the task at hand - looking for snapped blades of grass or other give-away signs of where the dogs had passed. I couldn't be bothered with his philosophical outburst of African Wisdom, and chose to ignore him.

Then we had sight of the herd of impala - they were in a large shona (a large clearing). Clearly, they were anxious - a particularly large female was nervously peering into the now almost dark bush. Then, suddenly - with no warning, we encountered a big lioness, just to our left. She was focussed on something else - and didn't pay any attention to us. We followed her gaze - and there they were: the dogs! She crouched, motionless. The dogs saw her. They were panic stricken! They leapt into the air with loud yelps. This was my picture! A lion hunting on a pack of dogs! But there was too much going on, and it happened too fast - all I got was blurs. The lioness made a mock charge, which put pay to the dogs.

Joined now by another lioness to make up a hunting pair, she could refocus her attention on the impala.

Now we saw the male. Majestic. Powerful. He came to lie down just behind the lioness. I managed to get one shot of the two of them against the sunset. But it wasn?t a great photograph - I knew that as I heard the shutter snap closed. Although we would probably witness the kill, it was now too dark to get a shot of the action. Damn!

We saw the kill. It was magnificent, being able to witness the flow of nature - just as it had been on these vast African plains a thousand years ago. But I didn't really live the moment - I was too annoyed that things hadn't worked out. I'd have to wait to get that perfect shot.

We lost sight of the lions for a while, and then came across the male again. By now he had taken the kill from the females, and was easily carrying the small impala in his powerfully jaws. Making an almost fatal error, we got too close to the male: it dropped the kill, turned on us, made a short charge, and growled loudly' clawing at the air. Masiwa knew that we'd be OK - it didn't see us as food. It already had enough - and simply wanted to protect it. As the lion charged though, my focus shifted from having yet again missed the perfect shot, to considering the possibility of never taking another one again. It's all just a matter of perspective, you see.

Weeks later, when I finally had the spools developed, I was looking at the shot of the two lions against the setting sun. Not a great shot, but good enough to make it onto my sunset wall. Looking at the photo, I wondered if I'd ever get the perfect shot - God knows, I deserve it by now! And then I thought of Masiwa's words: "Darkness comes too soon for the hunter". Not only for the hunter: for all of us.

Finally it dawned on me - I'd been so busy for so long waiting for the perfect moment... that it came, and went, unannounced... and I didn't even notice. This was the perfect shot of the perfect sunset! And, hanging on my wall, was a vast collection of perfect shots of other perfect sunsets. Now I could get on with the business of living my life. And the strange thing is that, having now taken the "perfect shot", I realise that the rest of my collection isn't half bad either. In fact, some are technically even better than this latest addition. Pity it took so long for me to understand this. That's all it took: for me to decide that this was it - I could stop waiting, and enjoy what I had.

So this picture may not be technically great. Yet, it is the perfect picture. It's mine. I was there. In fact, I don't even need the photo - it's just a copy anyway. I was there when the copy of the original was made - and I can remember what the original looked like. It was way more magnificent than any guest in my study could ever imagine. And I can remember what it looked like in the moment. One day, when I can no longer see, I'll still be able to remember what it looked like. Finally, I could stop waiting. I'd found what I was looking for.

Perhaps the great sage who said that "fulfilment comes when what you have, is what you want", was right. And it took an illiterate tracker to teach me this.

All photographs by Stef du Plessis. Copyright on text and photographs Stef du Plessis.