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By Root 912 0

is like looking at my graduation photo from the 1970s, in which I'm wearing an ill-fitting suit, a boring shirt with a supersized collar, and I have big Bee Gees hair. Frankly, I don't even recognize that guy any more. Hard to say what's changed. Whether it's the constant debilitating pressure I've been under all these months that's throwing my judgment off axis, or a side effect of the dragging fatigue that hounds me everywhere I go and never seems to lift, or just the numbness to fear that inevitably follows after you've crammed ten full lifetimes of worldly experience into a single, tumultuous twelve-month period, or the fact that I came close to dying a few weeks ago and was half a day away from never being able to complain about climbing an erupting volcano or standing on an icy mountain, or anything else for that matter, ever again … I honestly can't give you a specific reason why my MacGyver switch got flicked to on, whether it was facing the lethal rapids in Idaho or the polar bears in Alaska or drinking emulsion paint spat from a boy's mouth in Vanuatu, but, compared to all of these things, for some reason the prospect of sleeping in a house made from fresh cow dung, surrounded by preying lions and hyenas, scarcely makes me blink.

In short, of course I'll be staying in Wilson's home overnight. Now, turn on the tuck-in cam, somebody shout “Action!” and let's get on with it.

“Okay, then.” Jay shrugs wearily. “If that's what you want.”

He looks worried, and is obviously hoping I'll change my mind, though my willingness to sacrifice myself so readily in the name of cheap cable programming secretly quite impresses him, I think.

Minutes later I catch the bang of doors, the roar of an engine, and the squeak of suspension, steadily diminishing, as the van bounces away across the plain into the night, leaving the host of the show, or possibly the former host if things don't go well, lying all alone, smelling of dung, on a pile of dung, in a dark, claustrophobic cow-dung hut.

Not that you're ever really alone in a cow-dung hut, because the house, I now discover, is full of bugs, most of them entering via the hole Kevin punched in the wall. Every last airborne insect in eastern Kenya seems to have been notified that I'm here and decided to drop in on 24 Shithouse Lane to see what's cooking, because within minutes I'm being eaten alive. And in the quiet blackness of my bed, as unidentified legs crawl up my neck and I feel the brush of fluttering wings against my eyelids and lips, and as the hyenas howl outside and the lions scout the perimeter fence in search of Dinner—my new Masai tribal name—I suddenly start to feel rather proud of myself. For the first time in my entire life, I showed a modicum of bravery here tonight. I stood up to my instincts to back down and run in terror, making a decision that withstood the gravitational pull of convenience and good living, and chose to embrace discomfort instead. And I did it, not just for me, but for the show. For the good of the team. Another first. Furthermore, having made that decision, I stuck to it, rather than merely saying the words simply for effect, then changing my mind again almost immediately, which is what I usually do. In most situations, cowardice is my natural fallback. It comes very easily to me, I find.

But not tonight.

Tonight I was actually brave. And no one's more shocked than I am.

Of course, such heady foolishness can get a guy into trouble if he's not careful. For instance, it can lead to him lying in a dung hut in the middle of Kenya, being attacked and bitten by a swarm of bugs.

But for once, odd as it may seem, I don't care.

“I did it” is the only thought in my head right now. I did something brave that I didn't think I could do. I took a stand and didn't retreat from it. That's an achievement. One I should be very proud of. Doubtless, “I did it!” was the last triumphant thought that ran through the mind of my skydiving buddy Adrian, too, shortly before he hit the ground after his parachute didn't open, and it will probably be the very last thing