I jumped off a cliff in South Africa and didn't die

"Never," he replies very quickly with a reassuring smile that struggles to convince me fully.

I've had 24 hours to think about this and that I'm now standing at the edge of Lehr's Falls at the Oribi Gorge in the KwaZulu-Natal province of South Africa by my own choice is crazy.

I tell myself it isn't too late to protest and say I'm no longer interested — there's no shame in it. My brain has already processed for the words to escape my mouth, but I hold myself back and stare into the void hundreds of metres below.

Lawrence, who I met for the first time days ago, has just jumped and I can see him pumping the air in ecstasy as he swings here and there at the bottom of the gorge. I want that for me — adrenaline is a drug and this is going to be my fix.

The Oribi Gorge is a temptation to live a little [SA Tourism] Pulse Nigeria

What came before

I'm not the most adventurous person you'll ever meet. I have to do a two-hour internal monologue if I have to eat food I've never heard of or tasted in the first 10 years of my life. Most times, I end up not eating it, especially if something as familiar as Jollof rice is an option.

It's a painfully conservative approach but it's also safe, just like I love it. This doesn’t mean I don't sometimes dabble in the occasional thrill-seeking.

The last time I was adventurous was in September 2021 when I went kayaking in Lagos with my colleagues.

I'm morbidly terrified of any large body of water, so it made no sense that, as someone who can't swim, I was very willing to get in a tiny boat and paddle myself all on my own, unprovoked.

But I did it, and gradually started enjoying it a little too much that I raised my paddle to say a loud whoop to my cowardly colleagues standing and eating by the shore.

I shouldn’t have done that, and when the water rocked my boat, as was natural, my paddle was too far up to do a quick rescue mission, so I panicked and tried to paddle with my hand.

I went straight into the water and even though I was floating in there for only a minute before I was rescued, it felt like an eternity.

It was my closest shave with death, but here I was again, two years later, ready to test the limit. I have what my people call the coconut head, apparently.

What it means to let go

When Jen mentioned the previous morning that I could choose to do two things out of ziplining, bungee jumping (it's actually a wild swing), quad biking and paintballing, my brain opted for the last two just because they were the safest choices.

But there’s something about being in this country for the past week, courtesy of South African Tourism, that's made me just a bit more adventurous. I'm in a strange land surrounded by strangers I didn't know days ago, and something in the air feels like cocaine in my bloodstream.

So I cancelled paintballing for ziplining, but something about it still felt relatively safe and boring, especially when bungee jumping was an option.

Nonye appointed herself the champion of changing everyone's mind to live a little and provided the final nudge I needed to swing.

For the 24 hours that followed that decision, I resisted the urge to research what could happen, and what has happened to others, if anything went wrong — whiplash, eye injuries, spine injuries, broken neck. Yikes

Not thinking about all that is how I ended up on this ledge, questioning my life choices.

When the Oribi Gorge invites you to jump, you say, "How many times?" [SA Tourism] Pulse Nigeria

Jump

I’m just metres away from the ledge now and Lawrence is returning from his journey to the abyss.

The intrusive thoughts unavoidably beckon me to jump without a harness to bring me back. I'd have listened if this was a year ago — it was a hard year.

The first five seconds of my fall down the gorge is very confusing as everything rushes through my mind.

"What have I done?"

"Did I jump right?"

"Did I have too much for breakfast?"

"Should I close my eyes or open them?"

"What if my village people are online?"

Falling down the equivalent of a 55-storey building can be fun [SA Tourism] Pulse Nigeria

Mid-jump is when the real terror hits because there's nothing at the moment to convince me the cord tied to my harness won't snap and throw me into the void of the jungle below.

In the confusion that envelopes me, I don't know if to stretch my arms out and pump the air or hold on to the cord in the unlikely case it malfunctions.

When I reach the bottom and swing to the far end of the gorge, instinct kicks in and I cut my finger while scrambling to grip the cord — a battle scar I won’t feel until 15 minutes later when I'm back up and safe. But that's where all the terror ends.

It's beautiful at the bottom, and I dangle on the cord taking in everything my eyes can see. The momentum of the swing is too far gone now to pump the air in the fashion Lawrence did, but my arms are outstretched.

"I'm the king of the world!" I scream into the vast emptiness, a kingdom that's all mine for all the minutes I’m alone down here.

Adrenaline is a drug, and it's led me here where the waterfall is beautiful and nature looks a bit more peaceful, spread across miles in every direction.

I swing peacefully enough down there on my own that I start to feel mischievous.

"Yibambe!" I half yell, hoping, and not hoping, that Wakandans emerge from the jungle to welcome me. They don't.

I can confirm that Wakanda doesn't exist [SA Tourism] Pulse Nigeria

When I make my way back to the top where dozens of others wait to jump or watch others jump, no one can speak to me — I'm a jumper and they're not. We're not mates.

What it feels to be a jumper

I want to pretend that jumping off a cliff suddenly makes me a philosopher and an expert on the human condition, but it doesn't.

I just know that it may not look like it sometimes, but life really does fly past. The sum total of my moments in South Africa taught me it's important to create memories that make the grind of life worth it. No matter how much of a passive and safe existence you curate for yourself, always take the rare opportunity to let go.

I didn't need to jump off a cliff to learn any of this, but I need to jump again.