Sharon Davis swallows her pride (and some sea water) as she tells us how she braved the adrenalin pumping adventures at Durban's uShaka Marine World.

I think we would all agree that if something is of value or is important to us - really important - we make time for it. New lovers desire to spend time together and explore the excitement of intimacy and discovery - even if it is self-discovery in the mirror of a lover's eye. Serious students spend hours studying, pouring over books, making notes and study summaries. Serious athletes spend mind-numbing hours in physical training… for no other reason that this is a priority in their lives.

It's simple - if something is important enough we make time for it. The more important it is, the more time we make available.

But this simple acknowledgement or theory has an uncomfortable corollary. By extrapolation, we should then spend a large (read LARGE) portion of our day doing things that are important to us; things that we value doing. That does not mean a hedonistic pursuit of sensory pleasure - we are talking about spending the better part of our conscious day doing things that are important - taking care of our body, mind and spirit and those of our loved ones.

A rooster scratches the ground listlessly in front of a small cluster of modest mud and thatch huts, just off the path to the fields. In the lush green valley below, villagers of rural Tsegulani also work the soil. Bent double, the women use metal bottle tops as a measure for fertiliser, dropping some into each hole. The men work ahead preparing the maize beds and digging the seed holes using long thin sticks. 

Ruth Gawani came out the door bent double, with an ailing and aching back, indicating a life of hard labour. She looks much older than her 69 years with her purple top was hanging almost as loosely as the skin from her old thin frame. She greeted us with a toothless smile and settled painfully down in the sun. With arthritic hands she started to pull corn off a mealie cob until it was a bare husk.