The Day I Held the First Copy

Early one morning, I drove to Pretoria to collect the first 50 completed books — Risk & Reward made real for the first time.

The smell of ink and paper, the texture beneath my fingers, above all, the weight of it — it was as if all the miles of dust and brushstrokes and risk had somehow gathered into this single object. Each book felt alive, almost imperceptibly whispering its own story. As I paged through those first copies, a wave of emotion caught me off guard. It felt sacred, as though I were walking again through the wild places that shaped me — the same silence, the same awe.

I thought of all the encounters behind those pages — lions, rhinos, buffalo, storms, and grace — and how close I’d come to losing my life in some of them. But more than that, I felt the unmistakable sense that this wasn’t mine. It belonged to the One who had carried me through both the danger and the discovery.

I’ve always believed that art is worship made visible. That day, as I signed and numbered each book, I realised these were not just pages and paintings — they were altars of gratitude.