Sometimes – actually, a lot of the time – my job is ridiculous.
Exhilarating as it is exhausting, I spend a large percentage of my life either on a telephone, a computer or a plane (often simultaneously), juggling one, two and sometimes three time zones to cover news stories for SBS television, radio and online.
It is an all-consuming lifestyle.
And I love it - I couldn’t imagine doing anything else.
Good timing and good luck is essential in the news business, especially as a correspondent, and on December 3rd last year, I bombed out with both.
After an overnight flight from the news bureau in London, I spent a long, hot day filming a series of stories in Tanzania.
As I worked away in Dar es Salaam it was suddenly announced back in London that the Duchess of Cambridge was not only expecting her first child, but had been hospitalized suffering severe morning sickness.
There was only one flight that would get me back to London in time for the evening news in Australia, so I had an hour to be on a plane and on my way to the story that would, for better or worse, dominate the next seven months of my deployment.
It would be fair to say I was “stressed” perhaps even a tad “frantic” as I boarded my Tanzania-Kenya-Switzerland-UK flight, feverishly filing stories and coordinating satellite locations and interviews for when I landed.
Thankfully, a colleague was transiting through London, and could cover until I arrived.
I had a very small window of opportunity to send my voiceover and scripts when we landed momentarily in Nairobi.
The cabin crew gathered around my seat to offer their encouragement as the file slowly uploaded, eventually sending just as we taxied back out onto the runway.
My relief was clearly visible to all, particularly the bemused passenger sat beside me, who moments earlier had watched with a polite smile as I recorded an earnest voice track into my microphone, head buried under the airline blanket in the seat beside him.
With nothing more to be done until the plane landed and I was catapulted into days of live crosses, my neighbor and I started chatting.
READ & WATCH: Brett Mason's story 'Mission to mend broken hearts'
And we didn’t stop - Dr Godwin Godfrey and I instantly hit it off.
Each year, tens-of-thousands of Tanzanian children die from operable heart disease, yet, in a country of forty-seven-million people, not one doctor has the skills or resources to help.
The statistics were simply shocking.
As I rushed off the plane in Zurich, we exchanged details and I promised to keep in touch and film a story helping raise awareness of Godwin’s goal.
In August this year I travelled to Israel, where he has spent the last five years training with Save a Child’s Heart charity in preparation for his return to Tanzania.
Our story followed the journey of a beautiful and intelligent six-year-old girl called Salma.
Watching Godwin perform life-saving surgery on her broken heart was remarkable.
About a month after filming their story I woke to a message from Tel Aviv.
Attached was this photograph of Salma smiling and waving, clearly happy to be heading home, healthy, to her village near Mount Kilimanjaro.
Next year I will travel to Tanzania to film Godwin operating in his country’s first paediatric cardiac ward.
I can’t wait to check on Salma’s recovery and meet Godwin’s wife and son.
I will never forget December 3, 2012. Not because it was the day we learned there was a new heir to the throne, but because I met a truly talented, selfless and dedicated human.
A man who has taught me much about life and I am now privileged to call a friend.
Follow Brett on Twitter @BrettMasonNews
READ & WATCH: Brett Mason's story 'Mission to mend broken hearts'
