In the fourth of my weekly interviews with an interesting resident of Umdloti, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa – the idyllic seaside village in which I am blessed to live – I asked the Big Five questions of Andre Cronje, director of the Wild Touch programme on SABC.
Let’s have a quick look at him, shall we?
FH:You grew up in or near the bustling metropolis of Johannesburg, yet knew from a very early age that you wanted to be out in the bush and working with wildlife… how did that come about?
AC: You see, Jozi-city is one of the most hardcore jungles out there. If you look at any aerial shot of the place it’s striking how many trees there are, there are also some crazy animals lurking in the bushes. On a more serious note, most of my ancestors were hunters, farmers and fishermen. I guess a love and understanding for nature is in my blood.
FH:You have been involved with Wild Touch, SABC’s popular wildlife educational programme, since its inception and now direct the series. How did you get involved and what does working with the programme mean to you?
AC: I have been working in the television industry for 11 years now so you naturally get involved with the kind of projects that fits your profile. It’s important for me to believe in what I invest my time and effort in. Series Directing Wild Touch is very rewarding because I know that I’m involved with sharing something beautiful and important with the nation.
FH:We are constantly being alerted to horror stories related to the degradation of our environment. Working so closely with it, what is your experience of human abuse of the environment and what would your message be to the youth who are to inherit it?
AC: You said I must keep my answers short, this question might take days to answer! But I think if we look around us right now, you will see the answer. The abuse that’s visible in the environment is only a mirror of our abuse of ourselves. Just like the orangutang, we are also running out of living space and just like the fish in our rivers the polluted water will also kill us. If there is a message for the youth it would be to start a revolution! Don’t be as ignorant as me, your parents, your teachers or our world governments. Don’t accept the easy way out and do question what is going on around you. To this day we are pretending that we don’t know that we are killing the earth and ourselves.
FH: A group of foreign visitors to South Africa (let’s say, ahem, a gaggle of gorgeous Scandinavian environmental science students, shall we?) arrive on your doorstep and demand to be shown the finest wildlife attractions our country has to offer. Where would you take them? And why?
AC: It depends… the Scandinavian students can hang around my house for a week or so and they’ll get up close with vervet monkeys, various snakes, spiders, amphibians, whales, dolphins and the beautiful birds of prey that hang out here. If it’s a small group I’ll take them on a wilderness walk through the Umfolosi Game reserve. Am I allowed to punt any cool organisations on this blog? Check out www.wildernesstrails.org.za.
FH:Cool. OK. So, you’re often to be seen surfing off and skateboarding around our gem of a seaside village, Umdloti. And I happen to know that you live in a beautiful house hidden deep in the bush on a hill overlooking our bit of the Indian Ocean. How did you get to be such a lucky bugger? And, go on, make us all insanely jealous… please describe your paradisical living-in-Umdloti-vibe!
AC: Jeez, Hatman, you just blew my cover. I was put under a witness protection programme several years ago and they forgot about me. I’ve been trying to get out of this lifestyle for years! Jokes aside, if you let go of your fear, everything else happens naturally. I remember as a kid I dreamed that I was surfing some deserted island. Everyone around me always said that it’s a silly dream because I live in a city 600km away from the sea. So I thought F@*^ you all and I started imagining that my skateboard had no wheels and the concrete was water. The rest is history as I have since spent tmy life living my dreams. I do want to encourage everyone to live their dreams, however far your imagination runs… though it’s crucial that you never forget this: “Concrete is not water” and you will get hurt along the way. So to answer your question about how I got to be such a lucky bugger… “no matter how hard you fall if you get up and try again, you will succeed”. Oh, and by the way this doesn’t mean that it won’t hurt like hell either.
There are some animal species in which the male gender have got it totally right. Not so much in the “spiders” category. There the guys are a lot smaller than the ridiculously dominant female and, after he finally gets his leg (or a few) over, she is inclined to have him for afters. As in eat him. Not nice. A bit on the extreme side, if you ask me. Well, as a red-blooded alpha-male type, this would not be a lifestyle I would necessarily recommend to myself.
In fact, if you ask me (and you’re not but I’ll just pretend you are and bomb forth anyway), the inter-gender pendulum has swung way too far the other way since my admirably rugged Neanderthal forefathers used to get back from a strenuous day of hunting / gathering, lob an antelope on the kitchen table and gruffly say: “Cook that, Wilma!” Her indoors (in the cave) would meekly (and, more importantly, uncomplainingly) barbecue up a storm, he (let’s call him Fred, shall we?) would chomp through the whole antelope, throw her a few bones and then have his barbaric but ultimately satisfying way with her for the all-that-is-required two minutes on the roughly-hewn-out-of-rock dinner table before collapsing on a comfy animal skin for a good night’s kip.
After a hard day's hunting, Fred was looking forward to a top-notch nosh and some quick nookie back at the cave
But gradually, and almost indetectably (apart from the odd burning of a bra), this has sadly changed. And caused a highly unfortunate imbalance in our social order which has left real men like me very confused. I don’t see why I should hunt all day for a Fred-sized buck, only to be told to cook it myself while she reads Heat magazine and fannys around with her fingernails in front of the telly. I won’t even go into the manipulative tactics involving the purchase of Jimmy Choo shoes, visits to her mum and putting out the garbage that have to summoned up in order to procure a roll-around in which my tongue is expected to do 90% of the work.
I mean, have a read of this so-called “joke” sent to me by a female “friend” just yesterday…
Duties of Wives.
Three men were sitting together bragging about how they had given their new wives duties.
Terry had married a woman from Greece.
He bragged that he had told his wife she needed to do all the dishes and housework. He said that it took a couple days but on the third day he came home to a clean house and the dishes were all washed and put away.
Jimmy had married a woman from Italy.
He bragged that he had given his wife orders that she was to do all the cleaning, dishes, and the cooking. He told them that the first day he didn’t see any results, but the next day it was better. By the third day, his house was clean, the dishes were done, and he had a huge dinner on the table.
The third man had married a South African chick.
He boasted that he told her that her duties were to keep the house cleaned, dishes washed, laundry and ironing twice a week, lawns mowed, windows cleaned and hot meals on the table three times a day.
He said the first day he didn’t see anything, the second day he didn’t see anything, but by the third day most of the swelling had gone down and he could see a little out of his left eye, just enough to fix himself a bite to eat, load the dishwasher, and call a handyman.
God Bless South African Women!
Not all that funny, is it? That’s not a joke. It’s an outrage. And perfectly illustrates my point that things have got well out of hand. Did you notice that last little dig in the balls… “God Bless South African Women!“? Pathetic! And unnecessarily provocative. If you ask me. Which you did, OK?!
Now let’s have a look at the male fruit fly. The what? Bear with me. This little feller has gone up big-time in my estimation. In fact, as I write this, there’s one buzzing the not-so-pristine pawpaw (papaya for foreign Hatpeople) in the fruitbowl here at Hatman Mansions. I know this one’s a male because he looks very pleased with himself. Why? Well, he’s out of the house looking for food to put on the table (probably inbetween titanic trysts with other really hot female fruit flies) and his missus is home doing the vacuuming, laundry, feather-dusting and whatever else it is that needs to be done in fruit fly homes. Now this is much more like it, yes?
