On the morning of 16 October 2017 all kinds of madness ensued at home for me… but it was in the best of ways! If you have read through the other media blogs preceding this one you will know by now that the evening before the story of The Angel Gown® Initiative broke on Netwerk24, with the story being printed in several newspapers across South Africa the following morning.
My phone was absolute chaos with constant phone calls from friends and loved ones congratulating me on this milestone for TAGI, phone calls that grew more and more difficult to process as WhatsApp messages and SMS’s was blaring in the background, and with the modern era of technology we live in, there was also constant beeps going off in the background to alert me to Facebook messages and emails coming through.
In between all this I remember sitting down for a moment on the floor of my bathroom to just take a second and breathe. It took me much longer than just a second to take in the gravity of my new reality that was starting to sink in… it took me a few more seconds to remember the reason I was sitting on the bathroom floor, rather than my comfortable bed, is that amidst it all I was still trying to get some laundry done! And as I was shoving some dirty clothes into the laundry machine the phone rang again and it was a call I was not quite yet prepared for…
Reinhard Kotze from DisaFM phoned to say as he was reading Die Burger he happened across the article of The Angel Gown® Initiative which immediately struck a nerve with him as he himself had to say goodbye to his baby boy a few months earlier. He eagerly asked if I would be interested to come into the studio the following morning for a meet and greet, which was an obvious yes, and then he somewhat cautiously asked if 7:30am would be doable for me, which again was an eager yes on my part as I’m an early riser.
He told me not to expect anything fancy, we’ll sit down, have a cup of coffee and discuss my story. I misunderstood and thought it would be just that; a casual chat in between his broadcasts. So the next morning I was up before the crack of dawn and relied on the standard caffeine booster to get the engines running and off we went from Gordon’s Bay, over the Mountain to Grabouw and to their studios.
We arrived a little early and so we had a walk around to enjoy the scenery of the mountainside, took some photos and then decided it is way too cold for my constitution and we head inside where Reinhard greeted us with a strong handshake and a welcoming demeanor. We sat down and started to chat for a bit and then the next moment he told me to take the mike, earphones optional, and that we are going live in a few seconds… I kept my composure but inside I was caught off guard, not because Reinhard misled me but purely because I had given myself over to my own assumptions.
About seventeen minutes later we finished TAGI’s first radio interview, a live one nonetheless, and I felt so proud! Not only because I managed to bite down every “inappropriate” word I was thinking or that I managed not to stumble over every other word I was thinking, but because less than 24 hours after the first article about TAGI was published in print, TAGI was already on life radio. We went from crawling to standing overnight.
We would like to thank Reinhard Kotze and Radio DisaFM for inviting us for an interview and extending this opportunity to us.
Feel free to listen to a recording of our interview with DisaFM added below and please share it to your social media and other platforms to spread the word as far as possible so that we are able to help more families going through this terrible time of loss.
Eric Elronde and the TAGI team.