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ABOUT ME - Pilates Instructor and Miss Deaf South Africa

I was diagnosed as profoundly deaf when I turned 14 months old. It was the late 80's and the ENT specialist told my mom, that I was the deafest person (according to my brainstem audiogram) to be diagnosed. According to doctors and experts, I would never talk. I had a hearing loss of 145 decibels, which means that a Boeing 747 could land behind me, and I would not notice! My mother, Annemarie, resigned from her job as a music teacher and enrolled in a course in Audiology, to reach a language to express myself. Deaf people are immensely frustrated because they have no names for their emotions. My mom used a mirror to show me my anger, happiness, fear, love, etc and taught me words for it these for the first of 4 years of my life, every experience was a language lesson and not an even a picnic or a day at the beach was only an outing, anymore. There were so many words! At this stage, I was wearing Phonak Hearing Swiss which enabled me to hear vowels, but no consonants, amplifie...

What to do when Deaf people feel left out in a crowded room. Here are 5 tips.

*** In my experience as a profoundly deaf teenager in a mainstream school, for the first time, I must confess that it was very challenging. I wasn't used to a crowded classroom. At Deaf schools, you have 5 or 6 classmates but in the mainstream, 30 or 35. On my first day at Jan Van Riebeeck Primary school in Cape Town, I was excited to try this new challenge at the mainstream school. Suddenly I had 11 new friends and we were always together. During intervals, w e sat together on the grass in a circle. A s a Deaf person, I felt left out most of the time because the conversations went on and on from different angles and person s . I became more silent and lonely. It was exhaust ing for me. I use my eyes for lip reading and felt totally ex hausted after breaks, trying to follow every word my friends spoke, to feel part of the group. After the break, it was back to the classroom and nonstop focusing on the teacher's lips until the end of ...

Best Tree House in Western Cape - Anna's Country Accommodation, Greyton

If you are looking for wonderfully unique, fantastically delightful, almost fairytale-like Greyton accommodation, escape to Anna's Country Accommodation. I always wanted to try a Tree-House. When I was on social media, I found a gorgeous old Victorian bath with jungle view pictures on Instagram. I knew immediately I had to try this place. I googled and found Anna’s Country Accommodation website. It is in Greyton, a 1 hour and 45 minutes drive away from Cape Town. I contacted her on WhatsApp and she sent me two gorgeous videos of the Tree Houses. Surprisingly there is a new Tree House that has been built during the Lockdown in South Africa last year - Tree House Loft. I booked the newly build Tree House Loft for three nights. It was a surprise vacation for my boyfriend, David. I planned this trip. He didn’t know where we were going. On the day it was pouring in Cape Town, I just put the GPS on so that David can follow the route. He followed the GPS route. We have never been to Greyt...

Marisa Smit

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