The night I was crowned as Miss Deaf South Africa 2019

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...

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...

One of the Best Getaway Places in Western Cape - Buff and Fellow

I saw these luxurious Eco-friendly cabins on social media, on Instagram last year. I told myself I had to try this place with my boyfriend and had to plan our trip. It was a very nice 4 hours long drive through Garden Route from Cape Town. This place is between George and Mosselbay on R102 road, just 10km from George Airport. What a drive, it was a gorgeous drive from sunset to a big bright full moon. It was so bright and orange that we could see everything the trees and the farm hills. We were howling in our car like wolves and laughed. Traffic was super quiet except there were a lot of lorries on the road and we had to overtake so many times. It was a good drive. We arrived at the Ultreya Farm, it is a family Du Toit Farm, Ultreya is a Spanish word derived from the original Latin meaning "Onward with Courage". It was in common use by pilgrims to greet and encoura...

Marisa Smit

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