The night I was crowned as Miss Deaf South Africa 2019

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 encourage people along the way. This farm encourages you to go "Onward!" and

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 the school day . My head hurt so mu

Marisa Smit

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