Unsung Community Heroes: Franciske Venter - Creating your own disabilities. Dealing with Cerebral Palsy

Franciske Venter has cerebral palsy but, even though she has reason to find life challenging due to her disability, she takes life as a challenge and finds ways to live her dreams.

She was born with her disability and life was challenging from day one. She struggled to walk and she needed speech therapists from a very young age.

She initially went to a primary school for kids that did not have disabilities and she found it difficult and fell very quickly behind the rest of the kids due to her problems with her fine and gross motor skills. So she was moved to Pretoria Cerebral Palsy School where she could be close to her physiotherapist and where she could get individual treatment.

Franciske was always a busy kid and she needed something to help her deal with her frustrations and extra energy so she started to play sport. She started with javelin and shot put and after three months she got provincial colours in sport.

Sport was motivating for her, at first she did not want to be seen as disabled but then she started to make friends and she was able to talk to them about her disabilities. She realized that she could make a difference in sport.

She always wanted to play cricket but there was no cricket for kids with cerebral palsy. In 2003 she placed a picture of herself and the Proteas captain at the time, Hansie Cronje, in the Huisgenoot. This was spotted at the Titans Cricket Union and she was encouraged to go out and look for a form of cricket that she and others like her can play.

She did a little research and found that there was a format in India that she liked. She started her own club and introduced this form of cricket to South Africa.

A highlight in her life was in 2014 when India toured South Africa and she got to play against them. She learned a lot from the Indian side because they have been playing disabled cricket for a longer period of time and were far better than South Africa and they were willing to share.

She also coached KFC Mini-Cricket for kids with varying disabilities and she had to deal with a lot of challenges both physically and mentally.

Now she is busy writing a book with a ghost writer about herself and disabled cricket in South Africa. It is a large project and she is currently overwhelmed by it but she is not going to give up. She knows that it will help parent of disabled kids and it will help disabled kids know that they are not alone and be positive and they can achieve their goals.

Other than sport she has also had the opportunity to act in 7de Laan, a South African soap opera, as an extra. She want to take it seriously but she knows that there are challenges and it will be difficult for her to get a permanent role in a series or soap opera. Her next step is to take classes in acting and see how far she can get.

Her message is that if you have something in life that holds you back, don't give up and you can achieve your goals. You only live once and take advantage of every moment you get.

Great White Sharks - Simonstown

A friend of mine recently dived in Simonstown in the Western Cape, South Africa. She took these pictures. The visibility was not all that good so the pictures are terrible. Her opinion of the dive what that she was amazed by the 4 great white sharks that she saw but she is not that big on the cage diving experience. She would prefer to dive with Bull Sharks (Zambizi Sharks) or Tiger Sharks just because they are not cage dives.




There are places that in South Africa that you can go to and dive with Great Whites without doing it in a cage but they cannot guarantee that you will see the sharks and they don’t bait the sharks.

 
 

There are nice people out there

Normally a blogger will start by introducing him/herself to a potential audience and then get started on their topic that they decided to blog on. If they do not follow that line then they would just follow their topic. I’m going to do something slightly different.




I have been travelling for ages and learning and experiencing new things for over 30 years now. So I am not a beginner traveller so why would I want to start a blog with a post on “How I started travelling”. I will start on something that really impressed me recently. Actually it was a someone who impressed me.



My little brother, sister, brother-in-law and I were out geocaching in Amanzintoti, South Africa. It was a cache just off the side of the N2 highway. At no stage were we closer than 50m from the highway. My little brother and sister (9 and 11 years old) were geocaching for the 2nd time. The slope that we were on was quite steep for the younger two so we were careful and tried not to slip. My brother found the cache without much of a problem and shortly we started to head back. It was nto easy going due to the slope and due to the fact that all access to the spot had been closed off with wire fencing.



Eventually we got back to the road that led us to the cache. We were still on a high after our find when a lady stopped her car next to us. It was quite obvious she was flustered. She took a deep breath and asked us if we were OK and if we need a lift somewhere. She was on the highway when she saw a car, without the driver, stopped at the side of the road. When she looked up she saw us scrambling on the slope leading away from the highway. She thought that we had broken down and needed a lift to the nearest garage. For her to get to us, or even find the correct road to where we would emerge from was quite a feat. She must have done 10 – 15 km of driving just to see if we are OK.



Once she saw that we were OK and that we actually didn’t need a lift anywhere she said her goodbyes and left us without leaving her name or anything. It is not often that you meet a person as friendly as that. So I would like to start my blog by thanking this lady and I hope that I will meet more people like that in my travels.