Posted on by johanne_marais

I am if you are, and if you aren’t I still am.

I am…

Take a moment. Breathe in. 

Say, “I am…” and the first few things that come to mind. Notice how these thoughts feel. Any words that follow “I am…” have the power to mould and manoeuvre your sense of self.

I am human. I am curious. I am kind. It is perhaps one of the greatest instincts of the human condition to attach ourselves to a sense of identity. This may be rooted in connection, community or companionship.  Perhaps identity stems from creation, control, or ceremony. To construct a comfortable and assured interaction with the environment, we tell ourselves (and those around us) who we are. I am not my research, though I am working in the field of sleep science – diagnosing obstructive sleep apnoea in persons living with HIV. This involves tracking the brain patterns of a sleeping patient, as well as their breathing. I am constantly reminded to be humble in my knowledge acquisition.

I am a learner. I am a teacher. I am a neuroscientist. Effectively, this means I study the squishy, convoluted pink organ housed within the skull. This lump of biologically active stuff, which somewhat governs our lived experience, fascinates me so deeply that I am compelled to tell you why it is part of who I am.

As you read this sentence, your brain is making associations between what I write; the sounds in your environment; any aromas wafting past your nostrils; and even the temperature of your body. When you think back to this moment, your brain will recount – within milliseconds – all the sensations activated within you to remind you of this experience.

The average human brain can create about 60 000 thoughts every day!

We can practice calming or stimulating our minds by the type and timing of awareness we employ. I might be so bold as to say this awareness is a series of thoughts. So, what is a thought? A thought is an electrochemical trace that occupies multi-dimensional space in your brain. A thought is the internal experience of how we process external stimuli. This internal experience relates to one’s senses and (new term incoming) somatosensation, or the sensory relationships of our bodies with the space around it – a tickle, an itch, a chill. We even have this epic internal ‘sixth sense’ called interoception – sensing what we feel within our bodies! In some ways, I agree that what we think we can become.

Still, I am more than just my brain’s interpretations of my body’s sensations.

Humans have humanity. We adapt to circumstance and unite in hardship. I am an activist. I am an advocate. I am an ally. I situate myself at the intersection of neuroscience, public health, and social justice. I have more than just a love for science – I have a love for sharing science. This brings me to a chilling (but in no way “chilled”) fact:

In 2020, the Annual Mental State of the World Report showed that 36 % of South Africans are living in mental health distress. Let that number sink in. 36 % is about four out of ten people. I dream of a day where we see this number crumble like the last rusk in the packet. My research aims will likely centre around this dream for as far into our future as I can imagine. This percentage is not the fault of our brains, but a psychosocial consequence of centuries of suffering and oppression.

Restructuring the paradigm of cognitive wellness requires not only inclusion of minority groups, but in fact building new systems with excluded groups at the centre of our focus. While I have an ongoing love-affair with the brain, I feel even more inspired by Black joy, trans joy and accessible places for people with disabilities. As I pursue my neuroscientific dreams, I want to cultivate safer mental health spaces and research outcomes for LGBTQPIA+ people, Indigenous peoples and disabled persons.

There is no quick fix for mental health reform, but I am committed to proactively prioritizing both systemic and systematic wellness. I invite you to ask yourself, “Am I?”.

Posted on by Maseteditshego

The realities of the COVID-19 pandemic in the Higher Education Sector

In early March 2020, the president put the entire country under hard lockdown. This resulted in limited movement and interaction of people outside the home environment. The lockdown disrupted academic calendars and activities of institutions of higher learning in the country, especially for rural-based universities. The decision to close institutions of higher learning was an attempt by the government to curb the spread of the virus and mortality in the country as it was done by other countries across the world.

Despite these continued COVID-19 disruptions and restrictions to normal lives and academic operations, we had to find ways to continue teaching and learning activities to complete the 2020 academic calendar. When this happened I was on the verge of completing my Master of Arts degree by research and I had just been allocated some groups of students to tutor. You can imagine the frustration and confusion. Tutoring has always been done face to face in most universities, especially full-time universities. So, it has never been a challenge to walk into a lecture theatre and present a tutorial on any selected topic.  If anything, it has always been quite an enjoyable process. It is a relaxing two hours outside the library while one is still engaged with academic activities.

However, with the COVID-19 lockdown and restrictions, I had to go home, my students had to go home, and we had to learn how to teach and learn online. Most of these students, like me, are from the deep rural spaces of Limpopo and Mpumalanga. We share similar experiences of signal difficulties when trying to connect to the internet. I personally often have to travel some 20-25km away from my village almost into the town of Tzaneen just to read my email – that’s how bad it gets. However, because the University was making provisions for data as a means of facilitating an eased remote teaching and learning process, it was assumed that we will all connect to various ICT platforms to stay academically engaged. Of course, that was not the reality.

The miscalculation in this equation was that, even though my students had access to enough data, just like me, we did not have the network to connect via any of the online platforms. So it was a struggle. The reality is that being on campus bridges the gap between the have and the have nots because we have similar access to facilities and other resources. However, being home, especially during the lockdown in 2020, proved that there remains a huge gap between us as a society. The inability to connect with my students easily proved that South Africa remains a divided society and that rural spaces are exactly that – rural spaces. This proved ICT inequalities between the urban and the rural spaces, an injustice I deeply feel must be addressed.

My frustrations were not only with my inability to connect with my students but the fact that I also could not swiftly carry on with my research for the same reasons – network. Although I did talk to my research supervisor from time to time on the phone, it was difficult for me to achieve anything tangible because I could not access my chapter corrections in time, nor some of the material he would share with me to enrich my arguments.

Rural universities have a long way to go in their ICT learning integrations. And from what I have observed during the height of the pandemic in 2020, the problem cannot be solved by the Department of Higher Education only. The solutions require a collective approach by the Department of Science and Innovation in collaboration with relevant researchers on Information Communication Technology on rural communities and other key stakeholders.