Amanda Thandeka Masilela

In many social contexts, I often notice that we ask each other questions like: “What do you do?”, “What is your research about?”, or “Which department are you in?”. These are such common icebreakers. More often than not, when I describe what I do, the response is: “That sounds so cool!”.

For context, I am a Master’s student in the Ocean and Atmosphere Sciences discipline at the University of Cape Town, within the Oceanography Department. Our department is small and not very popular, as often it is assumed that we only study marine animals, which is not the case. In fact, oceanography is the study of the oceans and the ways in which their different components interact, including but not limited to the movement and composition of water, the plants and animals, the air above, and the geology below. This naturally branches into various themes such as climate sciences, physical oceanography, marine and atmospheric biogeochemistry, polar research, numerical modelling, and ocean statistics and machine learning. Our department is incredibly diverse in the research that we do, but what we all have in common is that we either focus on the ocean, the atmosphere, or their intersection. As for myself, my research focuses solely on the atmosphere.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve been fascinated by weather presenters. How do they know what the weather will be like tomorrow or for the next 10 days? How are they able to inform us that this year we will experience a dry season; that floods are coming; or that there is a cold front on its way? What is this cold front that they are talking about? I had so many questions, and I had no idea which field would bring about clarity. It is miraculous how I applied to major in Ocean and Atmosphere Science for my undergraduate degree, not really sure what it was, or how it would actually be the path to getting answers. I just wanted to learn about the ocean as it felt unique and the possibility of going on a research vessel one day sounded surreal (which I was lucky enough to experience in my Honours year). My journey in the Ocean and Atmosphere Sciences has been deeply rewarding, from answering questions that sparked my curiosity as a child, to empowering me to contribute meaningful research.

In a nutshell, my study is about tracing and quantifying the transport of moisture towards the Berg-Olifants and Breede-Gouritz Catchments in the southwestern South Africa (Fig. 1). Put simply, winds are the main driver of water vapor air masses (hereafter referred to as  “water parcels”) as they circulate and travel in the atmosphere in different phases of the water cycle. Water parcels are influenced by the warming of water bodies, which increase evaporation adding more water parcels in the atmosphere. Conversely, as air cools with decreasing temperature, the amount of water vapor also decreases. The rising of warm air and descending of cool air happens on a large scale in the atmosphere due to the presence of warm and cold sections of the ocean called currents. The warm currents and inland regions are the major contributors to water parcels that can potentially aid in cloud formation, enhancing weather systems, and fuelling the continuous water circulation in the atmosphere.

How exactly did we trace water parcels in the atmosphere? By utilising the numerical Hybrid Single-Particle Lagrangian Integrated Trajectory (HYSPLIT) model executed with the high resolution ERA5 reanalysis dataset. The HYSPLIT model can track backward (or forward) in time estimating the water parcels pathways and help determine their origin before arriving at the study region. Part of the results revealed that moisture tracked back from the southwestern South Africa originates as distant as the south Australian region; the western, central, and eastern South Pacific and South Atlantic Oceans; the Agulhas Current region; and from the southern African continental region (Namibia, Botswana, southern Zimbabwe, and southern Mozambique). Although the Berg-Olifants Catchment is a winter rainfall region and the Breede-Gouritz Catchment is an all-year round rainfall region, they illustrated similar moisture source routes.

With focus on a historical long term, as carried out in this study, prolonged deficiency (excess) in moisture in the atmosphere can potentially lead to persistent droughts (floods). Moisture can be influenced by wind patterns, differences in temperature, and earth’s landscape (mountains and valleys), among other things. Resultantly, not all moisture parcels traced back from their source regions arrive at the study domain. Understanding where moisture is coming from and where it is propelled to can help forecasters better understand current climate conditions, consequently helping the society to be better informed and prepared when regions become drier or more humid than usual.

While I am not a weather presenter (which still seems like an incredibly cool career!), I take pride in knowing that the work I am involved in contributes to a better understanding of the atmosphere. This journey continues to inspire me every day, as my knowledge grows, my list of questions becomes endless. Who would’ve imagined that diving into something so unfamiliar could be so deeply fulfilling?!

Figure 1: Map of the southwestern South Africa highlighting the positions of the Berg-Olifants Catchment (black outline) and the Breede-Gouritz Catchment (grey outline). The shading illustrates the difference in height above ground in meters.

Mariam Salie

My first-year anthropology lecturer once said: “There are as many cultures as there are people in the world”. I am inclined to agree with him. My PhD study explores the explanatory models of mental health conditions amongst Muslims through a multi-stakeholder approach. My work and I are inspired by Arthur Kleinman, a medical anthropologist, who coined the term ‘explanatory models’. Explanatory models refer to people’s beliefs, attitudes, understanding, and symptom and treatment knowledge about any given condition. That was a mouthful but stay with me.

Kleinman believed that it was important to construct a cultural formulation of illness based on the information noted above. According to Kleinman, people’s beliefs and perceptions about their health conditions are important to consider as it can improve the patient-practitioner relationship. The improved relationship contributes positively to treatment adherence, thereby improving treatment outcomes. A win for all! There are many others, like me, who have started to engage seriously with conversations around cultural competency, cultural relevance, cultural sensitivity, or cultural humility – whichever term tickles your fancy. The bottom line is the intersection of culture and mental health is an important one!

For my PhD, four stakeholder groups will provide the data. These stakeholder groups are: 1) Muslims with lived experience, 2) general Muslim public, 3) psychologists who have treated Muslims, and 4) Muslim clerics. While I would love to share everything I have learnt, I will save that for the PhD publications. What I would like to draw attention to in this post is two things: 1) culture and religion are often conflated and this impacts the mental health experience, and 2) mental health is understood through a cultural lens perhaps more than we realise.

First, religion is often perceived to be a part of culture, and some cultural practices are embedded within religion. Teasing apart culture and religion is a challenging task, and more often than not, their boundaries blur in ways that make clear distinctions difficult. I have witnessed this conflation first-hand in my practice as a clinical psychologist, as well as in my research. These experiences have demonstrated how cultural practices are often perceived with religious significance which has implications for how mental health is experienced, as well as whether help is sought appropriately. Cultural practices also establish rigid rules by which the community must abide, and any deviation is seen as deviating from the religion. Pertaining to Islam, I have now learnt after engaging with Muslim clerics on the matter that many of these cultural practices and cultural constructions have, in fact, nothing to do with Islam. Islam promotes holistic health which acknowledges mental health as an important component of overall health and wellbeing. Interestingly, recent literature has highlighted historical Muslim scholars who wrote extensively about mental health, as we understand it today. See Dr. Rania Awaad’s work, amongst others.

This brings me to the second point – how mental health is understood through a cultural lens. I cannot speak for all cultures or religions, but my work in the Muslim community has highlighted how mental health has predominantly been understood through a cultural lens. These cultural constructions of mental health have largely influenced perceptions about mental health and have contributed to the continued stigmatisation of mental health conditions (MHC) in the Muslim community. There are several problematic perceptions about MHC. Firstly, and most notably, there is the perception that MHC are non-existent. Conversations on the topic are taboo, and the cultural norm is to endure any kind of hardship. Secondly, MHC are sometimes perceived to be an indicator of ‘madness’ and people who are treated for these conditions are often alienated, feared, and treated with disdain. An interesting experience for me was the feedback I received from many participants. They thought I was ‘quite brave’ to explore this topic in the Muslim community and regarded the study as important but were also quite cautious about participating openly. During the focus groups, participants opted to keep their cameras off and use pseudonyms.

My work as a clinical psychologist in the Muslim community gives me a different perspective so it was interesting to engage on this topic through a research lens for my PhD. It is apparent that while more Muslims are seeking formal mental healthcare, stigma is still very much alive and thriving in the broader community. And dare I say it; it is the cultural constructions associated with mental health that continue to feed the stigma. Why is this conversation important? South Africa is a diverse nation and if we are serious about decolonising our practices (in whichever discipline), we need to understand how South Africans make sense of their experiences and collaborate with them as experts on their own lives.