Ocean Pillars

NICHOLLE KOBI A French illustrator’s images of black women are controversial in Paris, but adored on Instagram A meet-and-greet with illustrator Nicholle Kobi is titled A Parisian Instant, yet at home the French illustrator is overlooked. This, even as her work spreads from Instagram to communities of black women around the world, this week in Johannesburg. Kobi’s work has become something of a cultural phenomenon among women in the African diaspora. The popularity of her illustrations of black women in all their variations is a testament to the power of representation in our visually-driven online culture. NICHOLLE KOBI In much the same way many of her fans came to discover her work, Kobi too used to follow illustrators and artists online. She was always frustrated by the lack of diversity, even resorting to the comments section to question why there were so few images of black women. When there were illustrations of black women, Kobi found ...

Thousands of years ago, people were performing a form of surgery called "trepanation" that involves boring holes through a person's skull For a large part of human prehistory, people around the world practised trepanation: a crude surgical procedure that involves forming a hole in the skull of a living person by either drilling, cutting or scraping away layers of bone with a sharp implement. To date, thousands of skulls bearing signs of trepanation have been unearthed at archaeological sites across the world. But despite its apparent importance, scientists are still not completely agreed on why our ancestors performed trepanation. Anthropological accounts of 20th-Century trepanations in Africa and Polynesia suggest that, in these cases at least, trepanation was performed to treat pain – for instance, the pain caused by skull trauma or neurological disease. Trepanation may also have had a similar purpose in p...

Cross River: Ayade begins construction of poultry/livestock farm In  a bid to complement the multi-billion naira frozen chicken processing factory, Calachika, Cross River State Governor, Ben Ayade, has commenced construction of a poultry and livestock farm. When completed, the factory is projected to process about 6,000 frozen chicken per hour. Located on the Calabar/Odukpani Road in Odukpani Local Government Area, the poultry and livestock farm is conceived to be the biggest of its kind in the South South with the production capacity of 22,000 birds per hour. It is expected to rollout its first birds by the end of the second quarter of 2019. Briefing newsmen at the site during an unscheduled visit recently, Ayade, who disclosed details of the project, said: “We have six broiler houses, layers and of course, the hatchery. So, we would be producing 22,000 birds per broiler house with massive production of eggs. My ambition is to commission it soon. “Alr...

CONCEPT OF COMMUNICATION Communication  involves transmission of verbal and non-verbal messages. It consists of a sender, a receiver and channel of communication. In the process of transmitting messages, the clarity of the message may be interfered or distorted by what is often referred to as barriers. Health communication seeks to increase knowledge gain. This is the minimum expectation and acceptable requirement to demonstrate that learning has taken place following an intervention using communication. Once knowledge gain is established, it is assumed that the individual will use the knowledge when the need arises or at an opportune time. There is evidence in several school-based health interventions demonstrating that young people who got exposed to specific information, e.g. against smoking or engaging in harmful practice, tended to posses decision or refusal skills. Communication requires full understanding of behaviors associated with the sender and receiver and the po...