Nthabiseng Phalatse, an occupational therapy lecturer at UP, used to write on a ‘play-play’ blackboard as a child, teaching imaginary learners. Today she is a fully-fledged lecturer at UP.

Once Nthabiseng Phalatse hitched onto the occupational therapy bandwagon, she found her niche and hasn’t looked back. Now a lecturer in the discipline in the Faculty of Health Sciences at the University of Pretoria (UP), she is busy with the proposal for her PhD, and making her mark by being active in organisations both inside and outside the institution.

Yet her interest in occupational therapy, commonly known by its abbreviation OT, happened almost by chance.

After matriculating from Letsatsing Science Secondary School in Mafikeng in the North West, she was accepted into actuarial science at the University of the Witwatersrand. She never went. She didn’t have a bursary, wasn’t sure about how to go about getting one and ended up staying home for a year while she pondered her next move. Call it a gap year.

Apart from a period where she worked on the national census, she spent much of her time going with a relative and her sick child, who has subsequently passed away, for regular visits to Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital where his treatment included OT.

“I started thinking, ‘I love things health-related,’” she says, and that passion, combined with an interest in working with children, has influenced her entire career.

Off she went to Sefako Makgatho Health Sciences University in Ga-Rankuwa to study OT, followed by community service at Jubilee District Hospital in Hammanskraal. There she met one of her mentors, Jessie Nakedi, who headed Jubilee’s OT department.

“Jessie has a special place in my heart,” says Phalatse. “I was far from home and more than just being the head of department, she had a nurturing side, and became a mother figure to me as well. I guess if you are humble, and if you are respectful, and if you are diligent; if you do the things you're supposed to do, you are recognised for that. To some extent I did well, and she recognised that, and she also gave me good feedback. And when I wanted to apply for my master’s at UP during that community service year, she said, ‘You can go for it.’ And she helped me in those two years of studying with how to manage my time at work. She was very supportive.”

Much to her husband’s amazement, Phalatse was so keen to enter academia that she gave up her subsequent full-time job at the Dominican School for the Deaf in Hammanskraal to take up a temporary lecturing post at UP.

“I said to him, ‘If I don't get this exposure now, I’ll never know if this is what I really want.”

A year later, she clinched the job in a full-time capacity, and has been in her element ever since.

“I love being at UP. Part of it is the status that comes with working at this university that is rated among the best in the world. I did my homework before I joined and that's how I decided on UP. The systems at UP are better and smarter,” says the 31-year-old, recalling when she had to submit assignments written on paper, despite having graduated relatively recently in 2015. “And working with Human Resources – I can get information so quickly. The staff members are also very welcoming.”

Her colleagues have been instrumental in getting her involved on seminal OT committees. Dr Helga Lister took her to a meeting of the Africa Interprofessional Education Network, of which she is on the board, and now Phalatse is also on its board, where she serves on its capacity-building working group.

And when Prof Daleen Casteleijn, Chairperson of the Vona and Marié du Toit Foundation, spoke last year about its model of creative ability and UP being its custodian, Phalatse expressed an interest, and ended up as its secretary, responsible for activities such as the administration of its undergraduate research prize.

She is also on the Marketing, and Occupational Health and Safety committees of the faculty’s School of Health Care Sciences.

“I'm always up for a challenge,” Phalatse says with a laugh. “I love marketing. If I have to stand in front of people and tell them what OT is, I'll be there.”

Yet she shies away from promoting herself as a brand and exposing her every whim publicly.

OT has a public image of being the rehabilitation profession for those with physical injuries, but its net extends to helping those with mental and social disabilities to do everyday activities. Phalatse’s interest is in helping children.

“Whether it’s burns, or injuries, or children who struggle at school because they have attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder or are on the autism spectrum, I want to help these kiddies function better in the world,” she says.

Still busy with her PhD proposal, under supervisors Dr Karin van Niekerk, a senior OT lecturer, and Prof Jeannie van der Linde, Head of the Department of Speech-Language Pathology and Audiology, Phalatse is planning to do an early childhood development activity-resource guide for caregivers of children aged three to five years in a low-resource community.

A natural teacher, she grew up with a small blackboard at home.

“I remember I used to get scolded for that, because I would write everywhere on the walls with my chalk, teaching my non-existent learners,” she recalls.

Although she believes Women’s Month is important to recognise how special women are, she is not particularly aware of being a woman in her chosen discipline. In fact, OT is women-centric, and they reign supreme, at least in the academic setting. In UP’s department, for example, only one staff member is male. In other settings such as hospitals and mines, there are many male OTs, Phalatse says.

“As a woman, I feel very special – as a wife, as a daughter, as a friend and as a parent who has brought somebody into the world,” says Phalatse, the mother of a 10-month-old boy.

Yet even if there were obstacles in her profession to get ahead, she would be undaunted.

“If you feel there's a stumbling block, whether it's male-dominated or not, I always say, ‘If there are things I need to improve to be better or the best, let me work on myself.’ So if you want it, work on yourself and go for it.”