Community Project Masiphumelele 2008/09

In 2008 we started to offer Family Constellations Workshops at the Pink House in Masiphumelele. Masiphimelele means “we will succeed”. The Workshops were held once a month from 9am to 12.30pm and belonged to the Wellness morning program initiated and organized by the Non Profit Organisation, Work for Love. At their wellness mornings Work for love creates an opportunity for residents of Masiphumelele to come and receive alternative and complementary treatments on a weekly basis. Volunteering Therapist offer their services which include Shiatsu, reflexology, traditional healing – homoeopathy and herbal treatment, tarot readings, kinesiology and massage. Massage training, talks on use of herbs, nutritional advice and pregnancy support.

When we got in contact with Nicola Nangle, who is the chairperson of the organisation, it became clear that there was a gap for a therapeutic module which can offer an alternative way of counselling to the community. Nicola offered to arrange a space in the Pink House which was big enough to hold a group of min 10 people. From here we started to offer Family Constellations Work once a month. We were all very excited and when it came to the first group meeting with the help of friends who are living in Masiphumelele we had a nice group of about 15 people together. None of them have heard about this work before but as most of them knew each other the atmosphere was quite relaxed and people did encourage each other. We started off with some background information about Family constellations Work, Bert Hellinger and his years in South Africa and we explained how people can explore the work and how they can benefit from it. Very soon it became clear that the African people have a great understanding of the fact that we all belong to a family system and  that certain orders  are present in that system. The important role our Ancestors play and their strong influence on the family system was very well understood, as this is knowledge that gets passed on in the African culture.

What was of great surprise for us in all the constellations we had done on this day, were the topics and issues the constellators brought forward. Knowing most of their backgrounds, (i.e. unemployment, single mothers , often separated from their children, HIV infected family members, poverty, abuse and the not so long ago past of Apartheid), the issues that were presented, revolved mostly around basic human core issues. This showed us that despite different cultures, languages and different levels of education, the core issues for all of us is the topic of belonging, wanting to be loved and to give love. This is what we all have in common and what creates for all of us a big disturbance in life. We worked with topics like: my aunt’s daughter who is living in my mothers house is very nasty towards my mother and this is very painful for me, my sister who is the first born of my mother but with a different father, is getting more attention then I, I have a different father then my siblings and they always teasing me all the time and I feel separated…..and so on.

During the different processes we became aware of some cultural differences which we needed to take into account during the constellation session. One example of these differences is:
“We set up the client, a female, her mother, her siblings, her stepfather and her biological father. Using the term, ‘step father’ during the process the representative could not relate to that and we found out that there is no such a word as stepfather in the African culture. There is only the word ‘dada’ which means father”.

Our biggest challenge in working in this community was the continuity and marketing of the work to get enough people every month to do sufficient good work. Even though the workshops were free, during the year numbers varied from 15 to 2 people. We also battled with the concept of doing the work for free as it did not give any value to the work and it felt that it was not appreciated enough for people to come back.

At the end of the year we approached one of the church leaders and one of the community leaders to try work at another level in the community. Both were very interested but at the time in South Africa we were heading into another election and none wanted to commit to any new projects. So everything was put on hold.

As we move well into 2010, we are planning some new strategies and ways forward to re-enter the community of Masiphumelele with Family Constellations work on many levels. We will be once again working with “Work for Love”, we will be engaging with the community leaders, church leaders and schools. Our vision for this projct is to get the full community envolved and to do work on every level to create a simultaneous change throughout the community system.