Toward an African genogram

Introduction:

Based on the Darielle Watts-Jones model of African American genogram, I attempt to design my African family of origin genogram (The Kathemos)having in mind differences as well as similarities between the two groups.
I agree with Darielle Watts-Jones that the standard genogram that assumes that family is strictly a biological entity is inadequate for families of African origins (Watts-Jones, 1997, p.375). Africans have a long history of defining “family” as kinship based on biological and functional ties. It is on this conceptualization that we will design our genogram.
We need to define the two types of kin relationships that exist in most African families that we will be using in this project: The functional kin relationships and functional role relationships.
As Watts-Jones describes, functional kinship refers to nonbiologically related family members who have been designated as kin while functional role kinship refers to biologically related family members who function within the family in roles that are different from those associated with their biological status (p.376). FR stands for functional role relationship and FK for functional kin relationship.
However including functional as well as biological relationships in the genogram clearly increases it complexity. In my case the structure of my family presents a challenge as to how to diagram it in a manageable fashion. There is need here to limit, for spatial reasons, which functional relationships are to be highlighted.


Genogram Construction:

My family genogram indicates that I am in very “typical African family system”:
It is a patriarchal system that is characterized by male dominance over women. This is shown by the fact that information about paternal sides is much known and shared while information about the maternal side of each generation seems to be of less importance.
This genogram also conveys that polygamy is very present in the system. All my grandfathers and mothers are in polygamous marital commitments.
It is a “gregarious” culture where the majority of members are farmers with few fishermen. In my great-grandfather’s generation, there were nine farmers. In my grandfather’s generation six people kept the farming activity as their main jobs. In my generation as well as my father’s, the farming activity decreased but four people still had it as a main job.
In terms of human relationships, I am surrounded with a great web of relationships: I am in functional role relationships with my step mother (Safi), my aunt Atanasia, who also play the role of my mother and with (Faila, a cousin) who plays the role of a big sister. All my step-brothers and step-sisters are in functional role relationships with me because we grew up together treating each other as brothers and sisters. We all take responsibilities accordingly.
In addition I have functional kin relationships with all the people living in my family. That is the case of Bilos, Ange, Media, Maria and Kashindi who came from different villages to live in my family in order to further their education in my home town.
One of the major characteristics of my family is migration. In each generation there are big moves from one country to another or just rural exodus. In my grandfather generation, two people migrated: my grandfather Kathemo left the Congo during the war and went to neighboring Burundi. My grandfather’s older brother, Mboko lived in many different countries for long periods. In my father’s generation, two uncles and my father migrated from the Congo to Rwanda and Burundi and vice versa. In my mother’s generation, my mother and my aunt Atanazia also migrated from Rwanda to the Congo.

The genogram also conveys that there are many mysterious (sudden, unknown cause or premature) deaths in the system. In all three generations there are about seven people who died in ways that no one seems to know the exact cause.
It also portrayed that my mother miscarried a lot: Out of five births, she had five miscarriages, two before I was born and other two after I was born.
The genogram shows that there is a marital separation between my father and mother and a distant relationship with my father.


Genogram Analysis:

The patriarchy that characterizes the system must have influenced me in the way I see and treat women today: The fact that I grew up in a system that views men as more important or even superior to women will definitely color the way I relate to females.
• In that system I learnt early in life that I belonged to my father’s tribe and I needed to learn everything about his culture. On the other hand I missed every important aspect of my mother’ side. We, in that system need to recover also the legacy from our mother’s cultures. This will make us “more whole” in terms of identity.
• Efforts should be made to consider women as equal partners. My married brothers have troubles getting along with women who are not from the same system of reference.

This genogram illustrates the reality of multiple-parenting in the system. Speaking about multiple-parenting, Hill-Collins identifies “othermothers” as women who assist blood-mothers by sharing mothering responsibilities, and that is central to the institution of black motherhood. Prominent among these “othermothers” are extended biological kin (Hill-Collins, 1991). In my case, all the other wives of my father or grand father or uncles and my maternal aunts are considered to be “othermothers” whether we live together or not.
Including functional kinship relationships in this genogram allows the richness of the parenting that most of us received to be portrayed as well as the sibling support. It really attests to the fact that it takes the whole village to raise a child, as an African proverb says.
At the same time it raises concerns of bringing up too many children together. How does one foster healthy individuation in such a system? In fact in such families, individuation may not even be encouraged because the main parent’s concern is often how to keep everyone together in a uniform way. In my case my parents did a good job in satisfying every one’s apparent needs by not showing partiality. But there was no much room for individual voices and needs. I therefore developed my personality style: a peace maker. I felt it was important to be like every one, to avoid open conflicts and to create harmony and peace in the environment.
The shadow side of this style is lack of “personal voice”. And I have been working on that since the time I have become aware of it. This becomes a community challenge in that system. The question is therefore “how to maintain the need for community life but at the same time to develop a healthy sense of individuality”.? According to Philip Guerin, differentiation is a process of partially freeing oneself from the emotional chaos of one’s family. Getting free takes analyzing one’s own role as an active participant in relationships systems, instead of blaming problems on everyone but oneself (Guerin, 1987).
Given the great level of external interferences in the family (too many outsiders living in the family and many “othermothers” are in the functional role relationships with us), how are boundaries maintained in this system? Definitely with our parents’ desire to accommodate everyone in the family, there seems to be weak boundaries in the system. As a consequence, the danger of people losing themselves in relationships is real. For some reasons, all my stepbrothers and stepsisters seem to have more problems in dealing with detachment with family than we do.
This leads us to Bowen’s thinking on separation and individuation. While paying special attention to the resolution of oedipal attachments and leaving home, in Bowen’s model, we become ourselves by learning to stand alone. And success is measured by differentiation (Nichols & Schwartz, p. 381).

The genogram portrays how my mother stands alone: she is the only foreigner in the family, and also the only business woman in the system. She probably survived because of her great level of individuation. She was able to be herself in a larger communitarian system. I here get a clue why my biological brothers and sisters and I seem to be highly achieving (for we are all well educated and have decent jobs and positions in our lives) than my step brothers and sisters. We must have picked up the sense of individuation from my mother. In fact we left home as we completed high school and pursued our dreams. Instead some of my stepbrothers and sisters never left home.
Bowen also agrees with the notion that children develop personality characteristics based on their position in the family…though many variables are involved that prediction is complex, but knowledge of general characteristics plus specific knowledge of a particular family is helpful in predicting what part of child will play in the family emotional process (Nichols& Schwartz, p. 120).
Even if I am the fourth of my mother’s children, I consider myself to be the tenth child out of eleven. Given the fact that we always lived together with my stepbrothers and sisters and we were taught to behave as true brothers and sisters, I can’t see myself differently. In fact even my name Mukucha means the tenth (the one who completes, bring to completion ….ten children being a complete set of family).
But in connection to Byamungu, my youngest brother, I played a role of an older brother, because most of my brothers and sisters left home in their adolescence, living me alone with Bymungu. Since there was also an age gap between us (ten years difference), I therefore took up the role of eldest brother in many regards as I saw myself responsible for Byamungu’s welfare.
Some of the sibling position’s characteristics I identify with are: Support family over rules and values. Official parental representative to the world. I experience the sense of never being good enough.
Concerning interpersonal responsibility: I am achievement oriented, live up to performance demands of others and difficulty being self validating for I can’t judge when achievements are sufficient.
Perceptual Orientation: I experience difficulty being valued independently of achievements
Response to pattern: Look at pieces to form a whole…can be overwhelmed by details.
But given the fact that I had been youngest child for ten years before Byamungu was born, I also share some characteristics of last child in me. These include: support homeostasis of family, pick up unwanted tasks (which continues today as I am in charge of the kitchen in my community), caretaking, assume position that keep me in touch with everything, independent of others, tendency to take a lot of responsibility and easily overwhelmed because taking too much., expressions of affect can be explosive in quality.
Due to some external factors such as migration, influences of marriages with foreigners, also modernity (education opportunity, life in a big city…) my generation has changed patterns so that none of us has adopted polygamy, most are well educated and occupations have changed: The family shift is as follows:
• Geographical moves: Bita immigrates to Italy, Mboko to Canada, Byamungu to Guinea, Salima to Burundi….
• Marriage with strangers: John, Mwibe, Raymond?
• Job choice: Military service: Mboko, Ditho, Mwibe, Dito junior.

Dealing with emotions, loss and death:
This model of genogram expands the context for certain clinical questions/themes to be explored. Such as how the feelings of loss and grief were handled with so many significant people involved in one’s life. How does this family handle emotions?
A system that does not encourage much individuality has hard time to allow emotion expressions in its members. There seems to be a tacit rule here about not expressing one’s feelings, though foreigners can always be excused if they don’t abide by the rules. This was the case of my mother who was free to express her emotions in her own way. How did the rest of the family deal with emotions? Since my father had a marital separation with my mother, I felt it as terrible injustice. I emotionally cut off from my father.

Satir reminds us that emotion suppression is the root cause of family problems. She goes on saying that many parents have the tendency to confuse the instrumental and expressive function of emotions. They try to regulate their children’s action by controlling their feelings and as a result, children learn to suppress their emotional experience to avoid making waves. (Nichols & Schwartz, p.200). This is what partly happened in my family system. We were not allowed to talk about our pain as father and mother separated… Healing will happen here when people are allowed to freely express their feelings.
It is also striking to see so many mysterious deaths in the system: in all generations there are people who die prematurely or from unknown or unclear causes. What is our understanding of this reality? Part of it is lack of good medical care but also some deaths were attributed the “presence of witchcrafts” in the system. Though we did not portray witchcraft presence in the genogram, we know that some people have been accused of being part of “witchcraft circles”.
My mother also miscarried a lot: Out of five births she had five miscarriages, two before I was born and other two after I was born.
How did we cope? Murray Bowen describes an “emotional shock wave” that moves through a family system following a death. The more enmeshed, emotionally unfree, and uncommunicative the system, the greater and longer the aftershock. Death presents not only the loss of the person but also the role they play in the system. (Bowen, 90).
As I look back at the history of the family, I realize that I am not much scared of death. This is not only because of the omnipresence of death in the family (which is a clear signal that death is integral part of our human cycle) but also because of the way my family has celebrated death. Two important aspects stand out in the way we celebrate death: occasion for family reunion and funerals/mourning weeks.
Family reunion: Even if my family is scattered all over central Africa, death has always been an opportunity for family reunion. Most members feel the obligation to stop everything and spend some time around the dying person and to support the grieving family from sickness to death and after death period. This provides the support we all need in dealing with losses.

Funeral celebrations have also provided space to ritualize the losses and to open to hope. As P.Giblin and A. Hug say, “…the funeral ritual provides a context for remembering, storytelling, and creating cherishable moments, an opportunity to validate the life of the deceased…. Funerals (also) provide a bridge between remembering and hoping, connecting the old to the new; they provide a threshold from which survivors can look forward and backward” ( A. Giblin and A. Hug, p.16).

Society, Ethnicity and Family:
My father is a Congolese citizen while my mother is from Rwanda. I am automatically Congolese by patriarchal system that exists in Africa. My personal and family identity has been deeply shaped by that characteristic. From colonial times, Belgians (who colonized both Congo and Rwanda) made wrong analysis about these two people and countries. For their own economic interest, they came to favor Congolese people to Rwandans.
A bit of history would be useful here to help us understand the context of my racial/cultural identity development. Since the Congo is a very wealthy country in terms of natural resources (copper, gold, cobalt, diamond, coltan (newly discovered), uranium…), and given its size (about sixty times bigger than Rwanda), the Belgians needing cheap labor, brought Rwandans to Congo to work for them and for Congolese people. In addition they developed and invested more in the Congo than in Rwanda. They also promoted more education in the Congo. This with many other similar strategies, created a Congolese complex of superiority towards Rwandans.
Being born from a Congolese father and a Rwandan mother, I inherited this double complex in my racial/cultural identity formation. In other words I have struggled with the fact that part of me “felt superiority complex” but another part felt the opposite. Even if this might seem contradictory, in reality that is who I have been until when I found a place of integration…and even then I believe I need an ongoing integration. The work is not completely done yet.


Theological Reflection (images of God):

Crucial facts: In general the church in my area was open and inclusive. All tribes and races were equally represented. In fact more Rwandans experienced the church as a place of refuge and promotion because it was one of the places where their skills and credentials were recognized and valued. In fact many become priests and pastors.
I subsequently learnt the theology that geared those missionaries who were leading our churches: It can be summed up in the following words: “Make this world a single family, for in Jesus there is nor more Greeks, or Romans or slaves or free people. We are all one in Jesus”. (1 Cor 12:12).
I also picked up my “mother’s theology”. Using modern theological language I would call it the “preferential option for the poor”. Being a member of a despised minority group, she came to understand that God must have not only room for the minority groups in his heart but also some special love for them since they have endured too much on earth.
I have therefore naturally developed a theology of inclusiveness. Since I have always felt uncomfortable with part of me (my mother’ side) for I must have picked up my mother’s sense of marginalization with her sense of non-belonging. However I always felt that there must be a place where everyone “would be at home”. Early in life I developed (in my mind at least) that space of comfort where there is neither majority nor minority groups. That is a place where one can “rest” some time without worrying about those discriminatory questions. I later understood that that place must be God’s heart. According to my understanding, the church is called to be “the heart of God on earth”. That is the theology that led me throughout the struggle of discovering my cultural identity.


Conclusion

Blessed be the Lord, the God of the Congo….He has come to his people and set them free….
He promised to show mercy to our fathers… And to remember his holy covenant

This was the oath he swore to our father Isimaeta: to set us free…
.free to worship him without fear …..All the days of our life

And you, my child Mukucha …you will go before the Lord to prepare the way,
To give his people knowledge of salvation…by the forgiveness of their sins..

In the tender compassion of our God, the dawn from on high shall break upon us
To shine on those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death,
And to guide our feet into the way of peace.
(Canticle of Zachariah , Lk 1, 68-79).

What are some future perspectives? I see my self working towards fostering inclusiveness in the world. I feel God is calling me to promote peaceful cohabitation among people of different races, cultures and colors. That ideal is embodied in my identity….and that is my calling: to make this world a single family where everyone feels welcomed, accepted and valued. But this will be done if differences are accepted. Differences are to be seen as richness. They echo God’s face on earth.
My family needs to work on forgiveness and reconciliation. In our up-bringing we did not have great models of forgiveness. I don’t have any vivid memory of it. But now as Christians we have Jesus as our model. Lord, how many times must forgive my brother (sister) if he wrongs me? I tell you seven times seventy seven…? Or again “I cancelled all that debt of yours, where you not bound to have pity? (Mt 18).
Or more powerfully, Jesus forgives his killers, saying: “Lord, forgive them for they don’t know what they are doing…” (Lk 23, 34).
In the family we never forgave our father for the marital separation with our mother. Most of us still have some level of hatred toward my father. We took it as injustice and violence to family cohesion. Now that we have more understanding of it, for our own human and spiritual well being we need to move toward the direction of forgiveness and reconciliation because there is no future without forgiveness.


Bibliography


1. Giblin P. & Hug A. The Psychology of Funeral Rituals (pp. 11-19)

2. Guerin, P. G., Fay, L.F., Burden, S., and Kauto, J.1987. The evaluation and treatment of marital conflict: A four stage approach. New York: Basic Books.

3. Hill-Collins, P. (1991). The meaning of motherhood in black culture and black mother-daughter relationships (pp.42-60) in P. Bell-Scott, B. Guy-Sheftall, J Royster, J. Sims-Wood, M. Decosta –Wills, & L. Fultz (eds.), Double stitch. New York: HarperCollins.

4. Nichols P. M., & Schwartz C., (2006). Family Therapy, Concepts and Methods. Allyn & Bacon.

5. Watts-Jones, D. (1997). Toward an African American Genogram in Family Process, Vol.36. (pp 375-383).