Helping others through alternative healing
Even though her days are occupied by her work as a Deputy Direct Infrastructure Monitoring and Evaluations at the Department of Health and a reflexologist, Sibongile Sibo Yingwane still manages to juggle being a single mom flawlessly.
POLOKWANE –Â The 40-year-old originally hails from Monakato in Rustenburg and now resides in Polokwane.
Healing with regard to reflexology, she explained, has been her passion from a young age, following in her father, Dr Maseko BPV Yingwane, a homeopathic doctor’s footsteps.
“Alternative healing was the norm in my household and I enjoyed the treatments my father did whenever he was home as well as watching him in his surgery back during school holidays,” she said.
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“Being a single working mother is tough but absolutely rewarding and my son, Itumeleng, is all I live for,” she said.
Growing up, Sibo’s mother died in an accident while she was on her way to visit Sibo’s father who had been arrested during the Apartheid era.
With her father in jail and her mother dead, Sibo was left to fend for herself and spent most of her teen years moving from school to school.
She studied a B.Com marketing and business management degree through Oxford Brookes University and obtained a diploma in the same field from Damelin.
“After my day job I can only see one client a day as a reflexologist during the week. Everything consumes energy and other energies can be draining, so to safeguard myself, I do not exceed the one hour after work I allocate for clients, to allow myself to detox after the session and regroup for the next day,” she said.
Over the weekend Sibo can manage about five sessions, with breaks in between to clear the energies and to ground herself for the next session.
For her day job, Sibo assists in the selection and refinement of monitoring and evaluation (M&E) indicators relevant to the national monitoring and evaluation framework, assessing programmes and projects, offering recommendations for improvement of implementation mechanisms and researching best practices in M&E, including operational structures and procedures.
But reflexology remains Sibo’s passion as she loves helping people, especially sharing information like health tips with them.
“I’m a people person and absolutely enjoy learning about people,” she added. Her advice when it comes to choosing a career is to love what you do.
“I do reflexology because I have a passion for feet. I love it and do not do it for the monetary reward but because it is rewarding and fulfilling and one of my passions.”
