Kel Ewey Tuareg, Tree Bark, and Women Healers

Kel Ewey Tuareg, Tree Bark, and Women

Herb Here,

Traveling north through the wire to Mt. Bagazan in the Air Region of Niger. Here, I encountered the Kel Ewey sub-tribe of the Tuareg tribe and learned of the medicinal practices among the Kel Ewey female herbalists.

        

    The Tuareg tribe are apart of the Berber people, a longstanding ethnic group in North Africa. The Berber people, in some instances, have been subject to many cultural influences from pre-dynasty Egypt to French and English colonists so today one can see an intermingling of polytheist, Christian, Jewish, and Islamic religious practices among the people, although the primary religion is Islam. While here, I learned that the medicine rituals among the Kel Ewey involves cooperation between polytheist and Islamic practices. This is especially the case for female herbalists, tinesmeglen.

            

The Tinesmeglen work primarily with fertility; they use herbal ingredients from Mt. Bagazan’s tree bark and earthly remedies that promote female attractiveness. Although Kel Ewey society is primarily Muslim, female herbalists are allowed to practice medicine because “‘only women know the trees’ (Rasmussen 148).” This illustrates a symbolic connection between women and the trees (their environment) that pre-dates Islamic influence there. Kel Ewey women, and sometimes men, will visit the tinesmeglen to diagnose why no children have resulted in the marriage and stomach pains; in a Western society, seeing one of the female herbalists would be the equivalent of a woman seeing her gynecologist. Tinesmeglen diagnose the fertility problem through divination on the stomach, another symbol of their realm of femininity. If the problem becomes a problem of the head, then the tinesmeglen refer their patient to a marabout, an Islamic medical scholar. The cooperation between the tinesmeglen and the marabout allows for women to continue practicing their pre-Islam medicine tradition without rebuke from the society. In a way, the religious changing of the medicine tradition is what allowed the tradition to thrive for as long as it has.

            Tinesmeglen intermix Islamic religion in a lot of their practices. When they are gathering herbs for their remedies, traditional herbalists will give the Islamic benediction “Bissmillallah” for every herb they gather, recognizing that the herb possesses more than medicinal value, it possesses spiritual value. Likewise, tinesmeglen give the benediction before diagnosing the problem because sickness in the culture is attributed by affliction from a malign spirit in the stomach.

            Although tinesmeglen tradition has changed due to religious influence, it still revolves around a matrilineal passing of knowledge from family members. In Kel Ewey society, only older women are respected herbalists. This is due to rigorous apprenticeship an herbalist must undergo under a mother or aunt that is an experienced practitioner. The mother or aunt received her knowledge from her mother or aunt, and this matrilineal cycle continues like this. The Kel Ewey model Traditional Environmental Knowledge (TEK) through the tinesmeglen tradition because the difficult training is created from environmental knowledge on herbs that has been inherited from generation to generation. The tinesmeglen also adhere to a strict ritual. If this ritual is not followed then the entire cure is useless. The tinesmeglen represent a system that has incorporated new religious ideas as well as adhered to a longstanding relationship with their environment.

Herb on,

Herb (Danielle Radic)

Rasmussen, S. (1998). Only women know trees:medicine women and the role of         healing in tuareg culture.Journal of Anthropological Research, 54(2),       Retrieved from http://http://www.jstor.org/stable/3631728?seq=9