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Abstract
This article looks at modernization in Ovamboland, Namibia, through the eyes of Selma Rainio, a Finnish mission doctor who worked there between 1908 and 1939.Her extensive family correspondence is used to show how she accounted for the signs and symptoms of modernization, especially during her second African commission (1922–1933), and how her observations were informed by the experiences of her formative years in Finland. Rainio’s attitude towards modernization can be described as selective. She grudgingly resigned herself to the colonial aspirations of the great powers and the concomitant surveillance and bureaucratization. She was fearful of and critical towards many aspects of economic modernization, for example the replacement of agricultural with wage labour, labour migration, and the prospect of labour unrest. In contrast, her attitude towards most technical advances was practical and open-minded, and she was enthusiastic about medical advances. How well she succeeded in incorporating the latter into her hospital practice is another matter. All in all, the issue of modernization occupied a very central place in her long missionary vocation: as she saw it, missionaries cushioned the indigenous people against the dangers and ill effects of modernization.
Keywords:
Notes
1 Rainio, Suuren parantajan, 5–6.
2 In geographical terms, Ovamboland coincides with the so called Cuvelai Floodplain and lies in the northern part of present-day Namibia and the southern part of Angola. In speaking about Ovamboland, I refer, unless otherwise indicated, to the Namibian part of the area. This is where the Lutheran Finnish African Mission worked from the 1870s onwards.
3 Several biographical accounts have been written about Rainio, although there is, as yet, no scholarly biography. Her death was followed by a spate of obituaries and biographical writings by people who had known her or been involved with the Finnish African Mission. Inkeri Taube, a niece, published a book on Selma Rainio in 1947 (Taube, Kuku). It is based on Rainio’s letters, bowdlerized and amalgamated into a seemingly continuous narrative. Taube was a teacher, and, although the book was not explicitly directed at a young audience, it reads as if it were. Selma Rainio’s sister Lilli Rainio wrote an unpublished biographical account that covers her sister’s childhood, youth and university years. It is held in the Selma Rainio Collection (SRC) of the Archive of the Finnish Mission Society (AFMS) in the Finnish National Archives (FNA), Helsinki. I will refer to this manuscript as ‘Biographical account’. Selma Rainio herself wrote an autobiographical account, of which there is a Swedish manuscript in the same collection. Someone has written at the top of the manuscript: ‘Dr. Rainios egenhändiga berättelse om sitt liv’ [Story of Dr. Rainio’s life by her own hand], and I will therefore refer to it as ‘Egenhändiga’. There are some unpublished MA theses that deal with her work as missionary medic (Halmetoja, ‘Lähetyslääkäri’; Ojala, ‘Selma Rainio’). Published literature includes an entry in the Finnish National Biography by Kirsti Kena (‘Selma Rainio’) and an article that discusses the efforts of three medical women, including Rainio, to harmonize their Christian beliefs and ideals with their professional ambitions (Hakosalo, ‘Our Life Work’). In addition, Rainio’s extensive correspondence has been made use of in various other studies on mission and colonial history (Kena, Eevat; Miettinen, On the Way).
4 The biographical approach has been popular in mission history, starting with those Victorian tales of heroic missionaries that were used to raise money for the missions (see Rowbotham, ‘“Soldiers of Christ”‘, on this genre). During the last 20 years or so, individual-centred perspectives have complemented and challenged the organisation-centred view also within professional history of the missions. For methodological reflections on the use of the biographical method in mission history, see e.g. Jalagin, ‘Vieraalla maalla’.
5 The Weberian definition implies an essential contradiction between modernisation and religion. The relationship between missions and modernism is discussed in e.g. Dunch, ‘Beyond Cultural Imperialism’ and Wall, ‘Beyond the Imperial Narrative’, 95.
6 Selma Rainio (SR from here on) to Amy Taube 18 July 1926. SRC (4). AFMS. FNA.
7 McKittrick, To Dwell Secure, 54.
8 SR to Lilli Rainio (LR from here on), 18 January 1913 [3]. SR to LR, 7 July 1931 [4].
9 SR to LR, 17 January 1909; SR to her sisters, 24 January 1909; SR to her sisters, 25 February 1909. SRC (2). AFMS. FNA. Proceedings of the missionaries’ council held at the hospital of the Finnish African Mission on 1 December 1911. The inspection reports of the African mission fields. AFMS (195). FNA.
10 On Rainio’s many positions of responsibility within the mission, see Halmetoja, Lähetyslääkäri, 21; Kena, Eevat, 190–1.
11 The letters are held in two collections, the Selma Rainio Collection at the AFMS, at the FNA, and the Lilius Family Correspondence (LFC) at the Archive of the Finnish Literature Society (AFLS). In referring to letters from the former collection, I will indicate only the case in which they are stored in square brackets. In referring to letters in the latter collection, I will make a full archival reference.
12 Rainio’s correspondence is a very rich source both qualitatively and quantitatively. It extends from 1882, when she was nine, until the end of 1938, when she only had a few months to live. Many potentially interesting themes, themes that have no direct bearing to the issue of modernisation, will have to be left untouched in this article. These include her views on gender and on the Ovambo people; her relationship with the Ovambo, with other missionaries and with the mission leadership; her contribution to knowledge production and the details of her medical work. Parts of Rainio’s letters have been used as source material by mission historians. They have used almost exclusively her African letters. In contrast, the letters she wrote before leaving for Africa have been little used in historical scholarship.
13 See Jalagin, ‘Kirkkohistorian’ on using missionaries’ letters as sources.
14 Lilli Lilius (= LL/LR) was 12 years Selma’s senior, an unmarried, cultured (although not formally educated) woman with a wealth of literary and social interests. The other three sisters still alive at this point were Agnes Kekoni (1852–1934), Amy Taube (1863–1938) and Bertha Pakarainen (born 1870). Lilli and Selma both changed their surname from the Swedish (actually Latin) ‘Lilius’ to the Finnish ‘Rainio’ in 1906.
15 E.g. SR to LR, 14 February 1909, 16 September 1909, 26 September 1909, 27 September 1909, 26 February 1910 and 28 February 1910 [2]. SR to LR, 5 January 1911, 18 January 1913, 6 September 1916, 27 November 1916 [3]. SR to Amy Taube, 10 February 1918 [3].
16 SR to LR, 22 August 1911 [3].
17 Compton Brouwer, Modern, 3.
18 McKittrick, To Dwell Secure, 2, 4, 17, 272.
19 Junnila, Saarijärven, 68.
20 Autio, ‘Lilius. Suku’.
21 The poet and professor Martti Haavio, who had no such qualms, wrote at length about the academic and social accomplishments of the Lilius family in his memoirs, managing to trace this family line back to some of the most powerful noble families of early modern Finland. Haavio, Nuoruusvuodet, 30–5.
22 ‘Egenhändiga’, 1; ‘Biographical account’, 1. SRC (8). AFMS FNA. See also Akiander, Herdaminnen, 255.
23 See Ollila, Jalo velvollisuus, 21–4, on middle-class girls and household work in late 19th-century Finland.
24 About the communality of the middle-class way of life in late 19th-century Finland, see Ollila, Jalo velvollisuus, 111–15, and Sulkunen, Mandi Granfelt, 90. Mandi Granfelt (née Cantell), the woman whose childhood family Irma Sulkunen analyses in the latter book, was Selma Lilius’s cousin. There were many similarities in the ways of life of the Lilius and Cantell households.
25 SL to Bertha Lilius, 6 May 1894 [1]. SR to Bertha Pakarainen, 3 September 1899 in LFC (456). AFLS.
26 ‘Egenhändiga’, 1. SRC (8). AFMS. FNA.
27 Bertha Lilius to Agnes Lilius, 9 May 1888 [1].
28 Nääsilä, ‘Amanda’.
29 Jokipii, Keski-Suomen, 544, 562.
30 The only contemporary reference to this spiritual awakening that I have come across is in a letter from September 1893. SL to Amy Taube, 25 September 1893 [1]. A more conventional conversion story can be found in ‘Egenhändiga’, 2, and Rainio, ‘Biographical account’, 2, 4. SRC (8). AFMS. FNA.
31 SL to Amy Taube, 19 March 1904 [2]. SL to Anna Lilius, 15 October 1895 [1].
32 Medical studies consisted of three parts: preparatory, theoretical and clinical studies. They commonly took more than ten years. See Aalto, ‘Ilman kollegiaalisuutta’, 64, on the duration of medical studies in early 20th-century Finland.
33 The record card of Selma Rainio in the records of licensed Finnish doctors. The 5th Archive of the National Board of Health (Bcb:7). FNA.
34 SR to family 22 July 1908 [2].
35 SL to LL, 18 April 1905; SL to Agnes Kekoni, 28 May 1905 and 4 June 1905, 23 December 1905, 4 March 1906, 6 May 1906, 10 May 1906; SL to Amy Taube, 25 June 1905, 20 December 1905 and 25 February 1906; SL to Amanda Lilius, 4 June 1905, 11 September 1905 [2].
36 SR to Amy Taube or Agnes Kekoni, 1 November 1905; SR to Amy Taube, 6 November 1905 [2]. SR to Bertha Pakarainen, 5 August 1906; SR to LR, 11 August 1906. LFC (456). AFLS.
37 SR to Amanda Lilius 1 December 1906, 18 February 1907, 15 March 1907] [2]. SR to Agnes Kekoni 14 February 1907. LFC (455). AFLS.
38 SR to Amy Taube 20 December 1905; 15 April 1906, 29 May 1907; SL to LL 11 August 1906. LFC (456). AFLS.
39 On the history of the Christian student movement in Finland, see Franzén, Studentekumenik; Franzén, Ruth Rouse; Pietikäinen, Kristitty.
40 SR to Amy Taube 2 May 1901. LFC (456). AFLS. SR to Sylvi Soini, the secretary of the Women’s Christian Student’s Association 1 March 1926. The Archive of the Christian Student Association (263). FNA; Ojala, Selma Rainio, 18.
41 SL to her sister 30 July 1897 [1]. See also Haahti, ‘Kun pyhät’, 14–15. Hannes Heikinheimo, ‘The birth of the Christian Student Association’ (manuscript). Collection of Hannes Immanuel Heikinheimo (Heikeliana 15). Oulu Provincial Archives. Oulu.
42 SL to LL 12 November 1903, quoted in ‘Biographical account’, 66. SRC (8). AFMS.
43 ‘Egenhändiga’, 4. SRC (8). AFMS.
44 Porterfield, Healing, 142, 144; Kena, Eevat, 260; Etherington, Missions, 279. Compton Brower, Modern, 36.
45 Hannes Sjöblom to Hannes Heikel, 5 December 1902. Collection of Hannes Immanuel Heikinheimo (Heikeliana 15). Oulu Provincial Archives. Oulu. The Mission Director Jooseppi Mustakallio shared this opinion. See Kena, Eevat, 130.
46 SR to LR, 17 September 1908 [2].
47 McKittrick, To Dwell Secure, 163.
48 Notkola & Siiskonen, Fertility, 12–13.
49 SR to Bertha Pakarainen, 1 February 1923; SR to family, 26 October 1922 [4].
50 Helmi Heikinheimo to SR, 18 November 1922. LFC (446). AFLS.
51 Nord, ‘Healthcare and Warfare’, 423; Wallace, ‘Health, Power and Politics’, 5.
52 On the funding of the hospital, see Nyholm, ‘Suomalaisten’, 35; Ojala, ‘Selma Rainio’, 54.
53 SR to her family, 26 October 1922; SR to Bertha Pakarainen, 1 February 1923 [4]
54 SR to Bertha Pakarainen 1 February 1923 [4]. She held the title until 1926.
55 SR to Amy Taube, 14 June 1928, in LFC (456). SR to Bertha Pakarainen, 1 April 1928; SR to Amy Taube, 14 June 1928; SR to Bertha and Otto Pakarainen, 28 November 1928 [4].
56 SR to Berta Pakarainen, 17 June 1923 [4]. In fact, she had already produced information for the German colonial administration in exchange for medications and food for the hospital. SR to Amanda Lilius and LR, 11 October 1909 [2]. SR to Amanda Lilius, 15 September 1911; SR to Amy Taube, 29 October 1911 [3]. Peltola, Suomen, 163.
57 SR to Agnes Kekoni, 24 August 1930; SR to LR, 4 February 1925 [4]. The report on an inspection carried out in the African mission sites in 1937, part II. Appendices, page 10. Inspection reports of the African Mission. AFMS (198). SR to Ms Wäisänen, 2 August 1927. The Archive of the Christian Student Association (263). FNA.
58 Kari Kyrönseppä, and others following him, have stated that the South African colonial government subsidized Finnish missionary health care only from the 1930s onwards (Kyrönseppä, Sixty Years, 39; Notkola and Siiskonen, Mortality, 108; Nord, ‘Healthcare and Warfare’, 429). As we have seen, however, government support started already in the early 1920s.
59 On the hospital finances, see Nyholm, ‘Suomalaisten’, 35; Ojala, ‘Selma Rainio’, 54; Miettinen, On the way, 94. The difficulty of making ends meet was a recurrent topic in Rainio’s letters. See e.g. SR to LR, 8 March 1932 [4]. SR to Amy Taube, 13 August 1932. LFC (456). AFLS.
60 South West Africa mandates 1930, 89, 116; South West Africa mandates 1931, 87, cited in Nyholm, ‘Suomalaisten’, 77. On the relationship of the Finnish medical mission and colonial government, see also Nyholm, ‘Suomalaisten’, 35–6.
61 Vaughan, Curing, 137.
62 Vaughan, Curing, 23.
63 SR to LR and Amanda Lilius, 25 June 1919 [3].
64 SR to Bertha Pakarainen, 5 January 1920 [3].
65 SR to Bertha Pakarainen, 31 October 1920; SR to Bertha Pakarainen, 5 January 1920 [3]. SR to Amy Taube, 30 January 1921 [4].
66 SR to family, 26 October 1922 [4].
67 SR to Amy Taube, 18 July 1926 [4].
68 SR to LR, 7 October 1928; SR to Amy Taube, 9 May 1929 [4].
69 SR to family, 19 June 1908; SR to LR, 16 September 1909; SR to Amanda Lilius, 2 December 1909; [2].
70 SR to Amanda Lilius, 28 December 1909; SR to LR, 30 January 1910 [2]. SR to Amy Taube, 18 July 1926, 9 May 1929 [4]. McKittrick, To Dwell Secure, 100.
71 SR to Bertha Pakarainen, 2 April 1929; SR to Amy Taube, 9 May 1929; SR to LR, 25 May 1929 [4].
72 SR to family, 21 April 1936 [4].
73 SR to Bertha Pakarainen, 15 March 1938; SR to family, 21 April 1936; SR to LR, 13 March 1938 [4].
74 SR to LR, 14 February 1909 [2].
75 SR to a sister, 15 March 1909 [2].
76 SR to her sisters, 19 February 1914 [3].
77 SR to Amanda Lilius, 30 January 1910; SR to LR 26 February 1910, 8 April 1910 [2].
78 SR to LR and Amanda Lilius, 11 October 1909, 30 January 1910, 24 October 1909, 25 October 1909. SR to LR 26 February 1910, 8 April 1910 [2].
79 SR to LR, 2 May 1925 [4].
80 Rainio describes a visit to Iipumbu’s court in Etelän ristin alla, 43–52. The king emerges in this story as a fickle, wilful ruler, inordinately scared of witches, but also as a loving father.
81 SR to Amy Taube, 15 August 1932; SR to LR, 23 November 1932 [4].
82 SR to her sisters, 19 February 1914 [3]. Meredith McKittrick makes the same point. To Dwell Secure, 17. See also Löytty, Ambomaamme, 218.
83 SR to Aatto Taube, 7 August 1917; SR to Bertha Pakarainen, 1 October 1918; SR to LR 28 July 1917 [3].
84 According to Rainio, the Hottentot (Khoikhoi) people was on the same level of civilisation as the common folk in Finland, an opinion that Kirsti Kena still found ‘amazing’ in 2000 (cited in Kena, Eevat apostolien, 294). The native population of Gnadendal (South Africa), where missionaries had been active for a long time, was on the same level as “educated artisan and bourgeois classes in Finland” and certainly on a higher level of civilisation than the Boers who were bossing them around. (SR to LR 18 November 1913, 1 January 1914) She also wrote that the traditional healing methods of the Ovambo peoples were more sophisticated than the traditional healing methods of the Finnish people. (SR to LR and Amanda Lilius 25 June 1919.)
85 Along with Christianity, migrant labour is the most thoroughly studied aspect of Namibian history. McKittrick, To Dwell Secure, 11.
86 Notkola and Siiskonen, Mortality, 10.
87 SR to Amanda Lilius, 30 July 1909 [2].
88 On ‘station children’, see McKittrick, To Dwell Secure, 106–08.
89 SR to LR and Amanda Lilius, 26 October 1916, 16 November 1916 [3].
90 Notkola and Siiskonen, Mortality, 99; Miettinen, On the Way, 73. For a concise account of the Great Famine, see McKittrick, To Dwell Secure, 144–51.
91 Missionaries, unlike the indigenous people, ‘had access to colonial food supplies’, McKittrick, To Dwell Secure, 145.
92 Rainio, Suuren parantajan, 35–37; SR to LR, 17 March 1916, 6 May 1916; 1 February 1917; 24 June 1917 [3]. Rainio also included a short description in her Etelän ristin alla (27–33) of a futile trip she and her aids made during the famine in search of government relief food.
93 SR to Agnes Kekoni, 1 August 1916 [3].
94 Siiskonen, ‘Review’, 10–12; Miettinen, On the Way, 106; McKittrick, To Dwell Secure, 139.
95 SR to LR, 1 December 1908 – 2 January 1909 [2].
96 McKittrick, To Dwell Secure, 11, 127, 171.
97 McKittrick, To Dwell Secure, 14, 123–4, 128.
98 Miettinen, On the Way, 144.
99 SR to Amanda Lilius, 27 April 1914 [3].
100 SR to Bertha Pakarainen, 2 April 1929; SR to LR, 9 March 1927[4].
101 SR to LR 26, November 1927 [4].
102 Rainio, Suuren parantajan, 38–42.
103 For an analysis of the role of syphilis in colonial discourse and policies during the inter-war period, see Vaughan, Curing, 128–54.
104 SR to Amanda Lilius, 3 December 1913; SR to her sisters, 31 December 1913 [3].
105 SR to Bertha Pakarainen, 2 April 1929 [4].
106 Matti Tarkkanen. The report of an inspection carried out in the mission field of the FMS in Ovamboland in 1925, pp. 18–19. The inspection reports of the Finnish African Mission. AFMS (197). FNA. Tuberculosis patients were isolated from the rest of the patients in the 1940s. Notkola et al., ‘Kuolleisuuden’, 254.
107 Vaughan, Curing, 97.
108 SR to Amanda Lilius, 5 June 1909 [2]. SR to family, 26 October 1922; SR to LR, 2 May 1925, 6 October 1925, 2 May 1925 [4].
109 SR to LR, 1 September 1918 [3].
110 E.g, SR to Agnes Kekoni, 22 May 1909 [2].
111 Kyrönseppä, Sixty years, 39. SR to Bertha Pakarainen, 15 May 1927 [4].
112 SR to Bertha Pakarainen, 1 February 1924 [4].
113 SR to Amy Taube, 18 July 1926, 25 November 1919 [should be 1924], 26 February 1930; SR to LR, 6 October 1925 [4].
114 SR to Amanda Lilius, 8 December 1911; SR to sisters 31 December 1913 [3]. SR to LR, 1 November 1924 [4]. Hannu Haahti. A report of an inspection carried out in Ovamboland in between 19 April 1911 and 4 March 1912, p. 39. Inspection reports of the African Mission. AFMS (195).
115 SR to Amy Taube, 26 February 1930 [4].
116 McKittrick qualifies this picture. She notes that government relief was heavily concentrated on the eastern societies while the western parts of Ovamboland were largely left to cope on their own. McKittrick, To dwell, 182–3.
117 SR to LR 25 December 1928; SR to Bertha Pakarainen, 7 November 1930 [4]. Miettinen, On the Way, 40; NyholmSuomalaisten, 6, 19–22, 64; Notkola & Siiskonen, Mortality, 100, 102.
118 Mckittrick, To Dwell Secure, 189; Nyholm, Suomalaisten, 23.
119 SR to Agnes Kekoni, 25 February 1931; SR to Bertha Pakarainen, 8 November 1931; SR to LR, 7 July 1931 [4].
120 SR to LR, 7 July 1931 [4].
121 SR to Bertha Pakarainen, 30 April 1926; SR to LR, 8 March 1932 [4].
122 SR to her sisters, 15 March 1909 [2]. SR to LR, 1 November 1924 [4]. Her views are in line with those expressed by her fellow missionary Kalle Koivu in a booklet called Amboneekerin jokapäiväinen leipä (The daily bread of the Ovambo negro, 1925). The book sought to ‘develop the conditions in Ovamboland on the basis of existing farming methods and other cultural practices’ (Löytty, Ambomaamme, 213–14).
123 Stark, ‘Kansallinen’, 66.
124 SR to Amanda Lilius, 14 April 1911 [3].
125 SR to Amanda Lilius, 27 November 1910 [2].
126 SR to her sisters, 4 January 1909 [2]. SR to LR, 23 September 1910; SR to Bertha Pakarainen, 6 July 1918; SR to Amy Taube, 30 March 1919 [3].
127 SR to Bertha Pakarainen, 11 November 1910 [2]. SR to sisters, 19 February 1914; SR to Amanda Lilius, 13 July 1913 [3]. SR to the Women Students’ Christian Society, 20 March 1914. The Archive of the Christian Student Association (263). FNA.
128 SR to Bertha Pakarainen, 23 February 1913 [3].
129 SR to sisters, 27 February 1916 [3].
130 SR to Amanda Lilius, 30 October 1917; SR to Bertha Pakarainen, 26 November 1917 [3].
131 SR to family, 26 October 1922 [4].
132 SR to Bertha Pakarainen, 16 November 1924 [4]. Matti Tarkkanen. A report of an inspection carried out in the mission field of the FMS in Ovamboland in 1925, pp. 33–34. The inspection reports of the Finnish African Mission. AFMS (197). FNA.
133 SR to Bertha Pakarainen, 7 November 1930 [4].
134 SR to Amy Taube, 25 November 919 [should be 1924] [4].
135 SR to LR, 13 March 1938 [4].
136 SR to LR, 7 October 1928 [4].
137 SR to LR, 7 October 1928, 30 September 1938, 13 March 1938, 7 October 1928; SR to Bertha and Otto Pakarainen, 28 November 1928 [4].
138 Compton Brouwer, Modern, 4, 18, 65–67, 69, 75–76, 97, 121, 66, 20. See also Semple, Missionary, 2, 6, 191, 197.
139 SR to LR, 30 October 1908; SR to Amanda Lilius, 2 December 1909 [2].
140 SR to LR and Amanda Lilius, 25 June 1919; SR to LR, 16 March 1920 [3].
141 McKittrick, To Dwell Secure, 94; Kyrönseppä, Sixty Years, 5–7; Ojala, ‘Selma Rainio’, 15; Peltola, Suomen, 44, 50, 77; Kena, Eevat, 34, 65, Miettinen, On the Way, 93.
142 SR to LR, written between 1 December 1908 and 2 January 1909; SR to LR, 17 January 1909; SR to LR 20 April 1909; SR to Amanda Lilius 8 May 1909 [2].
143 SR to LR 17 January 1909; SR to her sisters 30 June 1909 [2].
144 SR to Amanda Lilius, 3 May 1912; SR to LR, 24 November 1931 [2].
145 SR to LR, 21 July 1911 [2].
146 SR to her family 26 October 1922, 10 November 1922 [*]. Salomaa, Evankeliumin valoa, focuses on Anna Rautaheimo’s work.
147 Matti Tarkkanen. A report of an inspection carried out in the mission field of the FMS in Ovamboland in 1925, p. 30. The inspection reports of the Finnish African Mission. AFMS (197). FNA.
148 SR to Agnes Kekoni, 8 August 1929 [4]; SR to Bertha Pakarainen 7 November 1929 [4].
149 Kena, Eevat, 262; South West Africa mandates 1928, 74, cited in Nyholm, Suomalaisten, 75–76.
150 Melander et al., Terveisiä Ambomaalta, 35; Ojala, ‘Selma Rainio’, 99; Kyrönseppä, Sixty Years, 35, 37. According to Kena, the first nurses’ instructor was Anna Rancken, Kena, Eevat, 262, Miettinen, On the Way, 34.
151 Compton Brouwer, Modern, 41, 72.
152 SR to Bertha and Otto Pakarainen, 17 June 1923 [4].
153 SR to LR, 16 March 1920, 10 April 1920, 20 August 1920, 29 August 1921; SR to Amy Taube 2 June 1920; SR to Bertha Pakarainen, 13 July 1921, 17 May 1921, 15 October 1921 [4].
154 Concern for keeping up her professional skills is a recurring theme in Rainio’s letters almost from the beginning. In 1916, she thought that she might still be able to work as doctor in some remote corner of Finland, perhaps in the far north. By 1930, she had come to think that she would no longer be able to work with western patients at all but might still be of some use in a laboratory. SR to sisters, 9 November 1916 [3]. SR to Bertha Pakarainen, 7 November 1929; SR to Agnes Kekoni, 24 August 1930 [4].
155 On the relationship of colonial and missionary medicine in Africa, see Vaughan, Curing Their Ills; Jennnigs, ‘Healing Bodies’; Crozier, Practicing Colonial Medicine; Vongsathorn, ‘First and Foremost’; Hokkanen, ‘Agents of Empire’; Hokkanen, ‘Towards a Cultural History’; Kalusa, ‘Christian Medical Discourse’; Manton, ‘Mission, Clinic, and Laboratory’. On the history of Health care in Namibia, see Wallace, Health, Power and Politics, and Gottschalk, ‘Political Economy ‘.
156 Proceedings of the missionaries’ council held at the hospital of the Finnish African Mission on 20 September, 4 §. The inspection reports of the African mission fields. AFMS (195). FNA.
157 Kena, Eevat, 261; Nord, ‘Healthcare and Warfare’, 423–4.
158 Nord, ‘Healthcare and warfare’, 423–4. For a detailed analysis on health care in Windhoek between 1915 and 1945, see Wallace, Health, Power and Politics.
159 Miettinen, On the Way, 94.
160 In 1936, Rainio brought a used x-ray machine with her when she returned from Finland, although it was probably not installed until much later. SR to Bertha Pakarainen, 1 April 1936; Eva Segerstråle to SR, 1 November 1936 [4]. Soini, Lääkärinä, 180.
161 Kena, Eevat, 261; Kyrönseppä, Sixty years, 14–15.
162 Soini, Lääkärinä, 51, 64, 67, 72, 76, 79-81, 91, 100–02, 108, 117, 119, 125, 130, 132, 140–43, 150–51, 153–54, 156, 160, 164, 171, 190, 194, 199. Soini does not mention penicillin, though. Penicillin was first mass-produced during the Second World War in the US and was reserved for the use of the Allies. This may explain why the Finns, technically German allies, did not use penicillin in the post-war years, when it was already widely used elsewhere in British Africa. The flourishing black market for penicillin apparently did not extend to the isolated and poor Ovamboland either. On black market penicillin in Eastern and Southern colonies, Vaughan, Curing, 144. On the subsequent history of the Onandjokwe hospital, and especially on its role during the war of liberation, see Nord, ‘Healthcare and Warfare’.
163 See e.g. Nyholm, ‘Suomalaisten’, 5. Meredith McKittrick thinks that the cultural distance between the Ovambo people and the Finns was less than their distance from the Germans or British. The local people did not regard them quite as white as the latter, as it were. (Quoted in Löytty, Ambomaamme, 73). Löytty also notes that there was a relatively high degree of transculturation between Finnish missionaries and the indigenous people (73). Löytty is primarily interested in analysing the ways in which Africans were represented in Finnish mission literature. He finds significant differences between the way Ovamboland and its inhabitants were represented in Finnish mission literature and in South African colonial literature. Where the South Africans saw dangerous untamed wilderness, the Finns were more likely to see rural idyll (43, 73, 77, 79, 82–83, 145). But Finnish mission literature, too, employed some mechanisms of distancing. Particularly the early representations, those dating from late the 19th and early 20th centuries, were Eurocentric and represented the Africans as the other. (149, 283, 284.)
164 Stark, ‘Sorcerers’, 7 (abstract).
165 Stark, ‘Johdanto’, 20.
166 SL to Amy Taube, 13 September 1893 [1].
167 Helmi Heikinheimo to SR, 23 September 1936 [4].
168 Kena, Eevat, 206.
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Heini Hakosalo
Heini Hakosalo is a historian specializing in the history of medicine and health. She works at the University of Oulu, Finland, where she currently holds the post of Academy of Finland Research Fellow. For the academic year 2014–2015, she works as visiting researcher at the University of Stockholm. She has published on the history of 20th-century brain research and on women’s medical education and work in late 19th- and early 20th-century Scandinavia. Her current project deals with the history of tuberculosis in 20th-century Finland.