ABSTRACT
When I questioned Lala, an elderly woman and the senior herbal medicine woman on top of Mount Bagzan in the Aïr Mountains of Niger, West Africa, about how Tuareg herbal healing began, she explained: “The medicine of tines-megelen [literally, “medicine women,” from amagal, “medicine”] is like “living milk herds” [akh huderan]: it is transmitted to, belongs to, and is practiced and managed by women, like property.” She then related an etiological myth in order to illustrate this point:
There was a woman who had a very jealous husband. He transferred her very far [away]. They lived so that other men would not see her. One day, he saw people coming toward them on their camels, elaborately decorated. They said, “Look at the men who are going to war.” The woman looked and she said, “I see a very handsome man among these men, one with an indigo robe.” As soon as he understood this, the husband killed the woman with a knife and she died. He straightened her body out for burial. The woman's stomach moved. He tore it open and took out two small twin girls. These two little girls, each one brought [out] something in their hands. He cut the umbilical cords. He arranged these girls, and after that he united the people for taking the dead woman to the cemetery. And he told the people afterward, “Look at what is in the hands of the little girls.” The people said, “These small objects held, you must hide until the girls grow up to learn about them. If they die, the information will die also.” The small objects were in wood. These were hidden until the girls grew up. They replied, “That is the beginning of medicine.” They even had medicine of icherifan [clans claiming descent from the Prophet], and they taught how the medicine is made: one touches, they explained everything. They were named Fatane and Fatoni. All the women on their side of the family learned to make medicine from them, and taught this to those women who were interested. That was the beginning of healing. Since being taken out of their mother's stomach, these girls held medicines.
