The proposed essay explores the role of touch in healing among the Tuareg, a semi-nomadic, socially-stratified, Muslim people of Niger and Mali, where herbal medicine women practice healing using a combination of plants, verbal incantations, ritual motions, massage, and psycho-social counseling. Medicine women trace their profession back to founding matrilineal ancestresses, apprentice with older kinspersons, and treat predominantly, though not exclusively women and children. The stomach is central in the imagery of their mythico-history, as well as their healing.
In many cultures, contact with the hands expresses alternative authoritative knowledge; thus healing is social, not strictly medical (McClain 1989; Davis-Floyd and Sargent 1997; Classen 1997). In touch, called edes , Tuareg medicine women transmit multi-sensorial associations of cultural knowledge. I argue that medicine women on one level counterbalance and provide relief from more generalized reserve in wider Tuareg culture and society, particularly among those of noble origins who emphasize dignity and restraint. They serve as confidantes for women and men in cases of illnesses considered shameful. I show how, in these processes, they act as medico-ritual healers, social mediators, and commemorators of institutions protecting women’s interests, though they also experience challenges to these roles in current social upheaval and change.