MIDWIFERY TRAINING AND FEMALE CIRCUMCISION IN THE INTERWAR ANGLO-EGYPTIAN SUDAN

Contrary to the popular vision, most practitioners of Western medicine in Africa during the colonial period were non-Europeans, usually Afri can medical auxiliaries with varying amounts of training. This paper s eeks to refine views of 'colonial medicine' by investigating the train ing and work of one such group of medical personnel. The Midwifery Tra ining School(MTS), opened in Omdurman, Sudan in 1921, created a class of modern trained Sudanese midwives out of, and in rivalry to, an entr enched class of traditional midwives. The interaction between Western and traditional medicine and between British and Sudanese societies in the context of midwifery training and practice was highly complex and constantly being negotiated. In their construction of respectability in potential pupils, their choice of language in lectures, their strat egies for licensing traditional and trained midwives, and their approa ch to female circumcision, the British women who ran the MTS, Mabel an d Gertrude Wolff, were constantly negotiating with Sudanese culture an d encountering the limits of British colonial (medical) power. While m idwifery training and practice incorporated the Wolff sisters and Suda nese midwives into the work of the colonial state, they remained margi nalized within that state, denied authority, status and remuneration, on account of their gender, class and occupation. A discussion of the Sudan government's position on female circumcision supports these argu ments, highlighting the Wolffs' simultaneous willingness to accommodat e and modify Sudanese custom, as well as the marginalization of both m edicine and midwifery within government.