Selma Rainio

After finishing the school she returned home, where she took care of her father, who was paralyzed for the last three years of his life.

During her studies Rainio was active in the Häme Nation of the university, where she strove to get women equal rights.

She also was active in delivering lectures on Finnish Nationalism and Russia's attempts to prevent Finland from gaining her independence.

[6] Towards the end of 1902, Rainio completed the theory section of her degree in medicine, and early the following year she started her internships in the hospitals of Helsinki.

She paid particular attention to the eye diseases of the Ovambos and observed that midwives would be needed to help with childbirths.

She would have wanted a horse for urgent home calls, but the board of trustees of the FMS thought it was too expensive to maintain such an animal.

In addition to the healthy oceanic climate, the benefits of the Cape included a possibility to participate in cultural activities.

The missionaries had wanted to make such trips before, but only now, when a medical doctor recommended them, the board of the FMS could not ignore these wishes.

In addition to this, the women were allowed to read the annual reports of the mission field only after they had been printed in Helsinki and shipped back to Africa.

Rainio also was perplexed about the fact that the missionaries were not allowed to write in public about the tightening grip of the German Reich on Ovamboland.

This was due to the fact that Germany and Russia had become more and more hostile towards each other during the years leading up to World War I, but this was not known to the missionaries.

Rainio asked her sister Lilli to instruct the sowing societies and friends of the mission to keep on sending clothes to Ovamboland.

Also the food aid from the German Colonial Government to the Onandjokwe Hospital had ended soon after the outbreak of the war, and then the South African troops soon seized the control of the country.

[17] In 1917, Rainio fell seriously ill. She left to accompany another Finn taken ill, Miss Selma Santalahti, to Swakopmund.

In Finland, Rainio spent some time in Helsinki organizing things to do with the medical mission in Ovamboland.

In June 1920, she worked in the Kivelä Hospital in Helsinki, and then she travelled to Tübingen to learn the latest developments in tropical diseases.

The Onandjokwe Hospital was becoming more and more dependent on the financial aid of the government, for which reason Rainio did not want to turn down the offer to work as the district physician.

In 1924 these figures were somewhat lower and mortality was higher, because an influenza arrived from the south, where in the mines of Lüderitz 400 Ovambos died of this disease.

Then she fell ill with erysipelas in the skin of her head, and she feared she would die, as no treatment was known for the disease at the time.

[25] In 1929 Rainio was able to make a “health trip” again, after many years, to the Cape, and during it she was able to visit the Enjamana leprosy sanatorium and acquaint herself with the work done there.

Mission director Matti Tarkkanen wrote a long report to the League of Nations, after which the government corrected its statements in 1931.

[29] In 1932, the South West African government was waging war against Iipumbu, king of Uukwambi, and in the end forced him into exile in Kavango.

Rainio would have wanted to remain in Ovamboland, in some more tranquil part of the area, because she knew she had fallen behind the development of medicine.

[33] At the end of Rainio's second term, in 1933, there were 17 proper buildings in Onandjokwe, 49 patient huts and 15 storebuildings or shelters, and a mill.

[34] While in Finland, Rainio put finishing touches on an Oshindonga textbook on health and hygiene, which was intended to be used as the basis of nurse training in Ovamboland.

Mission director Uno Paunu had wanted to send her to Kavango, but possibly Rainio's views convinced him that eastern Oukwanyama would be a better place for her.

In addition to this, Rainio taught health and hygiene lessons in the local boys’ school, using books she had prepared herself.

Measles causes lots of complications, such as eye conditions, which increased the number of patients in Engela.

in 1995, the Namibian postal service Nampost issued four stamps to commemorate the 125 years of Finnish missionary work.

The other Finnish missionaries depicted were Martti Rautanen, Albin Savola, Karl August Weikkolin.