Journal of Anthropology and Archaeology

Tabibas and the Success of Procreation in Western Sahara
Beatriz Carbonell

Abstract
The Saharawi people, establishes one of the most interesting milestones of Africa in the struggle to obtain its freedom and that of its occupied territories. Tabibas (women who practice medicine) are in charge of wandering through the sands of the desert, carrying the body of ancestral knowledge, fulfilling a task that transcends what they apparently represent as obstetrician assistants or empirical midwives. Although the relationship with fertility indicates early unions, high rate of pregnancies, excessive births, minimum intergenic intervals, reproductive stress and high reproductivity in accordance with the spontaneous needs to regulate the population. The success of procreation is the resistance of the group to the oversight of the birth rate, by excluding the modern practices of biomedicine.

Full Text: PDF     DOI: 10.15640/jaa.v7n1a1