Rainio arrived in Ovamboland on 14 December 1908. She started her work at the
Oniipa mission station. Even during her first month there, she treated between 40 and 50 patients every day. She had no time to study the
Oshindonga language, but had to ask other missionaries to interpret for her. When she arrived in Ovamboland, the area suffered from the great
famine of 1907–08. During the first year, 7 525
patients were helped, which meant 25 patients per day on average. The number became smaller when a small fee began to be charged from the patients. On the other hand, the patients did not continue their treatments long enough. When the worst pains were over, they thought they were well again and hurried for work in the fields, especially the women. In 1910, Rainio travelled to all the Finnish mission stations in the area. 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.
Founding of the Onandjokwe Hospital In January 1911, a hospital building was completed next to Oniipa. It had a
corrugated metal roof, the first of its kind in Ovamboland. The building had living quarters, and a combined polyclinic and
pharmacy in one room, another room for the necessary
operations, and a room for missionary patients. The Ovambos were cared for in huts, of which there were first eight and more were built later. The hospital was inaugurated in a mission feast held in July 1911. The inauguration was performed by the assistant director of the FMS,
Rev. Hannu Haahti together with the head of the mission in Ovamboland, Rev.
Martti Rautanen. The hospital was called Onandjokwe, ‘the place of wild geese’. During the same dry season, the first trained
nurses arrived there, Karin Hirn in August and Ida Ålander in August. The latter had spent some time in
Windhoek getting familiar in the work of a midwife. Also two Ovambo
evangelists were hired, and they took care of preaching the
Gospel to the patients. During the inspection trip of Rev. Haahti, Rainio was able to achieve a breakthrough for the medical mission: during the inspection meetings were held about the Finnish missionary work, and Rainio was allowed to write preliminary thoughts on the medical work, and the decisions were taken on the basis of her thoughts. In 1913 Rainio made a so-called “health trip” to the
Cape. She was now able to make a recommendation to the FMS, on the basis of her own experiences, that all missionaries be granted the possibility to make such trips. 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.
Problems on the mission field In the early years, the female missionaries encountered a number of problems. The worst of them was the so-called
meeting of the brethren, in which women could not participate. 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 began women's missionary meetings, but these came to a halt after only a year. However, during the visit of Rev. Haahti, general meetings of the missionaries were held in Ovamboland, and this then became the practice on the mission field. It could also be observed that the salaries of the women were quite inferior to those of the men. The relationship between the missionaries and the board of trustees of the FMS were strained, mainly because the board chose to believe in all kinds of rumours and did not make attempts to find out what was going on in the mission field. 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 also thought that the Finns could have had more beneficial attitudes towards the Ovambos. It had been wrong of the Finns to demand that the Ovambos dress in a
European manner. On the other hand, when this change had been achieved, the FMS wanted to stop sending clothes to them. Rainio asked her sister Lilli to instruct the sowing societies and friends of the mission to keep on sending clothes to Ovamboland. The missionaries were not interested in the customs and thoughts of the Ovambos. This led to some of the old customs falling into
oblivion, including some that in Rainio's opinion would have been worth keeping.
Consequences of the Great War As a consequence of
World War I, the connections between Finland and Ovamboland were cut off for nearly 18 months. For example, in the beginning of 1916, none the salaries of the previous year had been paid to the Finnish missionaries. 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. In March 1915, the hospital had to be closed for some time, as it had run out of
groceries, and it was difficult to find people to work for the hospital among the Ovambos. The food stuffs that Rainio had brought with her the year before had lasted until then. Among the Ovambos, various illnesses, such as the
beriberi became common. Also
bacterial infections became common in the hospital. In December 1915 the hospital had to be closed, because the patients began to die one after another. However, the polyclinic continued its operation. The hospital work could only be continued when the infected patient huts had been demolished and new ones had been built to replace them. In 1915 several Finns were also among the patients, and likewise the head of the English government, Major Pritchard. Thanks to the latter, the new government soon began to issue foodstuffs to the hospital.
Rainio falls ill In 1917, Rainio fell seriously ill. She left to accompany another Finn taken ill, Miss Selma Santalahti, to
Swakopmund. When they arrived there, it turned out that Rainio was more seriously ill than Santalahti. She was weak because e.g.
malaria. However, good
sustenance and a recuperation period of five weeks restored her energies. Even though a heart condition was also diagnosed, which had long been bothering her, she was able to return to Ovamboland in May 1918.
New diseases in Ovamboland Now some diseases appeared in Ovamboland that had not been known there before. These were
chickenpox,
measles,
meningitis, and
mumps. The
Spanish flu, however, arrived in Ovamboland only in late 1919, and it had been weakened to the degree that it caused no deaths there. The prejudices of the Ovambos towards the hospital had now lessened. For example, they allowed themselves to be carried to the hospital on
stretchers. Earlier they had taken this as a sign of an inevitable
death. Neither did they leave the hospital when someone died there. ==The first furlough in Finland 1919–1922==