Corinne Hofmann has a headline-grabbing story: she fell for a Masai warrior when on holiday in Kenya in the 1980s, promptly left her home in Switzerland to live with him in a tiny African village, and bore him a daughter. Then four years later she left, taking the child with her, as the relationship broke down.
Her account of her African adventure has been a huge European hit, selling four million copies and spending four years on the German bestseller lists. Arcadia is now publishing The White Masai (September) in English translation under its more popular imprint Bliss Books, with an initial print run of 14,000, and will be bringing the author over for a tour and widespread publicity.
Hofmann, who now lives on Lake Lugano with her 16-year-old daughter Naipiri, speaks only tentative English: she learned some of the language when in Kenya, as a way to communicate with Lketinga, her Masai husband. "We had a mixture of his language, which is called Maa, and very, very simple English words, and developed this way of talking together," she explains, with the help of an interpreter.
Her account of how, at the age of 27, she left a long-term boyfriend and a successful career running a clothes shop to follow an overwhelming attraction for a man whose language she did not speak, whose way of life was alien, and whose feelings for her she was uncertain of, is certainly dramatic. Does she think, looking back, that she was brave or just reckless?
"I'm very, very proud that I took the step to do it," she says. "It changed my whole life and I really treasure the whole experience. I don't regret anything at all and I'd do it exactly the same way again."
Yet entering a relationship with a man whose customs forbade even a simple intimacy like a kiss on the mouth--Masai women may not touch the faces of their husbands--was an almost unthinkable challenge. How did she make it work?
"I had to see things through his eyes and think in a completely different way. I had to give up a lot of things I might have wanted in a relationship. But because I wanted this particular man, I had to accept that. And in the first two years, the relationship really did grow in a wonderful, wonderful way."
Life in a Samburu village, in a tiny shack, suffering from malnutrition and severe malaria--Hofmann nearly died of the disease three times--was incredibly tough. "The first year it didn't seem difficult because it was so utterly different and fascinating and my whole life was taken up by my love for this man. It was the most wonderful time, but also the hardest; it was 20 years of learning packed into four years." And the attitude of her Masai family was in some ways inspiring: "They live completely for the day, they don't plan ahead, they don't know what they are going to eat tomorrow. And they are probably more content people than we are."
It was the breakdown of the relationship which finally forced her to give up on the challenge of her new life. Lketinga became increasingly jealous, convinced that his white wife was unfaithful, and claiming that Naipiri might not be his own child. "It was so hurtful and painful for me. People do write me emails saying the relationship could have worked, and they know people where it did work, but for me it didn't," Hofmann acknowledges.
Now she makes her living as a writer, with three books about her experiences: the third, Wiedersehen in Barsaloi (Return to Barsaloi) describes her return visit to Kenya after 14 years. "It was as if those years hadn't happened, they took me into the bosom of the family and no one made me feel bad about what happened. Lketinga has two more wives now, but I am still wife number one'."
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