The White Masai.........:wink:

Do you believe in love at first sight? Corinne Hofmann does. On holiday in Kenya with her boyfriend she sees a young Masai warrior and instantly falls in love. Race, culture, nationality - none of these are barriers. Nor, apparently, is language. All Hofmann and Lketinga have in common are half a dozen English words. Still, she gives up her job, her boyfriend, her country and moves to Kenya in order to be with him.
This is the story of The White Masai: "a hopelessly romantic love story... and a fine piece of meticulously researched social anthropology", or so says the back cover. Quite a description, and, after all, the book has sold four million copies since its publication in Germany in 1999. Surely that many people couldn't be wrong. Oh, but couldn't they?
"Hopelessly romantic" - well, yes, if you are capable of suspending disbelief sufficiently to believe Hofmann's delusion would not have been better dealt with on a therapist's couch. "Meticulously researched social anthropology," quite: "The people here don't dress as traditionally," Hofmann writes. "They wear normal clothing and live as farmers." You do learn, should it ever come in useful, how to make a hut out of cow pats.
Never have I encountered, in print or in person, anyone with less self-knowledge than Hofmann. From the outset she rails against the racism Lketinga endures and the treatment of the Masai by Europeans and urban Africans as primitive tribesmen, meanwhile musing on Lketinga's exoticism and the erotic effect of his "savage perfume". Throughout the book Lketinga is never portrayed as anything other than some kind of man-child. When they go to visit another white woman married to a Masai, Hofmann is mortified: "This Masai looks just like a 'normal black' who doesn't wear jewellery or traditional clothing but a red made-to-measure suit."
Against the odds Hofmann succeeds in marrying Lketinga, first living with him in his family village where she opens a shop selling sugar and provisions to the locals. Inevitably the union sours. The money and therefore the power in the relationship belong to Hofmann, but she has no understanding of how, by subverting established norms in a traditional society, conflict arises. Her Masai warrior is now little more than a house husband, and his anger and powerlessness manifest themselves in intense bouts of jealousy and drinking. In the final chapters, by which time they have moved to the coast and are selling Masai trinkets to tourists, he appears before her, shorn of his warrior's locks, his body paint washed away, dressed in jeans.
"I wait for my usual feeling of happiness to see him, but I'm still in shock," writes Hofmann. The shock is not at the terrible cultural alienation evidenced in her husband's actions, of which the psychiatrist and writer Franz Fanon wrote in Black Skin, White Masks more than 50 years ago. No, it's the crime to fashion that really guts her: "He's cut his long red hair short and got rid of some of the decorations he usually wears on his head. I can accept that, but his clothes look ridiculous: he's wearing an old fashioned shirt and dark-red jeans that are far too tight and too short." When she asks where his other clothes are, he replies that he is no longer a warrior and thus has no need of them.
Soon afterwards Hofman flies to Europe, taking with her their young daughter. She leaves Kenya with her prejudices intact - confirmed, even. In a farewell letter to Lketinga she blames his behaviour: "You didn't even know you were doing it, that's just Africa." Well, that's the easy answer. But maybe, just maybe, they were never suited in the first place. Maybe it was a clash of class rather than culture. Or maybe it was less about the difficulties of marrying a warrior, than the perils of marrying a fantasist. Lketinga, we are told, can't read or write. But, oh, how I would rather read his story.wink
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Comments (20)

@cmiver I go and read! sad flower
Hi darling v....cheers

is it white men really do like that eh????rolling on the floor laughing rolling on the floor laughing

i did not know ...rolling on the floor laughing doh
Minerva88

hello miss......cheers

i sort of felt, she wanted to have financial freedom,dunno

doh
iotaoo Rewari India

hi hows life baby.....wine kiss
...I hope the child gets to see her father...life is relative to where you are living...that involves a certain amount of conformity unless you are on some sort of crusade...writing
PistonBroke

hey you r newapplause

welcome dear.......cheers

yes you are right....hug handshake
wave Hello Cmiyer! And how have you been, dear?
angel


looks like you have not seen my tears yet,

in gd blog.......crying
looks like he posted and has gone back to work ....wave
@cmiver thanks for the asking. Its almost fine.
Virgosingle......who is he??????rolling on the floor laughing rolling on the floor laughing rolling on the floor laughing rolling on the floor laughing
otaoo

you are welcome.......cheers
@cmiyer If it is not distracting....in between....what is the political situation in mumbai and for that matter in Maharastra.
What are the prospects of AAP over there?
iotaoo

AAP......80/ chance baby...cheers
@cmiyer I liked this novelty. It will revolution India even if it scores 30+. What do you think? hug
iotoo baby i was talking about American Academy of Pediatrics

wink rolling on the floor laughing rolling on the floor laughing rolling on the floor laughing politics just jokes....rolling on the floor laughing
@cmiyer dear this politics has converted us into 3rd. rated citizens?????? I feel aggrieved????? frustrated
@Cmiyer..... Great story, I enjoyed it!! I hope you are well my dear friend!!

~DAN~wink wink
Cmiyer;thanks for sharing this story. I sow the movie and it sticked in my memory as one of interesting love story because cultural differences is so drastically huge that for Western women to believe she can adopt to native traditional Kenya lifestyle seams more as exploring fantasies to eventually come
into realization that she can not follow up his macho prejudice towards treatment of women that must fully adopt to his way.
Minerva;one's he tried to bit her and that's not OK, as well he was giving goods for free from 'his wife shop' as in his mind relatives and friends could not be charged for goods but someone has to make an living so where is give and take in relationship ?
It's hard to make judgments as it's simple two different world that clashes. Lovely story wine Good Blog !cheering
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