Customer Reviews

Die weiße Massai

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Corinne Hoffman was a successful 27 year old Swiss business owner. Her shop, selling secondhand bridal dresses employed three tailors and she felt that she was on a path to financial security. She took a winter holiday with her boyfriend Marco to Kenya to enjoy the beaches and a short safari. While taking the ferry from Mombasa to her beach hotel, she sees a Masai warrior, tall, dark, with a face so stunningly beautiful that it could be a woman's; but no woman had a face with such strong muscles and defined bones. Corinne is smitten, almost bewitched by the vision of this Masai.

The rest of the trip is a disaster; she meets Lketinga, who speaks broken English. Her boyfriend Marco is understandably put out by her obsession with the Masai. Then, Lketinga flouts a local law forbidding locals from being on a beach and is thrown in jail. Corinne breaks up with her boyfriend and spends some frantic days traveling around Mombasa to find where Lketinga is being held.

Back in Switzerland, the vision of living in Kenya overwhelms Corinne, and she sells her shop, her car and heads back to be with Lketinga. The primitive lifestyle is a far cry from clean and safe and orderly Switzerland (was this the secret attraction for Corinne?) Though she lives in mud hut and though she must share her man with other wives eventually, these are not the things that result in conflict. It is the everyday jealousies and hurts, same as one would find in Zurich or Bern that drive Lketinga and Corinne apart. Corinne has a daughter by Lketinga and opens a small grocery. This impugns, somehow, her husband's manhood, though he likes the affluence it affords. He becomes as jealous as Othello and finally, he shaves his locks, sheds his red Masai robe and puts on loud jeans, shoes and a shirt. The warrior is gone--what's left is a jealous, unreasonable husband who can barely communicate with his wife.

Corinne takes her daughter and goes back to Switzerland. She once again starts a successful business and her life in a Kenyan Masai village is a closed chapter until she writes this excellent memoir.

Sadly, so far this book is available in German, Dutch, Swedish, Danish and Spanish but not English (I am reviewing the German edition.) However, Corinne writes simply and effectively in German and despite what I assume were a few "Swiss-isms" I was unfamiliar with, anyone who can read college German will find this accessible. I found it riveting.

I read this book a couple of years ago, it was incredible. It is about a woman who goes to Africa with her boy-friend and falls in love with a massai warrior. She decides to stay with him in Africa, in the middle of nowhere. She writes about everything that happened to her, like the fact that they didn't speak the same language and cultural differences, which must be enormous if there are already differences in like America and Germany( as I know for myself).
This book is incredible and I am sure that everybody who read it will agree with me.

I found Corinne to be a really strange mix. She falls in love with a Masai, seemingly mainly because of his physical attributes. She barely mentions any conversations they had besides being very attracted to the way he always said "no problem Corinne" which reminded me of my teenage best friend who fell in love with a hooligan because she liked the way he said "well there you are then"! There's no analysis of whether she loved him for his character or just his exotic looks which I found incredible given that she was going to change her life to be with him. So, quite frankly, I had her pegged as a complete airhead. Then I read about how she dealt with her new (self-chosen/inflicted) life and all the hardships and dramas that entailed. Airhead or not, she had guts. Will certainly search out her the sequels.

From the first shots, we will witness the visible passion aroused just for simple glimpse that will arise a true flaming love. A mature Swiss woman will fall in love with a warrior or a tribe and following her heart's call she will follow his traces until they decide to live together.

But as you and I expect, the initial attraction will not be quite enough to carve in relief, the abysmal differences in order to understand the world. This is an entire exploration around the feminine universe, against a new world. A woman who unexpectedly, decides to live with this warrior but sooner than later she will realize her option was not the best of all possible ones.

all from the comfort of my couch with the heater on and coffee or glass of wine in my hand. I've had a crazy "connection" to a stranger in a strange land before and thanked god I wasn't mad enough to do anything about it and congratulated myself where in the past I berated myself for not having enough spunk.

It's a great story, well written and the translation into English works wonderfully. thanks to Corinne for going through it and then writing about it. She's quite a woman and I got alot out of her honesty which made me laugh out loud. She's not perfect but she's just like us and I never found her story unbelievable.

Excellent read.

Although I knew from the beginning that this kind of wild love never works out, I still couldn't put it down. It gives a lot of in depth view on the lives of Massai, whom I hope one day to visit. And can't wait for the movie to come to US.

Corinne Hoffman was hit by a thunderbolt when she first saw Lketinga, a Masai warrior, on a ferry in Mombasa. She ditches her boyfriend, sells her boutique in Switzerland, and marries the tall warrior and lives with him in the bush. (Note: I am commenting on the French edition, which I read).

Of all the 800 or so works I read and consulted in the preparation of my own book on romances involving female travelers, this one describes one of the greatest gaps in background, literally an Information Age woman with a pastoralist man. Barring one marriage-in-name between American photojournalist Wyn Sargent and a New Guinea tribal chief living in the Stone Age, described in Sargent's People of the Valley, Corinne and Lketinga are pretty much the champs of record in terms of attempting a marriage across an abyss of incomprehensibility. With little but mutual attraction to base their relationship on, they have but fitful success.

But what a mutual attraction it is! Hoffman describes Lketinga's facial beauty and powerful body in lyric terms. The book's photos, and those of the couple in magazines, show then as equally beautiful in opposite ways, she a porcelain blond, he dark warrior with face paint and a pleasing Michael Jordan-style moustache.

Hoffman is quite honest, however, that her lover is initially pretty lousy in bed, due to Masai prosriptions against touching below the waist -- and a cultural lack of emphasis on lovemaking skills. Lketinga's aunt confesses that she has heard that white people put more effort into mutual pleasure.

It's interesting to me how much complete squalor Hoffman puts up with in Lketinga's home village. Excrement litters the ground outside their hut, so tiny they cannot stand upright in it. Getting water is difficult. A young woman nearly dies in childbirth, and no one much cares except Corinne herself, who tries to get the woman to the hospital in her vehicle, a lifeline for the village.

In my own book, I compare "The White Masai" to Sarah Lloyd's "An Indian Attachment." Lloyd also lives in squalor, with an Indian Sikh whom she loves, for two years. What women will do for love, when the object of their desires is a warrior with beautiful hair.

Well worth the effort to dust off your German or French and read. Let's hope this comes out in English soon!

This book is an excellent read that is very unique. It is unique in that it gives the perspective from a woman who is from the 1st world-Western world and her relationship (as a girlfriend and then a wife) of a 3rd world Massai warrior. Both of them live for the most part according to Massai living conditions. Corinne gives her perspective from someone who is "very much in love" and wants to adjust herself to this new way of living, yet is accustomed to western living. She really gives it everything she has. It is so shocking to the way of living that most of us westerners are used to, that you cannot wait to see what's next (or how much more unusual and shocking her life can get). It really is incredibly interesting and a fun adventure.

I read it in German, even though my German is not fluent. It is written very easy to understand, yet not so simple as to be boring. It would be an easy read for anyone who understands 50-75% of a normal German conversation. The few words that you don't get in a sentence can be figured out by the words around them and what you may still not get, you can look up in the translation dictionary.

Highly recommended book! I have never read an experience quite like this one. How many western people get married to, live the life of a Massai tribal person and then write about it? Very unusual and well written.

clearly used, but still in fine condidtion and was an amazing price even if it is a used book.

Overall I thought the book was truly fascinating. Corinne Hoffmann's story is almost too incredible to believe! I dont think there is any other story like this and am eager to read the sequel, Back from Africa. This book was translated from German and thus some things do not translate well. Also, it's not the best written work I've ever read, but it doesn't really matter because the story is so riveting. I highly recommend it!