Customer Reviews

The White Masai

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(14)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

We in the US get a fair amount of grief about our insensitivity to other cultures, and our ridiculous demands that things be done 'our way' when we are in other countries. Well, nice to see that a European showed equal ignorance! Did this woman never have a social studies class? Did she never watch a single documentary or episode of Oprah?! How was she so completely ignorant of the lifestyle and huge cultural divide that would work against her, as a white woman in the Bush of Africa?

I laughed out loud at some of the unintentionally ironic statements in the book. One was when Corinne was madly trying to get "her Masai" a passport because she couldn't wait to introduce him to her mother. Yep, I'm sure Mom would have been thrilled. Toward the end of the book, as the doomed relationship hits the skids, Corinne lashes out angrily at some men in public. Lketinga shouts at her, "Corinne, you are crazy!" Well, yes.

Other reviewers mention that we don't see much of Lketinga's thoughts, feelings, or personality in the book. I disagree. From the beginning, he seems very much overwhelmed, but unsure how to extract himself from this strange relationship. He tells her maybe it would be better if she went home, and just came to visit a couple times a year. I was cheering for his amazing insight at that point, as I could almost feel his bewilderment at being stalked. But Corinne couldn't take a hint. Not when she had to bail him out of jail within a few days of meeting him. Not when the physical encounter she had dreamed of was consummated in a way similar to rape. Not when she had to hunt him down in the Bush upon her return to Kenya. And certainly not when she witnessed him having some sort of mental/emotional breakdown from his reliance on drugs and alcohol. Nope. Her Masai was a beautiful God, and come animal slaughter, malaria, or government bureaucracy, she was going to worship him. I found myself wondering, with all the return trips to Switzerland and his many disappearances, not to mention the days and weeks of travel within Kenya for various business and government errands - how many weeks or months total did they actually spend together?

Most people, in making a humiliating mistake such as this in their lives, would want to regroup, grow up, and move on. Instead, Ms. Hofmann has chosen to glorify her ridiculous 'adventure' and sell it off as a love story. I am very glad I read a copy from the library, rather than add to her fortune or celebrity.

Ok. I finished reading this a week ago and am still attempting to wrap my mind around her mentality. I, too, lived in Kenya for nearly two years, but did not stake claims on the country like a neo-colonial in the way this author did. While it was interesting that she would sacrifice so much in the name of love (which again, I just couldn't understand seeing as they were from two polar opposite cultures, didn't speak a common language and he wasn't as in love with her as she with him I thought), I can't understand how she maintained an ignorance and ego about her the whole time she was there. How could she not pick up the language? Even some basic Swahili should have been achieved in weeks of living in the country. As an anthropologist, I simply can't understand her frame of thought and why she really didn't see a need to assist the people she was living around and over-used the mission. I kept thinking the mission is there to help people who really need help and didn't ask to be placed in a marginalized environment, and here she put herself in this nightmare and expected the mission to continually bail her out. I do not consider this a travelogue, rather an odd memoir of "how I ruined my life." It still seems to me that she doesn't know, understand nor care to understand Kenya and I would certainly not recommend it for people who wish to understand the Samburu (she was so ignorant she didn't even realize the Maasai and Samburu are two different ethnic groups albeit closely related) or even the continent of Africa. This book was just an ego trip of how eccentric a woman can be.

I can say gratefully that a friend lent this sad tale to me. Thank you, God that I didn't shell out any shillings for this doggie of a poorly written book, and thank you for the fact that is not about another clueless American doing stupid things in foreign lands, like stalking gorgeous native men and expecting them to love you, your way.

As far as I could tell, this is a tale of an overly-indulged, wealthy, attractive, very obsessive young woman, Corrine Hoffman, who allows herself to be victimized while constantly insinuating herself on a man who really doesn't want anything to do with her except perhaps a quick "poke in the whiskers" with no foreplay. She calls him "my Masai" on page five after only seeing him a couple of times. (Creepy)

Lketinga sees the picture almost immediately; she chooses not to see. She believes he loves her, but it becomes obvious it's pretty one-sided --her side. Love is not perceived in the same way by the Samburu. Theirs is a culture of tough environmental and basic survival and requires tribal cooperation; a culture of the community, not the individual. Their life is definitely not about females having any rights, only responsibilities. It is not an adolescent, bodice-ripping, Romantic tale of romance. Samburu life is not easy, but it's the way it is. In fact, African life doesn't seem like something I want to try either.

So you have Corrine and her wacky friends. The European women in this story come across as pretty flighty, irresponsible and quite hippie-skippy, although they all run circles around her linguistically. Her friend Sophia does not seem to have much more sense than Hoffman does and you can easily visualize a "type" of wealthy, attractive, dilettante young European women, playing out their fantasies and spending their or their daddy's money. Her friend Sophia constantly seems to move to better quarters and is difficult to locate as she goes back to Italy for vacations, moves in with a loser boyfriend, procreates without thought of the future for her child and seems lacking in all common sense. Add to that, Hoffmann's constant references about her lack of appetite suggest a serious eating disorder as when she says "there's a lavish meal laid on, and after nearly five days fasting, I've almost got an appetite." There are numerous comments regarding her inability to eat. From the very beginning, her control issues are apparent.

She's obviously driven to be successful. She knows how to hire and manage people, works like a dog, has good business skills and has no problems working with men. But she doesn't have a glimmer that her business interactions and negotiations with various businessmen might not be understood by her husband, whose cultural concepts of proper behavior between men and women could not be more different, and whose behavior from the beginning has led him to question her motives. And for all the time she spends in Africa, she never seems to pick up language skills. The African women that befriend her seem much wiser and truly helpful, always willing to help out, explain reality to her and to try and help pull her out of her cultural haze.

Lketinga, her husband, cannot be judged from this tale, as you never know his thoughts or his version of this sad domestic partnership, but I believe that he tried to let her know the relationship was doomed from the start. His wise suggestion to her that that "If I have such a good business in Switzerland, why don't I come back a few times a year for holidays and he would always be waiting for me" should have sparked her brain cells into a reality check, but to no avail. With complete self-centeredness she inflicts herself on this man and his community, and then wonders why he starts to resent and distrust her, even as her hard-earned Swiss francs service their needy community and floundering business efforts.

Much of the deference she receives is due to her physical attractiveness, the fact that she is white, and her obvious purchasing power. To those struggling native people she must have seemed a female Donald Trump. Corrine appears to have an endless supply of money. We are told she was a very successful business woman but I wonder if in reality she suffers from fear of holding on to her success.

Hoffman complains constantly about the amount of work she needs to do, always hiring help, having others pity and do things for her, describing her raw fingers, bad hair days, lack of sleep, her hollow-cheeked face and failing body. Martyr complex? Probably. Controlled by a dysfunctional need to crave a "real man" then resents it when he tries live life in the culture he knows? Very probably. Results. Complete wacko. Her husband quickly becomes a sort of victim of her wealth. He hates it but wants what it creates for him and the tribe. He can't manage it because he doesn't have the skills, so he uses the old tribal "you woman, me man" thing and the situation deteriorates more quickly. Her money and skills gives her power over him and emasculates him.

Hoffmann doesn't listen to the advice she receives from the native women and doesn't seem to have enough common sense to research the basics of what "marriage" entails in the new culture she is forcing her way into. Sex doesn't seem all that important to her, although she frequently admires his physical beauty and elegance of body; his compatibility needs elude and appall her at times. He is a piece of living, beautiful artwork that she must possess but will never understand. Next time, Corinne, buy yourself the painting, leave the person alone and save everyone the boring, constant flow of your endless tears.

Throughout the book, Hoffman constantly places herself in serious physical and personal danger, neglects herself even when very seriously ill, still pursuing her obsessive effort of the moment. Her lack of personal self-care causes serious consequences for her, endangers her unborn child and brings her at one point, close to death. One has to wonder, if it affected her long-term. Did it not occur to her that the fact Lketinga can neither read nor write, is not at all westernized, and comes from a primitive, agrarian culture, could cause serious conflict and misunderstanding? Corrine thoughtlessly forges forth not realizing her female independence is eroding his self-confidence and pride while still noting to the reader that he cannot add, subtract, organize nor stop giving her money away.

Lketinga's increasing lack of trust in their relationship probably stems from their initial meetings, when she broke with her current beau to take up with him. Lketinga probably believes that if she dumped her current man that quickly in favor of him, she might not be worthy of his trust. It was extremely disturbing to see how she brazenly and aggressively stalks him until she corners him in his village. She's relentless and very creepy. However, it is obvious that she has great affection for these people, that she does try to assimilate herself into their primitive way of life and does sometimes, actually enjoy it. Some of the scenes she describes of Samburu village life are quite moving. She sees the inequalities that exist for black Africans and how people scorn their black/white marriage. They are humiliated frequently by both black and whites yet she does not see nor knows how to manage the very real difficulties that her financial and female independence cause.

How many trips through the jungle in an ancient, broken-down Land Rover does it take for her to figure out that this isn't working? How many bouts of malaria, anemia, hepatitis and other diseases must she endure, even at the risk of injuring the child she carries? The most shocking tale to me was her attempt to assist a young woman in the midst of a monstrous labor trying to give birth to her dead child. Hey, if I saw some poor screaming woman squatting and bleeding profusely, with the arm of her unborn child hanging out of her vagina, I would be out of there forever!

How much quiet time is she really able to spend with her man while she buys the cars, pays bribes for passports and travel paper? Can she manage the household, take care of baby, run and stock the store, hire good help, deal with stealing employees, bad bookkeeping, terrified child brides and a nation with no concept of punctuality? Meanwhile he disrupts her business; fires the people she hires; disappears for days on end, herds his sheep, goats, oxen, visits his mom, smokes Miraa, drinks and does the manly thing with his male tribe members? Sad things are bound to happen.

Alas, the time arrives when Corrine has no money left and Lketinga's pretty much on the mental brink...presto! Time to go! Alas, love is gone but now she has her new baby to become her new obsessive-compulsive replacement ...and as her as her moody, addictive man starts becomes increasingly paranoid about her fidelity, (which the reader can see from almost the beginning) she manages to leave with her infant daughter on the pretence of a nice Swiss vacation. (Fade out with..."Oh my man, I love him so, he'll never know..." aka goodbye Nicki Arnstein)

But she sends sweet "please forgive me" letters to Lketinga, his mother and his brother. So I guess at least she didn't lose her nice Swiss manners.

I am a huge fan of the kind of travel writing that takes you into the lives of other peoples and cultures, and this one was a prime example of everything that is really neat about travel and ethnographic writing. It was engaging, funny, relatable, and I felt like I really got a picture of what it might have been like to live in that situation.

I had some mixed feelings about the decisions she made, though. I can't imagine being compelled by infatuation to shack up with someone who I can't communicate with directly. Then, I can't imagine living with them for a long time and having a child with a person with whom you haven't worked out basic cultural agreements with. Why in the world did she have a baby with someone in such a different culture without discussing issues with the father such as "will my baby have an arranged marriage by the time she is two", or "will my little girl be circumcised?".

And where did she get all of her money? I am 27 and work hard and don't have anywhere near the resources she had. Was she from a rich family?

Questions like this made the book a richer experience in some ways, because those internal struggles made me really think about my culture, my beliefs, and that of the Masai. I am not sure I like Corinne, but there is no doubt that she is a compelling writer and has a very compelling story. This would be a great read for a book club because it does bring up so many issues to discuss.

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.

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.

Readers can 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. To the other reviewers who don't understand why Corinne would ditch everything to live primitively in the Kenyan bush, her actions (comparable to Sarah Lloyd's) appear to be based on an atavistic desire by modern women to find traditionally masculine men, with beautiful chiseled bodies, tremendous pride, weapons (swords, kris, spears) worn at the waist ... as found among Masai, Samburu, Sikh and other men in the developing world.

Anthropologist April Gorry (who studied women who entered affairs with men in Belize) did a marvelous job in her doctoral thesis noting that modern women love competent, strong men, rather than the drones and eunuchs found in the Western workplace. That BMW cannot substitute for the ease with which men in traditional societies display mastery of their environment, from climbing a coconut tree and anchoring a boat to guiding female trekkers up Himalayan peaks. Corinne Hoffman's tale is only the most extreme variation of a phenomenon involving perhaps 25,000 women per year.

Unfortunately, it was the schadenfreude that kept me reading, and not the "romantic" angle or the "gripping yarn" comprised largely of the author's tangles with bureaucracy or free trade in Kenya. I came to dislike the author early in the book, and it was knowing that I would have the satisfaction of seeing her capricious actions and her condescending post-colonial attitude come back and bite her that kept me glued to the book to the very last page.

I had trouble believing that a 27 year-old woman - old enough to know better - on vacation in Kenya WITH HER BOYFRIEND would, upon seeing the Samburu who became her husband, begin stalking him and proclaiming him "[her] Masai" with a frightening and single-minded obsession. Love at first sight? Really? And then you stalk him all over Kenya for the next several months?

The author continues on her flighty course, foisting herself on this young man she has fallen for, and then foisting herself on his family and village in northern Kenya. She seems to expect their culture to change to suit her, and when it doesn't, she acts as if she's a victim. In fact, she plays the martyr throughout the book, whenever things don't go her way, whether the problems are the result of cultural differences or because she insists on driving a dangerous jungle road (over and over and over and over again) despite numerous near-disastrous trips on the road. No matter how many stupid choices she makes, she always finds someone or something to blame when things blow up in her face.

She seems endlessly put off by almost everyone she encounters during the course of the narrative, whether it's her baby daughter for messing up diapers, or the Italian priest in the mission neighboring the Samburu village who inconveniences her by not being at her disposal to bail her out of yet another of her self-inflicted disasters (broken car - AGAIN, ran out of sugar, etc.). Shortly after her marriage to the Samburu, her tone toward him, as she tells the story, changes, and you can tell that she is almost immediately disenchanted pretty much the moment she makes a formal commitment to him. Unfortunately, by then, she's pregnant and more or less stuck in the situation. Again, it's a situation which she doggedly and tirelessly pursued, so it's hard to feel sorry for her reaping the rewards of her actions.

She recklessly disregards her health (I can't count the number of times she recounts how little she's eaten - but always with a figurative martyrish sigh); the most descriptive writing in the book deals with her two-and-a-half chapters retelling her miseries with malaria; and while I'm certain that malaria is no picnic, she brought it all on herself, every single woe that befalls her in the book, and it's hard to feel sorry for her, as she obviously wants the reader to do. She clearly wishes the reader to read her account and say, "Oh, poor Corinne! Look what she must put up with - all for love!" but by the time she starts complaining in earnest, you realize how flighty, immature, and manipulative she is, and it's hard to pity her for actively pursuing the situation that is currently making her miserable.

As well as complaining about the ways "[her] darling" - ugh - disappoints her, she does little but complain about... well, nearly everything else, too. How hard it is to get a permit to open a store or get married. How far away all the towns are. How hard it is to get stock for her store. How dangerous the jungle road - that she still insists on taking every trip, inexplicably - is. How lousy her car is. How little she eats. How hard she works. How hard it is to be the only white person for miles. The entire book is a litany of complaints.

Her writing - and maybe part of this is the translation from German to English - is workmanlike and strangely dispassionate. The tales of her frequent journeys to various towns and villages in Kenya have a hypnotic quality because they're all the same ("I must go to Nairobi. How I hate that place! It will take me days to get there." And then she recounts the various problems - tire puncture, broken clutch, broken transmission, leaky battery - that she has in getting there. And then discusses how unhelpful the bureaucrats are. And then describes the trip back home - tire puncture, broken clutch, broken transmission, leaky battery. And then the complaints about "home," in the Samburu village, despite the fact it appears the villagers bend over backward to make her comfortable both within and outside of their culture, which she so rudely crashed into without consulting anyone but her own fickle heart). For someone whose writing is so detached, though, she manages quite a bit of melodrama, but it rings empty, much in the same way that a heroine in a Gothic novel speaks hollowly of her great love and her vast troubles. And then she faints prettily and waits to be rescued by a gallant gentleman with smelling salts. This is what the entire book is like.

The author is enormously self-centered and selfish, and as she expects the Samburu culture to bend to her needs, she refuses to take up much of any of the culture to meet her new family and neighbors halfway. This, unsurprisingly, causes clashes, wherein, again, she seems to believe that she is the victim and the villagers and her husband and his family are the victimizers. She has an incredibly condescending, undeniably racist attitude toward them and winds up emasculating her husband terribly. This leads to poor behavior on his part, to the point that I ALMOST felt sorry for her the last couple of chapters, but the poor guy was stalked and outmatched by an insufferably selfish and manipulative woman, so his behavior - acceptable in his culture - gets a pass from me.

What kept me reading was, at first, the hope that the author would become less self-involved and more self-aware, and that the "part travel-writing" part touted on the back of the book would begin to evidence itself. Once it dawned on me that this wouldn't happen, I kept reading to see the author's downfall. Pure bonus were the letters at the very end of the book wherein she tries to explain herself to pretty much everyone she came into close contact with during her years in Kenya, in which she sounds indescribably self-serving and reveals that she learned absolutely nothing about herself or the culture into which she injected herself while she was there. I suppose her book is an explanation to the rest of us about what happened, and an attempt to make us believe that she is noble, brave, and tragic. I found her more to be stubborn, headstrong, and impetuous, and I'm glad the book is over so I can move on to more worthy projects.

If you are able to borrow this book, by all means, give it a read. It was entertaining, it its own way, to read about this woman's constant delusion and habitual victimhood, and, like I said, I couldn't put it down once I'd started. But I'm sorry I paid money for the book, and I wouldn't do it again.

Holiday infatuations are not unusual during visits to distant and "exotic" lands. Unlike the temporary nature of most such affairs, this dramatic story leads the heroine-author to undertake a multi-year voyage of discovery that the reader is privileged to share. Corinne Hoffmann's personal memoir of the years with the "love of her life", is an absorbing read - at some stages almost too amazing to be a true account.

Having fallen for the beautiful Masai warrior, Lketinga, during a holiday in Kenya, Corinne, a successful Swiss business woman, decides to follow her heart. She sells her belongings back home, returns to Kenya and embarks on the adventure of her life. With great frankness she exposes her own naiveté when searching for "her man" who had moved away from the tourist coast, finally tracking him down to his settlement in northern Kenya. There, her lack of awareness of local customs creates more than one drama. She doesn't give up, however, and learns to adjust. Her descriptions of the life among the Samburu tribe in a remote part of Kenya contain insights into the traditional life that they lead. Warmth of feelings and even tenderness develop between her and "Mama" in particular, but also with the closer family and neighbours. Her love to Lketinga does not diminish despite the numerous challenges they are facing as a result of their vastly different backgrounds.

The local diet, malaria, hepatitis and her pregnancy all pose threats to her health and even survival. Several times she visits Switzerland to recoup her strength, but as soon as she leaves Kenya, she yearns to return. To contribute to the basic economic stability of the community, Corinne buys a car that allows her to ferry supplies from the nearest town to the settlement. She even opens a local shop which creates benefits for the family but also results in tensions between her business approach and her husband's tradition and customs. It is hard for her to accept that the cultural differences between her and her husband may jeopardize her continued stay in Kenya. In the end she has to draw painful consequences. Using "a needed vacation" with her daughter as a ruse, she does not to return to Kenya for many years.

With "The White Masai" Hoffmann has written a beautiful and moving portrait of a life committed to bridging vast cultural differences. Her style is very direct, almost intimate. The reader can visualize her life among the Masai, sense her emotional strength and the upheavals that accompany the love between her and "her Masai". Hoffmann returned to Kenya with her daughter after 14 years to meet up with her Kenyan family.
[Friederike Knabe

This is one of those books, I not only couldn't put down, but when I finished I headed to the computer to learn whatever more I could about the author. Having been to Africa and visited a Masai village, it was nearly impossible for me to understand how a sophisticated European negotiated the challenges of a primitive nomadic tribe's living conditions. A Masai hut is simply a circle of cowdung with a thatched roof and a beaten earth floor, in which the majority of space is occupied by the male masai, and the smaller sections of only several feet wide and deep are space for the women and animals. Add to that the only motivation for Corinne Hofman was lust, and even that was not satisfied. Love at first sight is one thing, but with no communication, a huge cultural divide, and primitive living conditions, it seems worth examination. I was consumed with curiosity, and interest in her story. She showed amazing courage and perseverence in conditions that are unimaginable to most Americans, and one wonders at the end of it all, how she feels now. I also wonder how her warrior husband processed the experience of basically being coopted by a European woman who was determined to marry him and whether, ultimately, it was confusing and exceedingly painful to him. I would read anything else she wrote, would travel to listen to her, and will long remember her story.

This book was disappointing. I had anticipated that the author would have explained what made her leave her live-in boyfriend, sell her apartment, 2 cars and shop in Switzerland to move to Kenya in pursuit of a relationship with a Masai warrior she'd barely met and with whom she did not share a common language. Her only explanation was that she was in love with "her Masai." At 27 she should have recognized the difference between animal lust and true love. (She admitted that she liked him better in only a loincloth with his hair, face and chest dyed red than she did when he was in shirt, jeans and sneakers.)
She gives few details other than an itenerary of their trips into towns to take care of business. Her most-detailed descriptions are of her episodes of vomiting and diarrhea during bouts of malaria and hepatitis. Her only mention of the cutting rituals to inflict decorative scarring is when she's on vacation in Switzerland and the cuts become infected with scabies.
She complains of being used by others while she contantly relies on the missionary priest to fix her broken-down car.
Her complaints are those of all young women who followed a school-girl-like crush to a marriage and parenthood for which they were ill prepared. She does not adequately describe the uniqueness of her situation. I'm sure her time in Africa must have been interesting, but that's not conveyed in the book. At first I thought this was the fault of the translation, but the book only received mediocre reviews at the German Amazon site.

Recounting her real experience, Corinne Hofmann, a Swiss clothing entrepreneur, vacations on the coast of Kenya and finds love in the someone of totally opposite culture, a nomad bushman of the Samburu tribe named Lketinga. Hofmann goes to great lengths to get married to Lketinga and start their family together, although it is easier said than done as she has to try and abandon her European ways to live with Lketinga's family in the "bush", meaning the Kenyan wilderness. The book closely documents the period that she lived with Lkentinga and the difficulties of making the transition from her Westernized lifestyle.

The actual story is riveting and fast paced and gives readers ample material to contemplate and ponder even after the book is over. However, Hofmann provides little reflection or analysis, even though the book was written years after her return to Europe, and she does not provide a satisfactory conclusion to all the characters, such as identifying where they are now, leaving for a disappointing ending. Also, some readers might find it troubling how Hofmann almost carelessly enters into their society without considering the impact that it would have on the community.

Although the book is in English, the original is in German, "Die Weisse Massai", which I recommend if you are able to read Deutsch, for some of the original meaning is lost in translation. In addition to the book, a movie in German was produced of the same name, "Die Weisse Massai" (2005). Also in this genre, British author Caitlin Davies documents her life in Botswana in the book "Place of Reeds."