I have just re-read The White Masai series by Corinne Hoffman. Each night I would read a few chapters and couldn’t wait for the next night to pick up the story.
The White Masai, Reunion in Barsaloi and Back From Africa tell of Corinne’s true story, beginning with her journey to Africa and falling in love with a Masai warrior from a remote village in the poorest part of Kenya. She was a well-educated woman from Switzerland who already had a boyfriend, off on an adventure to an exotic land. She was on a crowded ferry and says she turned her head, looked at him and fell in love ‘in one second’, and then her life changed completely.
She returned to Switzerland, sold up everything and went back to Africa on an impulse to find Lketinga and make a life with him. She lived in a small hut with an earthen floor and walls made of cow dung and cooked over an open pot. They came from two different cultures and her trials trying to fit in to her new husband’s life would test anyone. They had a daughter together but eventually his jealousy made her pack up and leave Kenya, taking the child with her. Through the series of books, Corinne tells of her life back in Switzerland and the difficulties for her and her child as the village found them ‘curiosities’. She eventually went back to Kenya and describes the reunion with Lketinga and his mother – and Lketinga’s new wife.
It’s a truly fascinating story. I read the series a couple of years ago but found them just as intriguing the second time around. There was a film made, but there are more details in the books.
Cheers, Carmel
http://www.amazon.com/Ours-Yours-Mines- ... +and+mines