This story of a relationship between a Masai warrior and a Swiss businesswoman will demonstrate a clash of cultures at its fullest. The author, Corinne Hofmann is a German entrepreneur from Switzerland who meets Lketinga, a Masai warrior while she vacations in Mombasa, Kenya's beautiful coast. She pursues this tall, handsome smooth black warrior a year later in 1987 and they begin a torrid love affair in an Africa which has never seen interracial dating let alone a white person.
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Months later, Corinne decides to abandon her life in Switzerland and move to the bush in Africa with her Masai warrior. They lived in a five-foot tall hut made out of cow dung and had to walk miles just for water. Lketinga and Corinne encounter language barriers and cultural differences that they try to overcome with many struggles. The warrior paints his face daily, wears a loincloth, carries a spear, doesn't understand kissing, and drinks goat's blood. Corinne has to adapt to very few baths, thousands of flies, eating goat, living without a toilet, electricity, or running water, which she does admirably.
She had encountered many wild animals in the bush, caught malaria and endured hunger. It was then she decided to open up a small shop that sold maize and sugar to the locals.
This help to provide a few comforts for them, like a mattress and money to help Lketinga's mama out. Corinne bought a 4-wheel drive truck with the money she made from selling her business in Switzerland and that provided her and the locals with a ride to the city for medicine and goods. They married the following year in the bush. She and Lketinga fought many battles over female circumcision, which he totally believed in but she refused adamantly.
After an extremely hard pregnancy a year later, more bouts of malaria and an increasingly jealous husband, Corrine's life starts to crumble. She worries about her baby daughter growing up in such circumstances. Corinne did all the business deals with her customers since she knew had to count money and do the accounting but was accused of having affairs with those men. Slowly their business was going under due to the warrior's insecurities. He talked about getting a second wife and started to get physically controlling with Corinne. She now started to see that in order to survive she must return to Switzerland to get proper nutrition and a safer life for herself and her baby daughter.
The review of this Book prepared by Susan D. Minkalis
