Read Online The White Masai by Corinne Hofmann - Free Book Online

work things out and get to know Lketinga better. I’ve worked on my English, and I’ve packed some good textbooks with lots of pictures. In fifteen hours’ time I will be in my new home. With that thought in my mind I board the plane, lie back and peer through the cabin window for a last look at Switzerland. Who knows when I’ll be back? To celebrate my departure and a new beginning, I order champagne and don’t know whether to laugh or cry.

A New Homeland
    F rom Mombasa Airport I can take a hotel bus as far as the Africa Sea Lodge, even though I haven’t booked a room. Priscilla and Lketinga ought to know when I’ll get there. I’m in a real tizzy. What if nobody turns up? But barely have I had time to think about it before I’m at the hotel, look around and see there’s nobody there to welcome me. All of a sudden, standing there with my heavy case all my excitement gives way to immense disappointment. Then out of nowhere I hear my name, and when I turn round to look up the path there’s Priscilla charging towards, me her enormous bosom wobbling. Tears of joy and relief flood into my eyes.
    We embrace and of course I have to ask about Lketinga. A cloud passes over her face and she turns away from me to say: ‘Corinne, please! I don’t know where he is!’ She hasn’t seen him since shortly after I left, more than two months ago. She’s heard stories but doesn’t know what’s true and what isn’t. I want to hear everything, but Priscilla says we should go back to the village first. I pile my heavy case on top of her head, and with me carrying just my little piece of hand luggage off we go.
    But my God, I’m thinking to myself, what happened to my dreams of great love and happiness? Where on earth is Lketinga? I can’t believe he’s simply forgotten everything. In the village I meet another woman, a Muslim. Priscilla introduces her as a friend and explains that for the moment at least the three of us have to share her accommodation because this woman doesn’t want to return to her husband. The little house is not very big but for now it will do.
    We drink tea, but I’m awash with unanswered questions. I ask about my Masai, and Priscilla with no little hesitation tells me what she’s heard.One of his fellow warriors is supposed to have said he’d gone back home, sick and unhappy because he’d had no letter from me for such a long time. ‘What?’ I explode. ‘I wrote at least five times.’ Now even Priscilla looks surprised: ‘Really? Where to?’ she asks. I show her the P.O.Box address on the north bank. Ah, she says, no wonder Lketinga didn’t get any letters. This P.O. Box apparently belongs to all the Masai on the north bank, and any of them can take whatever they want out of it. Given that Lketinga can’t read, someone else has probably taken them.
    I can hardly believe what Priscilla is telling me: ‘I thought all the Masai were friends, almost like brothers. Who’d do a thing like that?’ That’s when I find out for the first time about the jealousy among the warriors living here on the coast. When I left three months ago, some of the men who’d been on the coast a long time had teased and hassled Lketinga, saying things like: ‘A woman like her, young and pretty, with lots of money, isn’t going to come back to Kenya for a black man with nothing.’ According to Priscilla, because he hadn’t been living here long and hadn’t received any letters, he’d probably believed them.
    I ask Priscilla curiously where, then, is home for Lketinga. She’s not certain, but somewhere in the Samburu District: a three-day journey away. I shouldn’t even think of it. Now that I’m here, she’ll find someone to go out there in the near future and get a message through. ‘Give it time, and we’ll find out what’s happened. Pole, pole ,’ she says, which means something like ‘slowly, slowly’. ‘You’re in Kenya now, you need time and patience.’
    The two women fuss over me like a