Free The White Masai by Corinne Hofmann

beer as a present for her father. I can hardly believe my eyes when she gets the case and plonks it on her head on top of everything else. I can’t wait to see how these Masai live; Priscilla has told me they’re more affluent than the Samburu tribes to which Lketinga belongs.
    When we finally get up to our destination there’s a huge ‘Hallo’, and a crowd of people rushes towards Priscilla then suddenly stops and stares in silence at me. Priscilla apparently tells them all that we’re friends. First of all we have to go to her brother’s house because he speaks a bit of English. The dwellings are all bigger than our village house, with three rooms, but everything is dirty and covered with soot because they cook on open wood fires. Chickens, puppies and cats run around all over the place as do children, everywhere you look: kids of every age, bigger ones carrying the little ones piggyback. Priscilla hands out the first presents.
    The people here don’t dress as traditionally. They wear normal clothing and live as farmers. When the goats come back from the fields it’s my duty as guest to pick out the one we’ll have for a welcome dinner. I can’t bring myself to hand out a death sentence, but Priscilla tells me that it’s traditional and considered a great honour. For all I know I’ll have to do this daily and whenever we visit anyone else. So I point out a white goat, which is immediately rounded up. Two men cut the poor animal’s throat, and I have to turn my eyes away from its death throes. Already it’s got dark and cooled down. We go into the house and sit around the fire burning on the earth in one of the rooms.
    Where the animal is being roasted or boiled, I have no idea. I’m all the more surprised therefore when I’m presented with a whole foreleg and a huge bush knife. The other leg is put down in front of Priscilla. ‘I can’t eat all this,’ I tell her, ‘I’m not starving.’ She laughs and tells me we’ll simply take the rest with us and eat it tomorrow. The idea of gnawing at this leg again for breakfast doesn’t thrill me. But for form’s sake I eat what I can, although I get laughed at for my lack of appetite.
    Dog-tired and suffering from backache, I ask where we’re going to sleep. We’re given a narrow couch that we’re supposed to share. There’s no sign of any water to wash with, and without a fire the room is terriblycold. I put on my pullover and a thin jacket to sleep in. I’m even glad to be squeezed next to Priscilla; at least it’s warmer. In the middle of the night I feel an itch and wake up to find tiny creatures running all over me. My first instinct is to leap off the couch, but it’s pitch black and freezing cold. There’s nothing for it but to stick it out until morning. At first light I wake Priscilla and point to my legs. They’re covered in red bites, probably from fleas. There’s not much to be done since I haven’t brought a change of clothes. I want to wash but when I go outside I’m taken aback: the whole area is covered in mist and there’s a frost on the lush meadows. I could almost be on a farm in the Swiss Jura mountains.
    Today we’re off again to see Priscilla’s mother and her children. We tramp across hills and fields, meeting children or old folk here and there. The children keep their distance from me but the older people, women mostly, want to touch me; some hold my hand and mutter something I don’t understand. Priscilla says most of them have never seen a white woman before, let alone touched one. That turns out to be why when our hands are together they spit on them: it’s a particular honour.
    After three hours’ walk we finally reach the hut in which Priscilla’s mother lives. Immediately children charge towards us and hang on to Priscilla. Her mother, who’s even rounder than Priscilla, is sitting on the ground washing clothes. They obviously have a lot to talk about, and I try to get the gist of at least a bit of it.
    This