An african love story

I have not shared stories with you for a while as I am so involved in my Masai community education campaign which is leaving little time for anythung else.

It is taking me on a journey to reconnect with old friends and to also go beyond my comfort zone to ask people for support, but it has so far been an AMAZING experience and one that is leaving my heart full of love every day!

We have also had a very sad week as we lost a young warrior in a tragic accident but the amount of love and support that has and is being shown to his family is just overwhelming and is leaving everything else in its shadow.

I am wrapped in a blanket of love, in the mood for sharing this beautiful emotion with the world and this is why I would like to tell you a love story - my very personal one. The story of how I met my husband Sokoine:

Sokoine taking a break while herding our cattle

I had met him on Mafia Island. A magical place. Paradise. A haven of peace, blue seas and the most amazing diving. Mafia to me was Zanzibar’s little sister. Just as beautiful and cultured but more herself. Less altered by the hordes of tourists that befall Zanzibar so frequently.

The day I set foot on Mafia was the day I met Sokoine.

I was with a group of volunteers, exploring the village of Utende, when we bumped into some Maasai. I was enthralled at first sight. He was taller and bigger than the others, but what drew me in were his eyes. Dark and fiery, yet infinitely kind and patient.

Our wedding day.

I tried to keep him there, on the dusty road in the midst of the village, with my year’s worth of Swahili I had picked up working in Ifakara, close to the Selous Game Reserve in the south of Tanzania. I did not want this moment to end. Another one of those moments that made me feel so intensely at one with the dust under my feet and the sun caressing my skin; at one with the country I had come to love, with the Swahili flowing freely off my tongue, with the immensely beautiful and fascinatingly exotic people standing in front of me.

He worked as security for one of the hotels by the beach and everyday, when we walked past, I tried to make myself as noticeable as possible, pushing our dive cart, laughing, talking; and should I glimpse him watching me, my heart would beat a little faster.

Five weeks passed and I became more and more attached to Mafia, its people and Sokoine. I knew I would not go back to Germany.

And when my friend Michael, whose shop down by the beach was right next to Sokoine’s, told me one day that Sokoine liked me, it seemed I had even more of a reason to stay.

That this beautiful, proud, mysterious human being that comes from a world I cannot even begin to envision, should like me, this ordinary white chick, was too much for me to comprehend. But it was true and we got together and spent the most amazing three weeks under the sun and the stars of Mafia Island…

…a year later we married and moved to his traditional Masai home in the Masai Steppe of Tanzania.

Our son Yannik, Sokoine and I. 

Six years later, and I am still here with him, his parents, his grandmother and more recently with our son. I am as in love with the beautiful country as I have always been and have recently launched a campaign to bring environmental education to our Masai community to make a stand against the ongoing environmental destruction of their homelands.

If you would like to support me in saving the Masai culture along with the wilderness they live in and depend on to feed their cattle, click on this link.