Die weiße Massai

Corinne Hofmann:

In this autobiographic novel at the center of which is the heroine Corinne Hoffmann, the author depicts actual facts traced on a personal experience. Accompanied by her fiancé, the narrator sojourns for four years in a Massai village of Kenya. Their stay in Kenya is placed under the sign of exotism. Not being able to resist the charm of the Massai warrior Lketinga, the heroine breaks her engagement on her return to Switzerland, quits her job, leaves her family and friends and marries Lketinga with whom she settles in the countryside in Kenya.

Lketinga is a vigorous warrior who can neither read nor write. Like everyone in his tribe, he has only one traditional attire made of skins of wild animals. The living conditions of the Massai are extremely difficult, compared to the ultramodern comfort of Swiss society. The firewood is the only source of energy. The daily food is essentially made up of maize pap and meat. The only drink is water from the polluted river which also serves as a bathing place for the entire village. Together with her mother- in-law the narrator shares Lketinga's hut. Communication between the spouses is made up more of gestures than words. Notwithstanding with these particularly difficult living conditions for a European, the heroine tries somehow to adapt herself to her new environment. She buys a vehicle and opens a store in view of making life easier for the villagers. From the union with the warrior, Lketinga, a girl child is born and she is named Napiraï. Meanwhile, the jealousy and growing possession of Lketinga forces the heroine to return for good to Switzerland with her daughter.

The union between the heroine Hoffmann and the Massaï warrior poses the problem of encounter between the self and the other. Here, the problem of intercultural relations is also revealed.
The heroine shows her determination to integrate herself into the Massaï society . So she registers herself in the complex school of understanding and accepts a foreign culture. She learns and accepts the cultural values of the Massaï people apparently without judging them. In return, she brings to him enriching element of Western culture: she buys a vehicle and puts a grocery at the disposal of the villagers. By this, the narrator wants to ameliorate the living conditions of the Massaïs. The heroine seems to open up to the Massaï culture and identifies with it to the point that she gives the impression of wanting to break with her culture. Meanwhile such a rupture raises questions. Thus it will not be superfluous to ask if the love that the heroine develops towards Lketinga is not purely exotic. Is the impossible relationship between Lketinga and the narrator not simply a representation of the failure of any dialogue between the West and Africa?

The heroine breaks her engagement, abandons her family and friends in Switzerland to marry Lketinga, to unite herself with the Massai culture; but from start to finish this marriage is tinged with exotism. It is certainly true that the Massai were not living in the same material conditions as the Europeans, but they did not automatically need a vehicle or a grocery either. In reality, it is the heroine who seems to have felt the need to create a space for her original culture within the Massai culture. It is infact a projection of western cultural values in Massai cultural sphere; A projection that tends towards confirming the asymmetrical relationships between the North and the South. The heroine will not tolerate that Lketinga according to Massai tradition, considers his wife's goods as his. The union therefore ends up in failure, and Corinne takes Napirai with whom she returns to Switzerland. This scene confers to the title of the work a very peculiar connotation. In effect, the heroine lived among the Massai's for four years. Nevertheless she remained European with a superiority complex. From whence the failure of harmonious encounter with the other.

The Massai welcomed the heroine inspite of the cultural differences. This might be interpreted as the image of an Africa where cultural differences do not constitute potential sources of conflict. In this case one will agree with Dieter Kramer who holds that cultural differences ought not to be considered as a potential for conflict but instead as a resource for the solving of global problems. Meanwhile the real question is to know whether Africa has a choice in this acceptance void of restriction of the other. Does the attitude of the Massais not simply result from the asymmetrical relationships between Europe and Africa? It should also be underlined that it is easier to acquaint oneself with this culture than to identify oneself with it.