The White Masai Read Online Free PDF

remember the dreadful scene when I kissed him that first time and I realize that what I’m hearing is the truth.
    Priscilla hasn’t looked at me while we’ve been talking, and I realize too that it must be hard for her to talk about things like this. Everything is rushing through my mind, and I’m not sure if I’ve understood it all properly. The night’s experiences force themselves into the back of mymind, and the only thing I know is that I want this man and nobody else. I love him and beyond that everything else can be dealt with, I tell myself.
    Later on we take an overcrowded matatu to Ukunda, the next biggest village, where me meet more Masai sitting around in a native teahouse. It’s nothing more than a few planks nailed together, a roof, a long table and a few stools. The tea is brewed in a white pot hung over the fire. We sit down together and people look me over with an eye that’s partly critical, partly curious. And then they’re all talking at once, obviously about me. I look each of them over in turn, and none of them looks as handsome or as peaceful as Lketinga.
    We sit there for what seems like hours, but I don’t mind not understanding anything. Lketinga is touchingly attentive, continuously getting me something to drink and then fetching a platter of meat: little pieces of goat that I can hardly bring myself to swallow, they’re so bloody and tough. Three is as much as I can manage without choking, and I indicate to Lketinga that he should finish it, but neither he nor any of the other men will take anything from my plate even though it’s obvious that they’re hungry.
    After half an hour they get up, and Lketinga tries to explain something to me using his hands and feet. The only thing I understand is that they all want to go and eat but that I can’t come with them. I’m determined, however, that I should. ‘No! Big problem! You wait here,’ I hear. I watch them disappear behind a wall, followed minutes later by mountains of meat. After a while one Masai comes back. He looks like a man with a full stomach, and I ask him why I had to stay behind, but all he says is: ‘You wife, no lucky meat.’ Something else I’ll have to ask Priscilla about.
    We leave the teahouse and take the matatu back to the beach. When we get to the Africa Sea Lodge we decide to get out and visit Jelly and Eric. We’re stopped at the entrance, however, and I have to explain to the doorman that we just want to visit my brother and his girlfriend before he lets us in without saying a word. At the reception desk the hotel manager greets me with a smile and says in English: ‘So you will now come back into the hotel?’ I say no and tell him I like it just fine in the bush. He shrugs his shoulders and says: ‘We’ll see how long it lasts!’
    We find Eric and Jelly at the pool. Eric comes up to me and says irritably: ‘About time you showed yourself.’ He asks if I slept well, which makes me laugh, and I reply: ‘Well, I’ve spent more comfortable nights, but I’m happy.’ Lketinga’s standing there, and he laughs and says: ‘Eric, what’sthe problem?’ A few white people in swimsuits stare at us. A couple of women stroll past noticeably slowly and gape openly at my beautiful Masai in his finery and freshly applied body paint. He pointedly ignores them, rather embarrassed at the sight of so much flesh.
    We don’t stay long; I have shopping to do – paraffin, toilet paper and above all a torch. Last night I didn’t need to go out in the middle of the night to find the bush toilet, but I might not always be so lucky. The toilet is outside the village, reached by a rickety chicken ladder six feet above the ground – a little hut made out of woven-together palm leaves with two boards for your feet and a hole in the middle.
    We get everything in one shop, obviously where the hotel employees do their shopping, and for the first time I notice how cheap everything here is. Compared to what I’m used to, all