The old dusty bus clattered along the
familiar countryside of Tanzania at surprising speed and I started to drift
off…
I dreamt of him, and of what would await me at
his home, his boma, where he lived with his entire family. Nerve-wracking
enough to visit your boyfriend’s home for the first time, never mind meeting
his parents, grandmother, brothers, sisters, cousins and whoever else lived at
the place.
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.
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 quiver with joy.
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…
…And now he is my husband, and I am still here
with him, his parents, his grandmother and more recently with our son. We
are all still here in the Maasai Steppe of Tanzania.
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