Thinking About The White Masai

When I was away on vacation, one of the decadent aspects was reading three books in five days.  I used to read all the time but now I find it easier to numb my brain with bad TV for an hour or two after Will crashes instead of picking up a book.  Very bad habit.  I enjoyed the books far more than I do random singing contests or reruns of old Oprah shows.  (This is what you get when you give up cable).

One of the books I read was The White Masai.  My friend sent it away with me, promising a ‘can’t put down adventure tale of this crazy woman’.  Sounds like something I could both star in and read.  So I grabbed it.  And true to her word, I couldn’t put it down.  But mostly because I was in disbelief about what this woman did.  Did I mention it’s a true story? Here’s the trailer – it’s in German but you’ll get the idea.

[youtube id=”LVVERI6dAtc”]

Essentially, she goes on vacay with her boyfriend, sees a Masai warrior for a minute and decides that he is her destiny.  She sells her business, leaves her boyfriend and moves to his village in Africa.  She ends up marrying him, having a baby, almost dying a bunch of times, getting treated like crap and eventually leaving.  Oh and the sex scenes in that trailer – not accurate according to her book.  It was ‘Pretty Woman’ ish…no kissing on the mouth and no head thrown back in ecstasy…but nice touch screenwriters.

I doubt her hair looked that well conditioned!

Having been declared ‘totally unromantic’ by my friend Jeff, a claim I vehemently deny, I’ve been thinking about this book a ton.  What would you give up for a feeling that this is THE person?  And at what point would you listen to your head over heart.  In this situation, my head would say this….

Sara – look, I know the dude is hot however he doesn’t speak your language, he will want to have many wives, you will live in a dirt hut, you will most likely get malaria and never bathe or have a regular meal.   Vacation love stays vacation love.  Oh and he lives with his mother.

It’s not realistic to just toss everything aside and follow up on it.

Don’t misunderstand me.  I get the whole ‘love at first sight’ thing.  Remember the song ‘In My Life’ from Les Mis when Marius talks about seeing Cosette and ‘being struck to the bone in a moment of breathless delight’?  I’ve felt that.  Been there.  It’s amazing and heady.  And that night, in that moment, once I regained the ability to speak, I probably would have given up some significant things.  But I guess here is where my unromantic side kicks in.  It’s not realistic to just toss everything aside and follow up on it.  We sort of did and after some high drama, the only thing that happened were hurt feelings and people.

So what about you?  Could you toss aside everything and move to the ends of the earth for someone? Romantic or just a bad outline for a Harlequin romance?