Title: My Maasai Life: From Suburbia to Savannah
Author: Robin Wiszowaty
Publisher: Greystone Books; Reprint edition
Publication Date: September 7, 2010
Paperback: 300 pages
ISBN: 978-1553655091
Genre: Non-fiction, Memoir

From the Publisher:

A memoir of a girl’s choice to leave childhood comforts behind to live in her adoptive country of Kenya

Growing up in suburban Illinois, Robin Wiszowaty never pictured herself living with an impoverished Maasai family in rural Kenya. Yet in her early twenties Wiszowaty embarked on an incredible journey that would shake her from complacency, take her to unimaginable locales, and change her life forever. My Maasai Life follows Wiszowaty’s remarkable voyage as she explores some of the most remote areas of East Africa and has her eyes opened to the diverse issues facing the fascinating Maasai people.

My Review:

After high school and during college it is not uncommon for one to question what one wants out of life, however, rarely does one hear a student declare they are selling their belongings to live with a semi-nomadic tribe in Kenya, yet this is what Robin Wiszowaty did and writes about in her memoir My Maasai Life.

Robin grew up in a nice middle-class family with two siblings and two loving parents yet something just was not settled in her.  While in college she decided she needed to distance herself and before long her parents were bidding her safe travels as she boarded a plan for Kenya. After a few weeks in Nairobi taking Swahili lessons and learning about the Maasai, the semi-nomadic tribe she would be living with in the southern region of the Great Rift Valley, she found herself in her second home, being greeted by her Mama and by her Kokoo, who together gave her the Maasai name of Naserian and soon found herself meeting her four new brothers and two new sisters.

My Maasai Life is an extraordinarily beautiful and blunt look at life in Kenya, primarily in Maasailand, through the eyes of a young, middle-class American whose experience living as part of the Maasai proves to be an invaluable lesson.  Wiszowaty writes about her experiences in a beautiful and reverent manner, the reader will feel as though they are witnessing what Robin is experiencing as she takes the reader through the day-to-day activities as well as the cultural differences, practices, and beliefs.  The similarities and differences are astonishing and a reader would be hard pressed to come away from this book unchanged.  Wiszowaty wants the reader to understand the Maasai, to see the beauty they see, share in their joys, sorrows and of course the suffering brought on by poverty.  Words truly fail me when I try to describe how profoundly this memoir affected me.  It is my hope that all readers will pick-up a copy of My Maasai Life, if for no other reason than it is an unforgettable memoir.

About the Author:

Robin Wiszowaty, born and raised in Schaumburg, Illinois, currently resides in her adoptive home of Kenya. She currently serves as Free The Children’s Kenya Projects Director.

I received a complimentary copy of My Maasai Life by Robin Wiszowaty from Little Bird Publicity. Receiving a copy in no way reflected my review of aforementioned novel.