Corinne Hofmann

[2][3] Born on June 4, 1960, to a German father and a French mother, Corinne studied in the canton of Glarus and eventually went into the retail trade.

The Samburu are a pastoralist people related to the Maasai, and live in small villages in an arid area of central Kenya.

Hofmann moved into her mother-in-law's manyatta (compound) and learned to live as a Samburu woman, fetching wood and water.

Increasingly paranoid jealousy from her husband, possibly a side effect of his addiction to the drug khat (miraa), severely damaged her relationship, and in 1990 she decided to return to Switzerland for good, taking her daughter with her.

Her most recent book, "Das Mädchen mit dem Giraffenhals" is the story of her childhood in the Swiss province and how she became the woman that she is today, or was at the time she first went to Kenya.