Stephanie Fuchs travelled to Tanzania in East Africa as a research assistant for a marine conservation project. One day she was out for a walk when she bumped into Sokoine, her husband-to-be. «What attracted me to him were his eyes. His calm, steady gaze,» she said. Today, they even have a son together.
Some time ago, we told you about an Englishwoman who went to live in the Amazon because she fell in love with a young Peruvian. Love has no geographical limits, and today we prove it again with a new love story. This time, the plot is set in Tanzania, an East African country to which a German woman arrived and fell in love at first sight with her current husband, a man who belongs to the Maasai tribe. They’ve been together for nine years and have a son.
Stephanie Fuchs (34) and Sokoine are living proof that love conquers all. She’s from Germany and met her current husband on January 5th, 2011, after she travelled to Tanzania to work as a research assistant for a marine conservation project. The man worked as a security guard at a dive center in the area, according to the woman’s Instagram account.
Stephanie arrived with her fellow researchers in the village of Utende. They settled in, and she decided to go out and explore the area. She spoke Swahili – the Tanzanian language – perfectly because she’d spent a year in another camp. «I had already fallen in love with Tanzania. I had fallen in love with the wonderful people and the incredible wilderness,» she said in a post on the popular photo and video social networking platform.
She continued her tour of the wilderness and came across a group of Maasai men, a tribe in Tanzania of some 880,000 people. Stephanie saw three members, but only one caught her attention. It was Sokoine. «What attracted me to him were his eyes. His calm, steady gaze exuded so much peace and confidence,» the woman said on Instagram.
Days passed, but Stephanie couldn’t forget about Sokoine. «A few weeks passed and my fascination with Sokoine only grew stronger,» she said. Still, she was embarrassed to approach him.
One day, the German woman was hanging out in a restaurant with a local friend when suddenly Sokoine walked in. Her friend says «oh, look, here comes your Maasai». She asked him in surprise why he’d said that, to which he replied «Oh… don’t you know? He likes you». A couple of days passed and the two started talking… and the rest is history.
«11 months later, I moved in with him and his family on his traditional farm in the middle of the Tanzanian desert,» Stephanie added on social media.
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Today, Stephanie and Sokoine have been married for nine years and have a four-year-old son. Although she admits that her marriage isn’t perfect and that her life is «not a fairy tale», she’s happy living in East Africa.
In an interview with Globstory, the German woman showed her life in Tanzania and said that while she’s had to adapt to the Maasai culture, her husband has also had to adapt to hers. This is how they’ve managed to maintain a balanced relationship. «In our relationship, there are certain things he does that other Maasai men don’t do,» she explained.
Sokoine is actively involved in the upbringing of his son, just as if he were a Western man, and just like he should be. It turns out that in Maasai culture, the task of raising a child falls primarily on the mother, but Stephanie’s husband is breaking down that stereotype.
On the other hand, the woman’s relationship with her husband’s family is quite good. She is close to her in-laws and especially to her mother-in-law, who’s asked her on several occasions if they’ll be bringing another child into the world.
«I’m getting a bit of pressure from my mother-in-law and my husband’s grandmother. Whenever I’m in the cabin, they always like to ask, ‘Stephanie, when is the next child coming?’, but I always run out of the cabin,» she said.
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