Single Mom Moved to Africa, Found Love, and Got Racist Hate Online

Hi, friends! For the past 10 months, Linda has been living in Kenya with her son, and she's met a new man there. She shares her life on her Instagram account, where she regularly gets vicious comments about her new relationship, because she's a white woman in her mid-40s and he's a Black man in his early 30s. In this interview, she tells us why she left Germany and how she deals with the online hate.

Linda, when did you leave Germany, and why? What was your life like back then, in terms of work and everyday routine?

We moved to Zanzibar on May 28, 2023. My son and I, with four suitcases and, honestly, almost no idea what our life there would look like.

My life in Germany before that was pretty unremarkable. I was a single mom with a part-time job in marketing at a real estate company. It was a job that didn't excite or fulfill me, but it didn't completely swallow me whole either. It still wasn't enough money. I had to supplement my paycheck with Hartz IV, Germany's long-term welfare benefit, just to get by.

My son went to daycare like any other kid, and later to elementary school. My days were basically work, pick up my kid, playground, housework, get organized, and then start all over again. My highlight was honestly my two fitness classes a week. Those were the moments when I thought: Oh, there I am. I feel alive.

And at the same time, I'd had this dream of Africa for a very, very long time. More than a decade. I just had no idea how I'd ever make it happen as a single mom with a part-time job.

I'd also wanted my own business for a long time. But for years I told myself I couldn't do it. At some point I thought: If I keep waiting for the perfect moment, my life will be over one day and I'll never have tried any of the things I long for. 

So I started building an online business on the side. Step by step. Not because I knew it would all work out, but because I finally wanted to create a way to decide freely where and how we live.

By the way, I didn't leave Germany because I think Germany is terrible. It was more this really strong pull toward Africa. And at some point I thought: I'm almost 40. If not now, when?

Just a few years ago, you were very unhappy. Can you take us back to that time?

My son was born in 2015, and he turned my whole life upside down. He was a colicky baby who cried constantly and barely slept, and I still tried to just keep going like before. Push through. Function. Don't complain. Perform. Exactly the way I'd been used to my whole life.

Until at some point my body and my mind said: That's it. I had to go to a hospital because I'd developed severe postpartum depression. And that really was the lowest point of my life. My life was literally hanging in the balance back then, and I felt like: I can't do this anymore.

Looking back, though, that was also my reset button. The moment when everything that had worked before finally stopped working. I knew: I can't keep going like this. I can't just try to somehow carry on with my old life, only with a child. I have to completely reinvent myself. I have to build a life for my son and me that truly fits us.

I slowly got back on my feet, and then I was a single mom. Professionally, my old career life wasn't sustainable anymore. I went from branch manager to a woman with a part-time marketing job at a real estate company. And even though I'd worked hard my whole life, suddenly the money didn't even cover living expenses. I had to supplement with Hartz IV. At times, the welfare office even paid for my son's lunch. That was incredibly frustrating for me.

From the outside, you'd probably have said: normal life. Work, pick up the kid, playground, housework, get organized, start over. But for me it felt tighter and tighter. Vacations were barely affordable. My everyday life moved within a pretty small radius. 

And I think I have to say this: There are women who completely thrive in that classic mother role. I was never one of them. I love my son. But I was also always the woman who wanted to discover the world. I wanted adventure, travel, experience, creating things. I didn't just want to function.

And that's why that time was so hard for me. Not because every single day was objectively awful, but because deep down I always knew: This can't be all there is. So one question got louder and louder: How can my life look different?

Where do you live now, and how are you doing right now? And how do you earn a living?

We've now been living in Kenya for about ten months, in a coastal town right on the Indian Ocean. Before that, we lived on Zanzibar for two years and then traveled for quite a while, including Indonesia, Mauritius, and Malaysia. In the end, though, East Africa pulled us back, and that's how we landed in Kenya.

We're doing really well here. My son goes to a private school, like he did on Zanzibar, and he made friends here quickly. I have a new partner now. We live in a beautiful apartment, it takes about five minutes to get to the ocean, and my daily life looks very different today from what it was in Germany. 

I love riding around on my turquoise scooter, going to the beach, working out, and every once in a while I still think: Wow, this is really my life.

How do you pay for your life there?

I fund our life entirely with my online business. I coach women who know deep down that they want more from life but keep getting stuck. Women who function, who keep their daily lives together, who are there for everyone else, and who at the same time realize: I don't want to settle for crumbs for my entire life.

My work is about getting them moving again. In their mindset, in their energy, and above all in practical ways in their real lives. So that "I'd actually like to …" eventually becomes "I'm doing it now."

And this work fulfills me enormously. Because every day I get to watch women start moving forward for themselves again. Sometimes those are huge decisions, sometimes small steps. But they're moving. They build themselves a life that truly fits them, piece by piece. For me, there's hardly anything better.

You show your life on Instagram…

I'm very open about my life on Instagram. Not because I think everyone needs to know everything about my private life, but because I believe lived stories can be hugely encouraging to people.

When someone sees a single mom who one day went to Africa with four suitcases, built a business, travels, loves, tries things, and sometimes changes everything all over again, maybe another woman starts to think: Maybe more is possible for me than I currently believe.

…But your new relationship in Kenya has drawn a lot of vicious comments online….

True. From my perspective, a lot of these comments play into very clear racist and colonial stereotypes. For example, I'm portrayed as an older, sex-starved white sex tourist who "took" or bought herself a poor Black man.

At the same time, my partner is portrayed as a man who obviously couldn't have any real interest in me and must just want my money, a passport, or German citizenship. What's interesting is that in these stories, the two of us can only be perpetrator or victim. Either I'm using him or he's using me.

The possibility that two adults might simply meet, fall in love, and have a relationship doesn't seem to exist for some people. And then all of it gets completely analyzed based on a ten-second Instagram video.

What exactly gets analyzed?

People argue with statistics, TV shows, documentaries, or stories from the internet. And I always think: I've never lived my life according to statistical probability. Of course no one can guarantee how a relationship will turn out. But no one can guarantee that with a German guy from the next street over, either. All my life, I've followed life, not fear.

Where do you think this hatred and contempt come from?

I can't answer that definitively, of course. I can't get inside anyone's head. I was honestly pretty naive at first. I just showed my life and my relationship, and I never would have thought that alone could set off such a strong reaction in some people.

I think several things come together. Prejudice plays a role, of course. With a white European woman and a Black African man, certain images immediately pop up for some people. Not the real couple they're looking at, but everything they've ever heard, read, or seen on TV about relationships like this.

Then there's something else: fear. Sometimes I feel like a lot of people now see the world mostly through a lens of danger. What could go wrong? Who could cheat me? Where could I get taken advantage of? Who can't I trust?

I also think that when someone visibly makes different choices than you do and looks happy about it, it can stir something up. Because suddenly there's an unspoken question hanging in the air: What if my life were less set in stone than I've always thought? If it's actually possible to change things, then maybe I'd have to ask myself where I'm holding myself back.

That doesn't mean every critical comment comes from envy, or that everyone who disagrees with me is unhappy. But with this kind of extreme contempt and aggression, I do believe there's a lot of projection going on. Because a content person usually doesn't need to explain to a stranger on Instagram that she's ugly, stupid, or sex-starved.

How do you react to comments like these? And how does your boyfriend handle it?

I'd be lying if I said it does nothing to me. Of course it does something to you when you constantly read that you're stupid, ugly, naive, sex-crazed, out of touch with reality, or whatever else. I'm not a robot.

At the same time, I've gotten pretty good at stepping back and looking at it from a distance. I can put it in perspective: These people are judging from their own point of view. They don't know me. They don't know my partner. They don't know our relationship. They don't know our everyday life. They see ten seconds of Instagram and build a whole story out of it.

Some of the comments are so absurd by now that they almost become funny again. For example, someone accused me of running some kind of smuggling ring, deliberately connecting German women with African romance scammers.

Or I post a totally harmless, sweet everyday scene on a motorcycle taxi, where someone behind us grabs on for a moment while on rollerblades, and suddenly the comments turn it into a story about how many men I'm supposedly "sleeping my way through Africa" with. In moments like that, it becomes very clear to me: We're not living in the same reality. And then I can get some distance.

Sometimes I even feel sorry for these people. I don't mean that in a condescending way. But someone who looks for danger, fraud, and the worst-case scenario everywhere will probably miss out on a lot of beautiful experiences. Many years ago, I decided for myself: I only take advice from people who are living something in that area that I'd like to live myself. In the end, I'm the one who lives with the consequences of my decisions.

Of course, I don't have a crystal ball either. I don't know if I'll live in Kenya forever. I don't know what will be in ten or twenty years. And of course I can make wrong decisions, too. But for me, the bigger risk would be not living my whole life out of fear of possible mistakes. So I make my decisions consciously, and then I take responsibility for them.

My partner himself was pretty shocked by the comments. He'd always had a very good impression of Germany. Some older German expats live here, and he's trained a few of them at the gym, and those were always very nice, respectful encounters for him. So his impression was positive. 

When the shitstorm on Instagram got bigger, I eventually told him about it. And he was visibly stunned. Mostly at how quickly people judge others they don't know at all. Right now, he isn't especially interested in ever visiting Germany. On one hand, I think that's sad. On the other hand, I totally understand. If your first intense contact with a country is people telling you, unprompted, what kind of person you supposedly are, I'd probably feel the same.

How different does this relationship feel from your previous ones?

Very different. Although it's funny, because people online sometimes make up this unbelievable history of men for me. In reality, I've had exactly two men in ten years. After the relationship with my son's father, I had no interest in a partnership for a long time. I separated from him around the time of the birth, because that relationship wasn't good for me or for my child.

After that, I was truly fed up with men. I didn't date anyone for years and pretty much closed the chapter on love. It wasn't until Zanzibar that I had a partner again after many years. That was an important and also very beautiful relationship for me, because after all my disappointment, I got to experience again that men can be reliable. They can be honest. They can be loving.

In the end, it still didn't work out, because a long-term partnership takes more than love and good intentions. Some very practical things about sharing a life just didn't fit together.

My relationship now feels completely different again. I've never experienced this kind of love before. So much attention, care, protection, and real presence. This man is one of the most loving people I know. And he shows me his love every day, not through grand gestures, but in everyday life.

There are no games. No artificial distance. No constant guessing about where you stand with the other person. He takes responsibility. He's reliable. He worries about me, and at the same time he supports me in doing my own thing. He stands behind my business and my ideas and doesn't try to make me smaller.

It really feels like a partnership. I can be very soft with him without having to be weak. I can be fully feminine and still be the independent, ambitious woman I am.

We're very close, emotionally and physically. And something else that's new for me is our spiritual connection. God has a place in our relationship. For us, partnership isn't just: We like each other, we live together, and we have a nice time. For us there's something deeper there. Something sacred. A covenant. We can talk for hours about God, about the meaning of life, about why we're here and what we want to leave behind in this world. I'd never experienced that level in a partnership before. And it gives me an incredible amount of peace.

With this person, for the first time, I have a very strong feeling: I could really imagine going through life with you.

What do you wish for your future, and for yours together?

Above all, I wish for a whole lot more life. I want to travel with my partner and my son, discover new countries, have adventures, see beautiful places, and collect lots more memories.

I'm not a ten-year-plan kind of person. I'd rather check in regularly: Does this life still feel right for me? What do I want to change? What do I still want to experience? What do I still want to go after? What maybe doesn't fit anymore? And then I follow that.

I also want both of us to keep growing professionally. My partner is continuing to build his personal training business, and I want to reach many more women with my work. I also hope for more financial growth, not just to make some number in my bank account bigger, but because money creates possibilities. More chances to travel. More freedom. More chances to build something. And above all, a bigger impact. 

I hope that someday we can look back and say: We really lived. We loved, we tried things, we took risks, we touched people, and we left this world a little bit better than we found it. That would be one hell of a life for me.