The German former glamour model opens up about what she claims to be her transformation into a 'true African woman'
A GROUP of tribeswomen in traditional African garb stand singing in the grasslands of Kenya - but one woman stands out and it's not just because of her 32S boobs.
Martina Big is the naturally fair-skinned glamour model turned tanning addict who is so convinced that she has changed race she appeared on This Morning last week declaring she will conceive "black babies".
Remarkably, the 30-year-old who has been taking melanin injections for two years, now plans to leave her native Germany to move to Africa to be among "her people", despite a psychologist saying that race is a biological construct.
Here, Sun Online can reveal that Martina recently went on a house-hunting trip in Kenya - and was baptised 'Malaika Kubwa’ - meaning ‘Big Angel’ in Swahili - along the way.
"I not only look like an African woman, I also feel that I’m now an African woman," she tells Sun Online.
"I spent time in Kenya last year and I felt so at home. Now I have a lot of invitations from all over Africa.
"I wanted to go to different countries there and learn more and to decide which place is best for me to live."
It’s the latest bizarre chapter in a story which started seven years ago when Martina, a former air steward, quit her job to pursue her dream of having an "extravagant Barbie figure".
Twenty-four surgeries followed all over her body, including increasing her natural 32D breasts to the 32S they are now, which she inflates using a saline pump.
"I hope to have them made even bigger soon," she says. "I want the biggest breasts in the World".
Then in January 2017, Martina, who had previously used sunbeds to boost her pale skin, had a series of tanning injections claiming at the time she was "obsessed" with darker skin.
Now however she insists that the injections were in fact experimental medicine designed to boost the body's resistance to skin cancer.
"I had three injections. Lots of people had the same treatment and everyone reacted differently," she says. "Some people had only a little change, but for me it changed me entirely.
"At first I could only see my skin tone changing from light to dark to really dark, then after a while I could see my eye colour change to darker, and my eyebrow and my hair changing too.
"It’s a change that is inside as well as out. These changes are not superficial but deep inside me."
So deep in fact that last year Martina travelled to Kenya accompanied by her long-term partner and now husband Michael.
"I wanted to learn more about my history and black culture," she says. While there she was baptised by a Kenyan pastor and renamed Malaika.
"The African people loved me,"; she says. "On the first day I wanted to go into downtown Nairobi to a tailor to get some new clothes and when I left in the car I had people surrounding me."
In footage taken by Michael - who also received the same injections as Martina, but who is left with only slightly darker skin – Martina, clad in traditional tribal clothes is shown alongside a local tribe, carrying water from a well and cooking over a campfire.
“It felt very natural, very normal to me," she says.
Martina hasn't decided on a final location for her move but said the northern part of Kenya, in Isiolo, "near the equator" was her favourite part.
"I like the dry hot climate. I was able to spend all day in the sun without sunscreen and did not get sunburned. I only got darker."
She maintains she has effectively changed race in the face of understandable cynicism from some quarters of the black community.
"I have seen a few comments saying ‘you are still white whatever the colour of your skin on the surface’ – but they mainly come from places like America," she says.
"In reality I have made lots of African friends who understand who I am and that I am trying to learn.
"I think they see that I am genuine, that this is not just the surface, I want to understand more about their history."
"I spend most of my time with them now as it feels easier. Compared with my white friends I have more in common with them."
Since she has returned to live in her native Trier, a German town near the border with Luxembourg, she has continued to embrace African tradition.
"My life has changed a lot since my transformation," she says. "Now I mostly wear traditional African dresses and I cook African food.
"My favourite meal is cooked goat meat, ugali, which is boiled corn meal flour, and sukuma wiki which is a Kenyan vegetable."
Embracing this new life alongside her meanwhile is Michael - a former pilot and Martina’s childhood sweetheart – who she insists is nothing but supportive of her new life.
"He also had the injections although they did not have the same effect. But he was and is very supportive, very relaxed about my body modifications and so is his family," she says.
Tragically, her father and mother and younger sister were killed in a car accident in 2011.
Given that Martina had her first surgery the year after they died, it’s hard not to wonder if her extreme surgery and skin change is not some extreme reaction to her loss. She insists not.
"I had started wanting to change my body in 2010. The next year was very hard for me obviously, but the next year I felt ready.
"It was not about not liking who I was. I liked the white person but it is like a boy with a car that he loves – he wants to change things here and there. It’s like fine tuning."
Today that "fine tuning" is ongoing: Martina says her skin is continuing, naturally, to get darker, while she is also planning more surgery.
"I want to widen my nose, make my lips bigger and have butt implants," she says. "I am still a work in progress."
And there’s one further deep-seated change planned: Martina and Michael are hoping to start a family in the future - and Martina believes her babies will be black.
"My doctor has told me it is possible as I have changed myself internally," she claims.
"You only have to look at my old pictures: When you compare me now with who I was I am a completely different person. The age in which you have to stay the race you were born in is over."
Clinical psychologist Dr Abigael San says:
"People use a variety of ways to express themselves and their identity. However, when it comes to race - and Martina saying she's able to have a black child - this is a biological issue that she's misinterpreted and may cause offence.
"She may be having a crisis of identity due to a deep feeling of insecurity about her appearance, and it could be her way of trying to gain some control, and fit in.
"Deep down, it would appear Martina isn't confident or happy with her own identity, and it's manifesting itself in a potentially unhealthy way.
"I would suggest anyone thinking about making drastic physical changes like this to seek professional help first to get to the bottom of any underlying issues, as often the issue isn't physical".
