Kenyan offers Bill Clinton 40 goat-20 cow dowry for Chelsea's hand
NAIROBI, Kenya -- A Kenyan city councilman says he offered Bill Clinton 40 goats and 20 cows for his daughter's hand in marriage five years ago. He's still awaiting an answer.
Godwin Kipkemoi Chepkurgor wrote Clinton asking for Chelsea's hand in 2000 when Clinton visited Kenya, Chepkurgor told the East African Standard newspaper. Chepkurgor, 36, vowed to remain single until he gets an answer to his proposal to marry Chelsea, 25.
Chepkurgor, a city councilor in Nakuru, told Clinton of plans for a grand wedding presided over by South African Nobel Peace Prize winner Archbishop Desmond Tutu.
"Had I succeeded in wooing Chelsea, I would have had a grand wedding," he told the Standard in an interview published Friday during Clinton's recent visit to Kenya.
Chepkurgor said his letter praised both Clinton's leadership and his wife, now Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, for standing by her husband in the Monica Lewinsky scandal.
The electrical engineering graduate said he promised to pay 40 goats and 20 cows in dowry for Clinton's only daughter in accordance with African tradition. But he said the letter prompted security checks -- on him, his family and his classmates.
It's unlikely Clinton ever received the offer. A security official told the Standard the letter probably never made it out of the office because authorities thought Chepkurgor "just took the joke too far."
