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Kenyan Holding a Torch for Chelsea Clinton

By Associated Press

July 27, 2005, 2:48 PM EDT

NAIROBI, Kenya -- A Kenyan says he offered Bill Clinton 40 goats and 20 cows
for his daughter's hand in marriage five years ago -- and is still waiting
for an answer.

Godwin Kipkemoi Chepkurgor told the East Africa Standard newspaper last week
that he wrote Clinton asking for Chelsea's hand in 2000 during the
then-president's visit to Kenya.

Chepkurgor, a 36-year-old elected city councilor in Nakuru, recounted
writing to the U.S president through the Kenyan government.

He described his plans for a grand wedding presided over by South African
Nobel Peace Prize winner Archbishop Desmond Tutu. He named then-President
Daniel arap Moi and the president of his university as references.

"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 Clinton's leadership and commended his
wife, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, for standing by her husband "like an
African woman" in the face of the Monica Lewinsky scandal.

The electrical engineering graduate said he promised to pay his would-be
father-in-law 20 cows and 40 goats in dowry for his only daughter in
accordance with African tradition.

But he said the letter prompted security checks -- on him, his family and
his classmates, and he was summoned to the Foreign Ministry in Nairobi for a
meeting that he missed because of his graduation from university.

A National Security Intelligence Service officer told the Standard the
letter probably never made it out of the office.

"We gathered that this man was a teetotaler and a staunch Christian who
seemed to have been struck by Chelsea, and I thought maybe he just took the
joke too far," he said.

Chepkurgor vowed to remain single until he gets an answer to his proposal to
marry Chelsea, 25.

Copyright 2005 Newsday Inc.

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