Tuesday, November 8, 2016

Memories of Hillary Clinton's past visits to Kenya

On her first visit to Nairobi in 2009, a journalist asked Hillary Clinton about a marriage proposal to her daughter by a Kenyan.
Ms Clinton, who is widely expected to win the presidential elections in the US, wittily dodged the question, only saying that her only child, Chelsea Clinton, then 29, was "very independent".
However she promised to convey the message from love-smitten Gideon Kipkemoi Chepkurgor to Chelsea.
Time has passed since then, and Chelsea has since got married.
But had Chepkurgor's suit been accepted, all odds indicate he would have become a husband to a US president's only daughter.
Exit polls placed Clinton ahead of her main challenger, Republican Donald Trump, placing her firmly on the road to succeed Barrack Obama as President Chepkurgor had written to the White House in 2002 asking the then President Bill Clinton for his daughter, and even offered 40 goats and 20 cows as dowry.
But the request and Mrs Clinton's response would form the lighter side of the visit by the then top diplomat of President Barrack Obama's first term, a year after the deadliest violence rocked Kenya following the disputed elections held in late 2007.
At least 1,300 people were killed and more than half a million displaced, sending shock waves beyond the East Africa region and to the dismay of the entire World.
Obama, who has his paternal roots in K'ogelo village in Siaya, had taken the conflict personally, sending Clinton-then his Secretary of State, to deliver his frustration about the slow pace of reconciliation.
Ms Clinton arrived in Nairobi late in the evening on August 4, 2009, and immediately settled down to talking about the reform agenda and punishment of post-election violence suspects.
Already, a Cabinet decision had been taken to drop a proposal of establishing a local tribunal that would have investigated and handed down punishment to the offenders

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