Hundreds of millions of dollars have been collected for victims of September 11, but none of those gifts was quite like the one orchestrated by a Stanford student last summer in a mud-hut village in Kenya.
The people in the Masai village of Enoosaen, where senior Kimeli Naiyomah grew up, had heard about a terrible event in America, but had few details and only a limited understanding of it. The village only recently received electricity. So when Naiyomah returned for a visit last May, they were shocked by his stories about “buildings that almost touched the clouds” crumbling to the ground, killing thousands of people. Naiyomah, who was in New York City visiting the Kenyan ambassador when the terrorist attack occurred, encouraged the villagers to offer a gesture of sympathy and support. A few days later, the gesture materialized in the form of 14 cows, donated from the small stocks of local herdsmen. On June 2, following a ceremony blessing the animals, the cows were presented to William Brancick, deputy chief of mission of the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi.
The size of the gift and the sacrifice it represented may be difficult for Americans to appreciate. Among the Masai, cows are sacred. “The cow is almost the center of life for us,” Naiyomah told the New York Times. “You give it a name. You perform rituals with it. It’s more than property.”
The donation also acknowledged the gratitude that villagers feel toward the United States because of Naiyomah’s educational opportunity here. Naiyomah plans to attend medical school after he graduates next spring, and says he wants to return to Masailand and build its first hospital.
