Goats and Politics: the US Presidential Election

In all the commotion of election preparation, the concerns of goats and their caretakers were often overlooked.  

Take, for example, Kipu the Goatherd:

Goats around the world have rallied around Barack Obama, the son of a Kenyan goatherder and now President-Elect of the United States of America.

Binx the Goat is just one of many who displayed his allegiance proudly.

Following the 4 November election, goats and humans alike gathered in Grant Park to celebrate Obama's victory!

We hope that in the coming years, President-Elect Obama will make efforts to address the needs of the goat community both domestically and globally.  

His family in Kenya has certainly rallied around the standard of the goat, and we hope he will follow suit.  See this excerpt from The Times:

There's only one thing to take to a Kenyan election victory feast: a goat. Preferably still breathing - “a sign of freshness“ - and with big testicles, apparently the sign of quality breeding.  And so it was that I found myself bouncing along a dirt track towards the ancestral home of the Obamas in a saloon car with the sound of John the goat bleating miserably from the boot.

It had not been easy finding such a quality specimen. The local livestock market had mostly sheep and cattle, with only a few scrawny goats on hand.  Instead, John was spotted at the side of the road by my driver George, who was impressed by the size of its belly and, well, other attributes.  He was mine for 2500 shillings, a little under £20, and roughly the price of 20 pints of beer or eight malaria-proof bednets.

“This is a fine animal,” said Abongo Malik Obama, at the lush family homestead in the far west of Kenya, surrounded by grazing cattle and fields thick with maize. “You are certainly welcome now to stay and sit around the fire tonight.” By then John will be nyama choma - the Swahili term for grilled meat.

He was to be only one small part of a vast celebration feast starting last night and comprising four bulls, 16 chickens and assorted sheep and goats.