A Goat for Everyone

However, his college education has not affected his humbleness or his desire to help mankind in trouble. In fact, he is using his education to go full circle back to Kenya with help for the people of his nativity who are starving because of effects of a seven-year drought in the land.

Two area advocates of Sayiorry, Linda McSwain of Morganton and Natalie Carroll of Hickory, stand ready to help his cause by organizing the Maasai Goat Project.

People involved in the project sell gift cards for $30 to donors who wish to buy a goat for a Maasai family. In turn the goat will be named whatever the donor wishes.

“One goat can feed a family,” McSwain says. She adds that they don’t eat the goat, but that the goat provides the family with milk and cheese.

Carroll says she first met Sayiorry through an outreach at her church, Northminster Presbyterian in Hickory.

“My family and I were captivated by his story,” Carroll says.

To acquaint locals with Sayiorry and the Maasai Goat Project, Carroll and McSwain set up a speaking engagement and fellowship meeting Saturday at North Morganton United Methodist Church.

Dressed in colorful native attire, Sayiorry tells his personal story and explains his burden for the Maasai.

Sayiorry began his presentation with humor.

“Forgive me if you cannot understand my English,” he says. “We got it from the British.”

Following laughter from the congregation, Sayiorry tells of his childhood years in Kenya.

“I was born in the middle of the jungle,” Sayiorry says. “Living in the jungle is as much fun as it is dangerous,” he adds.

Sayiorry tells how the Maasai children would drink fresh milk directly from the udder of a cow.

“That was fun,” he says. But he also told how dangerous a mother elephant could be defending her baby.

Born the fifth of eight children, Sayiorry never saw inside a school until he was 13.

“My father loved me so much, he didn’t want me to go to school,” Sayiorry smilingly says. He went on to say how his main duty and occupation was to look after livestock and how his father was proud of the way he did his job.

Cattle, sheep, goats and donkeys were the main source of livelihood for the Maasai, Sayiorry says.

It seemed Sayiorry would remain a herdsman for life.

“But apparently God had other plans,” Sayiorry says.

In the evenings, Sayiorry would observe school-going children as they gathered in one of the Maasai Manyatta huts and recited their ABCs, counted numbers in English and did sums on the mud wall. Within six months, Sayiorry learned to read, write and do sums.

When Sayiorry’s elder sister, an elementary school teacher, came home and found him holding a newspaper before him, knowing he had never been to school, she asked him if he was admiring the pictures.

“Oh, no,” Sayiorry remembers telling his sister. “I am reading about the coup in Uganda.”

His sister stared at him in disbelief.

“She went to my father crying, and convinced him to let me go to school,” Sayiorry says.

Sayiorry earned his bachelor’s degree in community development at Daystar University in Kenya and is currently earning his masters degree in conflict transformation and peace building on a Fulbright Scholarship at Eastern Mennonite University.

It is Sayiorry’s personal mission to establish a non-governmental organization dedicated exclusively to the needs of his people and humanity as a whole.

The needs of his people are not only physical needs, but spiritual needs as well.

A profile on Sayiorry relates that “his real calling is working as a Holistic missionary, meeting the spiritual, social and economic needs of those under some kind of bondage.”

According to Sayiorry, 75 percent of the Maasai believe in a god called Enkai. He adds that 25 percent of his people are of Christian faith.

“I belong to that group,” Sayiorry says of the Maasai Christians.

On a recent visit to Kenya, Sayiorry found that 60 percent of the Maasai livestock had been lost due to drought conditions.

He says he felt a conviction to do something about the situation.

“I came on behalf of my people,” Sayiorry says to his audience. “With $30, you can restore hope to a family.”

Carroll’s and McSwain’s efforts have already supplied 55 goats to the Maasai, and Sayiorry delivered them to the families this past summer.

After Sayiorry finished speaking in the sanctuary, the congregation adjourned to the fellowship hall for refreshments and socializing.

A slide presentation was exhibited during the fellowship showing the actual delivery of goats to Maasai families and how they prayed, thanking God for their goats.

One slide photo had a caption that read, “A goat for everyone and God for us all.”

Carroll and McSwain attended a table that was set up with cards, made by residents of J. Iverson Riddle Developmental Center, for purchasing and naming goats.

“We named a lot of goats tonight,” McSwain happily says after the meeting.

The Maasai Goat Project is an ongoing endeavor. Anyone wishing to contribute donations or to purchase a goat in honor or memory of someone can do so by sending a check for $30 payable to: Northminster Presbyterian Church, Maasai Goat Project, 3730 North Center Street, Hickory, N.C. 28601.