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Revelers slaughtered goats in Kenya. Partygoers danced at elegant balls in Indonesia. Bar patrons kept eyes fixed on television screens in Lebanon. And schoolgirls dressed in Muslim hijab squealed and waved U.S. flags in New York while a crowd did the electric slide in Atlanta.

It was America’s moment, the swearing in of Barack Hussein Obama, the nation’s first black president. But Americans shared the event with the world Tuesday as people from Las Vegas to Kabul to London gathered inside casinos, on street corners and at restaurants to witness this chapter of international history.

A hush fell across parts of the globe as the 44th president of United States placed his hand on a Bible once used by President Abraham Lincoln and took the oath of office on the steps of the U.S. Capitol.

Inside New York’s City Hall, where 2,000 people gathered to watch on a big screen, a blind man nodded and broke into a grin, a Republican war veteran in a wheelchair clapped, a gay-rights activist wept and a black seventh-grader jumped to her feet and screamed. Jean Golden, 65, a social worker, stood in the back row singing “God Bless America” at the top of her lungs.

In other parts of the world, there was a feeling of kinship for this president, whose roots lie beyond America’s shores.

In the Indonesian capital of Jakarta, where Obama lived from 1967 to 1971, people in formal attire gathered at the Model Primary School Menteng 1.

“The fact that a black man is elected as the president of the most powerful country in the world is something to celebrate,” said Enda Nasution. “This is proof that we can still hope for humanity.”

In Kenya, a country where most people don’t have electricity, thousands crowded around public TVs -- from the giant screens erected at Nairobi’s downtown convention center to battery-powered monitors set up outdoors in remote farming towns. The banner front-page headline in a leading Kenyan newspaper read: “Obama The Great.” Dozens of cows, goats and chickens were slaughtered in Obama’s ancestral village in western Kenya.

Communities in Colombia with African roots rejoiced. In Turbaco, near the Caribbean resort city of Cartagena, residents acted out the inauguration using a paper scale model of the White House. In Puerto Tejada in the southern state of Cauca, a city holiday was declared.

As America celebrated, those in war-gripped regions clung to Obama’s words.

U.S. Marines in chow halls, recreation centers and battalion command posts in Iraq sat riveted in front of televisions. At al-Asad air base, Marine Staff Sgt. Trent Nichols of New York paraphrased his new commander-in-chief: “He said it would be a long hard road and we have to endure. He knows what needs to be done, and it’s not going to be easy.”

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