Note: this is a draft. Please let me know if you have comments, suggestions, or pictures.
A gourd calabash with a flat-topped cup lid similar in style to the mala enkoriong. The dried gourd is purchased from the Maasai. This is a storage, not a milking container. If you want fresh milk, kule nairobi, then you clean it first, but if you want kule nuato, you don’t clean the nkirrau. The gourd is used by anybody.
I am an author who writes about traditional food and foodways. My book, The Magic of Fire (2002) is about hearth cooking. I have written an introductory history of bread, Bread, a global history (2011) and am currently writing a history of bread for the University of California Press. Other areas of interest include wild mushrooms, and specifically the treatment of Amanita muscaria in the historic record. I also write about Early Modern British Gardens, and for a more general audience, I write for Mother Earth News on bread, gardening, and more. I have an ongoing research project into the smoke-cured fermented milk of the Kenyan Samburu tribe. I am a co-director of the Samburu Lowlands Research Station, Lengusaka. I am the founding editor (1972) of Stone Soup, the magazine of writing and art by young people.
View all posts by William Rubel
Samburu Research 